Gold ended a tad higher on Monday after initially rising toward $1,000 an ounce following the rise across the broad classes and thereby bolstering its status as a hedge against inflation.

October Silver futures on COMEX finished up 13.5 cents at $16.173 an ounce, about 1 percent up broadly tracking gold's strength.

The U. S. dollar rose against the euro and a basket of currencies despite the rally in U. S. stocks. The greenback dropped against the Japanese yen.

The world's largest gold-backed exchange-traded fund, the SPDR Gold Trust, said its holdings stood at 1,094.107 tonnes as of Sept. 28, unchanged from the previous business day.

Germany's Bundesbank, the world's second-biggest holder of gold, said it will refrain from big gold sales in the first year of a new central bank gold sales agreement.

Lighting manufacturer Bright International Group Ltd said it would buy gold mines in China for a total of HK$7.41 billion
($956 million) to tap rising prices of the precious metal.

Speculators set record highs for a third straight week in their net long position in U. S. gold - Commodity Futures Trading Commission data. The noncommercial net long position in gold futures on the COMEX division of the New York Mercantile Exchange stood at an all-time high of 236,749 lots for the week ended Sept. 22.

Precious metals are expected to take direction from the movement in dollar and broader asset classes like equities and crude oil. We expect precious metals to trade slightly up in today’s session backed by weaker dollar as investors are likely to switch to riskier asset classes on expectations of strong U. S. consumer confidence data.