Gold-Futures speculations and insignificant buying kept metal prices under technical correction while buyers in international and domestic market made cautious deals on Futures-output related buying, metal traders said. The metal dealers said the commodity has been witnessing continuous downward price trend since couple of days with few recession gaining some improvement. But all depends on Futures outlook of hedgers and gold speculators who are controlling over baseline value of metal, said metal experts. Gold prices would come in green during next couple of weeks when gold was expected to get expensive substantially by Rs 800 to Rs 1,200 per tola on private buyers and retailers’ demand. The gold trading closed at $1,221 an ounce in international market with $2 cents an ounce decline in price. In domestic market yellow metal shed Rs 3,010 per tola to stay at Rs 56,119 per tola while in term of grammage it close at Rs 48,165 per ten grams with a loss of Rs 2,697 per ten grams, traders said. 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, August 1st 2018.