Bull run on yellow metal diminishes as hungry bears tighten grip

Speculators pare options on bullion as US economy gathers momentum, dollar recovers, reports Bloomberg.

Speculators pared bets on rising gold prices for a seventh consecutive week, the longest retreat since 2010, as futures erased this year's gains.

The net-long position in New York futures and options contracted as hedge funds accumulated the most bets on further declines since the US government began collecting data in 2006. The most-traded Comex gold option on Friday was for the right to sell December futures at $1,100 an ounce, or almost 8 percent below where prices ended the day.

Some investors are shunning gold as the US economy quickens and the dollar trades at the highest in four years, spurring expectations the Federal Reserve will raise interest rates and constrict demand for bullion as a hedge against inflation. Goldman Sachs Group Inc, Societe Generale SA and HSBC Securities (USA) said they expect lower prices.

"People have been falling out of love with gold," Bill Schultz, chief investment officer at McQueen, Ball & Associates in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, said on Thursday. "The better US economy and the stronger dollar continue to lure people away."

Futures fell 1.9 percent last week to $1,192.90 an ounce on the Comex in New York, the fifth decline and the longest slide since January 2013. After rallying on Monday to $1,207.30, prices are 0.4 percent higher for the year. The Bloomberg Commodity Index of 22 raw materials dropped 1 percent last week and the MSCI All-Country World Index of equities 2 percent, while the Bloomberg Dollar Spot Index rose 1.1 percent.

The net-long position in gold declined 15 percent to 37,743 futures and options in the week ended Sept 30, US Commodity Futures Trading Commission data show. The holdings are down 72 percent in seven weeks. Short positions increased 4.5 percent to an all-time high of 81,262 contracts. The bearish holdings doubled since the last week of August.

More than $4 billion has been erased from the value of exchange-traded products backed by gold this year. Investors sold 9.01 metric tons of metal held through ETPs last week, dragging holdings to a five-year low of 1,679.46 tons. The US jobless rate declined to a six-year low of 5.9 percent in September, and employers added more workers than projected, the government said last week.

On Thursday, Goldman reiterated its forecast for gold prices to reach $1,050 in 12 months, and HSBC cut its outlook for 2015 to $1,175 from $1,310. Recent gains for the US economy mean the market will "start pricing a much faster pace of" increases for US interest rates, SocGen said in a report, saying the metal will trade "well below $1,200".

Lower prices may help to spur physical demand for the metal. Sales of gold coins by the US Mint reached 58,000 ounces last month, the most since January, and more than double August's total. Purchases at Australia's Perth Mint climbed 89 percent in September to the highest in almost a year.

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