BHP hires former Australian state leader for Washington role
Dominic Perrottet, the former leader of New South Wales, will serve as a US government and external affairs liaison.
Gold erased gains from the previous session after latest voting tallies from the US presidential election showed a tight race, which left investors scrambling to parse the shifting odds.
Spot gold fell 0.4% to $1,900.73 per ounce by 11:30 a.m. ET Wednesday. US gold futures also declined 0.4% to $1,901.70 per ounce.
With millions of ballots still to be counted, Donald Trump claimed early Wednesday he had won re-election and said he would ask the Supreme Court to intervene.
Earlier, Joe Biden said he was “on track to win this election.” While his chances of an Electoral College victory have improved as votes come in, it looks likely that the final result may not be known for some time.
A Biden victory could pave the way for the roll-out of more fiscal stimulus that could lift equity and commodity markets — particularly gold, which benefits from a weaker dollar due to money printing — in the near term.
“Delays to any conclusive outcome over the next few days should keep commodity-market volatility elevated as investors wait for more clarity,” said Darius Tabatabai, head of trading at Arion Investment Management Ltd.
“The confidence that market participants had earlier about a clear result is slipping,” Harshal Barot, senior research consultant for South Asia at Metals Focus, told Reuters.
But there is a set of strategic investors keen to buy any major dips in gold and “there’s still a lot of uncertainty ahead for the global economy in terms of rising virus cases and fresh lockdowns,” Barot said.
(With files from Bloomberg and Reuters)
