OREANDA-NEWS. March 18, 2010. Gold lost ground over the past week, slipping lower in subdued trading with little investor interest for the bullion despite a slight rebound in the euro and very mixed trading in the precious metals complex, reported the press-centre of VTB Capital.

The February uptrend had finally been breached, but losses were still limited in low volumes and depressed volatility for the best part of last week. As it happened in the week before, other precious and PGM metals fared a little better than gold. The gold to silver ratio held around 64, down from over 70 in mid-February. Platinum to gold ratio neared 1.5, levels not seen since early autumn 2008 when the economic crisis was just unfolding. Platinum is holding especially well, supported by improving macro data and high hopes for a recovering automotive sector. At the same time gold continues to lose its shine as an ultimate hedge against global economic fallout.

Net speculative lengths in COMEX gold futures were a bit lower with spec interest remaining as ever anaemic and non–commercial longs actually contracting from the week before, while there were practically no changes to speculative shorts. As a result, the latest set of data from the CFTC shows further easing in net speculative longs in COMEX/NYMEX futures in the week to 9 March coming in at 42.15% of total open interest.

Remarkably, this drastically contrasts with the sharp spike in silver net spec longs on COMEX/NYMEX, once again highlighting shrinking investor interest in the bullion as an investment asset as other metals in the precious complex are starting to look more attractive, especially given the continual global economic recovery. In the same week, non-commercial lengths in CCOMEX/NYMEX silver futures saw a sharp increase that also coincided with a substantial closure of short positions, bringing net speculative longs to 31.36% of total open interest. Naturally, recent short coverings in silver did help this spike in net positions, but still the trend very was different to gold.