KARACHI: Gold-Futures speculations and insignificant buying by leading buyers kept metal prices under technical correction while buyers in international and domestic market made cautious deals on Futures-output related reports. The commodity has been witnessing continuous technical correction and price trend since last some weeks with some recession gained on some improvement. But all depends on Futures outlook of hedgers and gold speculators who are controlling over baseline value of metal. Gold prices would come in firm zone during next couple of weeks when gold was expected to get expensive substantially by Rs 600 to Rs 1,000 per tola on private buyers and retailers’ demand. The gold trading closed at $1,320 an ounce in international market with no change in price. In domestic market yellow metal gained Rs 23 per tola to stay at Rs 54,776 per tola while in term of grammage it close at Rs 47,012 per ten grams with an increase of Rs 16 ten grams. The gold price remained in the hands of manipulators in India, Pakistan and other major gold buying countries, as they remained busy influencing current prices and Futures on speculations. The potential buyers in India and Pakistan remained busy in hedging. However the gold hedgers made some cautious deals. The general buyers remained on sidelines anticipating further easing in price in coming days on dollar-rupee parity. Buyers made deals according to their immediate needs. Local trading in gold remained dull on back of insignificant buying. Local dealers said the domestic gold prices decline/rising is depending in line with the trend of global gold markets. But, the increase is usually not as much as takes place internationally because people stop buying the metal when prices are too high. Published in Daily Times, March 10th 2018.