Gold edges lower ahead of US presidental debate

The spot gold price edged lower during Asian trading hours on Monday ahead of the US presidential debate, but market watchers expect the yellow metal to stay well-supported in the near-term.

Spot gold was last at $1,334.90-1,335.20 per ounce, down $2.50 from Friday’s close. Trading ranged at $1,334.00-1,340.00 so far.

Gold is expected to continue to hold its recent $1,330-1,340 range in the lead up to the first presidential debate on Monday, MKS Group said on Monday morning.

The US presidential debate between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton will take place on Monday evening local time – Tuesday in Asian time zones – at Hofstra University in Hempstead, New York, and will be first of three debates before the November election. 

With the Fed September meeting out of the way and expectations for any rate hike to happen only in December, the US presidential election is expected to dominate market psychology for the next six weeks and how the debate impacts their poll standings will be of keen interest, National Australia Bank said on Monday.

A “good” performance by Trump could see a rally in safe haven assets including gold, Angus Nicholson, a market analyst at Melbourne-based IG, noted in a Monday report.

In currencies, the US dollar index fell 0.05 percent to 95.44 so far on Monday.

In equities, the Shanghai Composite fell 0.57 percent to 3,016.68 recently on Monday, in line Dow Jones Industrial Average’s 0.71 percent drop to 18,261.45 last Friday.

In other commodities, the Brent crude spot price rose 0.59 percent to $46.23 per barrel, and the Texas light sweet crude gained 0.49 percent to $44.77 so far on Monday.

In US data, the flash manufacturing PMI for September came in at 51.4 last Friday, below the forecast of 52.1 and the August figure of 52.0.

It is a quiet day for data with mainly the German Ifo business climate and US new home sales due later today.

In other precious metals, silver was last at $19.53/19.56, down $0.12. Platinum fell $7 to $1,038/1,048, and palladium dipped $1.50 to $692/701 recently on Monday.

On the Shanghai Futures Exchange, gold for December delivery was last unchanged at 288.10 yuan per gram, and the December silver was flat at 4,341 yuan per kilogram.

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