Gold steady in thin trade

On Tuesday, gold held steady with prices struck in a narrow $15 range over three sessions as investors stayed on the sidelines amid the year-end holiday seasonwatching for developments in the euro zone debt crisis.

Spot gold edged down 0.1 percent to $1,603.29 an ounce by 7:32 p.m. EST and U.S. gold was little changed at $1,605.20.

Gold and silver speculators cut their bullish bets for the third running week in the week to December 20, with silver net long positions down by more than half, according to the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission.

The largest gold producer of the world, China, churned out 31.75 tons of gold in October, bringing the output in the first 10 months of the year to 290.752 tons, up 4.96 percent from a year earlier.