Gold was slightly lower in the Asian trading hours on Wednesday as expectations of a Greek debt deal and a firmer dollar continue to weigh on the sentiment.
The spot gold price was last at $1,176.8/1,177.4 per ounce, down $1 on Tuesday’s close. Trade has ranged from $1,176.2 to $1,179.5 so far.
In Europe, if eurozone finance ministers approve a cash-for-reform package this evening, EU leaders could sign it off at a meeting on Thursday, releasing billions of euros in loans for Greece and preventing a default – for now.
Although a deal is closer than at any time in the past five months, there are concerns that the latest set of proposals will not return the country, which still owes the ECB around 320 billion euros and owes billion to the ECB and the EU, to growth.
And for now, Greece’s banks are strapped for cash, prompting the ECB to raise its emergency lending limits for the fourth time in six days.
“The toing and froing in the Greek debt crisis is keeping the precious metal markets on tenterhooks,” Commerzbank said. “Although no final agreement was reached between the highly-indebted country and its creditors, meaning that the cliff-hanger will continue for the time being, gold found itself under noticeable pressure.”
In US data overnight, core durable goods orders month-over-month in May was up 0.5 percent, yet just off predications of 0.6 percent. May durable goods orders month-over-month were down 1.8 percent, with estimates pegging a decline of 0.6 percent. HPI month-over-month in May climbed 0.3 percent, yet was below predications of a 0.6 percent increase.
New home sales in May were 546,000, above forecasts of 524,000 and the single best month since February 2008. The Richmond manufacturing index for June was at 6, doubling predictions of 3.
As for the other precious metals, silver was little changed at $15.84/15.89, as was platinum at $1,066/1,071. Palladium at $698/703 increased $4.
On the Shanghai Futures Exchange (SHFE) gold for December delivery was unchanged at 238 yuan per gram.
(Additional reporting by Dalton Barker)
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