Gold edged up in early Asian trade on Monday as jitters over the resignation of Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi after losing a referendum on constitutional reform induced safe-haven buying.
FUNDAMENTALS
* Spot gold was up 0.3 percent at $1,180.20 an ounce by 0050 GMT.
* U.S. gold futures gained 0.4 percent to $1,182.40 per ounce.
* The euro sank to 20-months lows in Asia on Monday after Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi said he would resign in the wake of a stinging defeat on constitutional reform that could destabilise the country’s shaky banking system.
* The U.S. unemployment rate fell to a nine-year low of 4.6 percent in November, as employers added another 178,000 jobs, making it almost certain that the Federal Reserve will raise interest rates later this month.
* Deutsche Bank AG has agreed to pay $60 million to settle private U.S. antitrust litigation by traders and other investors who accused the German bank of conspiring to manipulate gold prices at their expense.
* Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev has signed an order to sell rights for the development of the giant Sukhoi Log gold deposit in Siberia in an auction in 2017, the government said in a statement on Friday.
* President Tayyip Erdogan on Friday called on Turks to convert their foreign exchange into gold or the Turkish lira and said there was “no option” other than cutting interest rates to spur growth – comments that helped send the lira to a new low.
* Turquoise Hill Resources Ltd said on Friday it has suspended concentrate shipments from its giant copper-gold Oyu Tolgoi mine in Mongolia across the Chinese border, blaming problems with a crossing route.
* Gold premiums in China held near three-year highs this week amid limited supply of the precious metal with traders saying Beijing was restricting imports, while prices in India swung to a discount as a severe cash crunch dampened appetite.
* Speculators reduced their net long position in gold futures and options by 17,843 lots to 103,392 lots, the lowest since February, the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) data showed.
