Commodities: Gold finds small bid as investors gauge weekend news from US

Most commodities outside of precious metals space traded lower on Monday, as risk aversion picked up following confusion over the weekend regarding the exact scope of the US administration's temporary ban on immigration from several majority Muslim countries.

In parallel, reports on Saturday, citing an official order, indicated that the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff and the head of national intelligence had been removed from the so-called principals committee, except where issues pertaining to their responsibilities and expertise are to be discussed, while senior adviser Steve Bannon was added.

On Sunday, in an interview with NBC News, White House chief of staff Reince Priebus denied the content of those reports as pertained to the JCS and intelligence chief.

At least one US senator and another ex-high ranking government official expressed surprise that the chairman of the JCS might have been excluded from the meetings of that committee following the re-organisation.

As of 1853 GMT, the Bloomberg commodity index was off by 0.97% to 87.13 as the US dollar spot index was drifting lower by just 0.03% to 100.50 and off its best levels of the session at 101.01.

April 2017 gold futures advanced 0.44% to $1,193.60/oz. on COMEX, while spot platinum edged up by 0.18% to $987.34/oz..

March copper futures on the other hand slid 0.97% to $2.6635 a pound.

Meanwhile, in agriculture futures, April 2017 live cattle futures lost 2.51% to $1.1438 a bushel on CBoT, while the March 2017 corn contract gave back 1.17% to $3.5825 a bushel.

West Texas Intermediate was down 0.71% to $52.79 a barrel on NYMEX and natural gas futures declined 3.39% to $3.24/MMBtu..