Gold tumbles to four-month low

London (June 2)  Gold tumbled to the lowest level since February after the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index reached a record and hedge funds pared bets on a rally in the metal at the fastest pace this year as haven demand waned.

Bullion for immediate delivery lost as much as 0.7 percent to $1,241.11 an ounce, the lowest since Feb. 3, and was at $1,243.53 by 2:36 p.m. in Singapore, according to Bloomberg generic pricing.Gold dropped 3.3 percent last week. The metal for August delivery retreated as much as 0.4 percent to $1,241.10 an ounce on the Comex in New York, also the lowest since Feb. 3 for the most-active contract.

The S&P 500 closed at an all-time high of 1,923.57 on May 30, advancing 4.1 percent this year. Money managers trimmed their net-long position by 24 percent in the week to May 27, U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission data show. Assets in the SPDR Gold Trust, the largest exchange-traded product backed by bullion, contracted for a second month after dropping to 776.89 tons on May 21, the lowest since December 2008.

“The risk status of gold has lessened somewhat,” Jonathan Barratt, the chief investment officer at Ayers Alliance, a wealth management company, said by phone from Sydney. “There’s really no major issues out there that warrant it, you can deploy your funds elsewhere and that’s what people are doing.”