Wholesale prices for gold bullion dropped below $1710 an ounce ahead of Tuesday's US session, its lowest level in over six weeks, as stocks and commodities also fell and the Dollar rallied, with two weeks to go until the US presidential election.
Silver bullion fell through $32 an ounce to hits its lowest level since the first week of September.
"You've had QE priced in and what we're seeing now is a bit of a retracement following that," says Daniel Brebner, analyst at Deutsche Bank, referring to last month's Federal Reserve announcement of open-ended quantitative easing.
"We have a pause in monetary policy action – it's very unlikely we're going to see anything in the U.S. and China while there is political transition."
US voters go to the polls in a fortnight, while next month also sees a change of Chinese leadership. The Federal Open Market Committee today begins its latest two-day policy meeting, which will be followed by a decision tomorrow.
Germany's Central Bank Told to Inspect Overseas Bullion
Over in Germany, federal auditors said yesterday that the Bundesbank should regularly inspect its reserves of gold bullion held at the central banks of the US, UK and France. Press reports suggest the central bank may begin shipping gold held at the New York Fed back to Germany for inspection.
Elsewhere in Europe, stock markets sold off Tuesday morning for the third day in a row, with Germany's DAX down 1.3% on the day by lunchtime.
In Luxembourg, the European Union Court of Justice is today due to hear a complaint against the Eurozone's €500 billion bailout fund the European Stability Mechanism "is at odds with and undermines [European] legal order," the lawyer for Irish politician Thomas Pringle told the European Union Court of Justice Tuesday.
Pringle argues that the ESM violates EU laws against bailing out single currency members. The ESM, which was set up to replace the temporary European Financial Stability Facility, became operational earlier this month after a preliminary ruling by Germany's Constitutional Court in September that its creation did not breach German law.
Billionaire investor Wilbur Ross, who has previously bought stakes in Bank of Ireland and Northern Rock, is in talks about buying Spanish banking assets, Bloomberg reports.
The volume of gold held to back the world's largest gold ETF, SPDR Gold Shares (GLD), rose by 2.7 tonnes yesterday to 1336.9 tonnes, within 3% of the all-time high hit earlier this month.
Source: Bullion Vault
