Gold falls, $600/oz under pressure again

Gold bullion prices slipped below $600 an ounce on Friday, with selling driven by a stronger dollar and oil price weakness.Profit taking after a week of rallying also hit futures in New York. Brokers attributed some selling to disappointment that prices failed to clear the 200-day moving average, which chartists consider a long-term trend indicator.A break above the average could have brought in fresh speculative buying, they said.At the COMEX division of the New York Mercantile Exchange, gold for December delivery fell $6.70 to $604.20 an ounce, Spot gold hit a high of $603.50, before falling to close in New York at $598.90/9.90, down from 603.00/604.00 late Thursday.The metal, which had jumped about 5 percent in a week, lacked the strength to hurdle the moving average barrier at $613.70 in December futures in the near term."If we pop through that, it could be 'Katie bar the door.' But it's probably going to take some kind of news to do that," said James Quinn, commodities commentator at A.G. Edwards & Sons.Oil fell back toward $62 after OPEC member Nigeria appeared to be alone in its decision to trim output to stem a two-month price slide. But NYMEX November crude reversed losses, after gold closed, to settle up 15 cents at $62.91 a barrel."Unless the oil price keeps going upward, there's not much else to push gold up. We've pushed above $600, but then it falls away very quickly. This is suggesting that things don't look too good," said a dealer in Sydney.The metal regained $600 for the first time in more than two weeks on Thursday, after a recovery by oil prices sparked investment buying."Obviously, the bounce in oil prices helped gold ... (but) I am not calling for a sharp increase from these levels in the very short term," John Reade, precious metals analyst at UBS Investment Bank, said."I still remain constructive to gold. We have got our three-month forecast at $640 an ounce and I am pretty confident that we will get that number," he added.The dollar extended gains against the euro and the yen after an inflation gauge the U.S. Federal Reserve watches closely emerged in line with expectations.More gold selling pressure was attributed to news that Sweden's central bank would sell up to 10 tonnes of gold over the next year and reinvest the proceeds in foreign securities. [ID:nL29825654]In other precious metals, December silver fell 19.5 cents to $11.54 an ounce. Spot silver closed at $11.44/51, down from $11.58/65. The fix was $11.55.NYMEX October platinum settled $4.80 lower at $1,141.20 an ounce. Spot platinum fell to $1,138/43 from $1,150/55 at the previous close.December palladium fell $7.70 to $316.40 an ounce. Spot palladium fell to $313/317 from $319/324.