Gold prices regains strength, US fiscal crisis ends

Even though the world's biggest economy will no longer go over the "fiscal cliff", other bruising budget battles lie ahead in the next two months.

Gold added $7.01 an ounce to $1,681.55 by 0649 GMT after hitting a low around $1,670. Gold ended up around 7 percent in 2012, the 12th straight year of gains for the precious metal in what is one of the longest bull runs ever for a commodity.

Gold struck a record of around $1,920 in September 2011, when a worsening debt crisis in Europe sparked a buying rush.

"Right now nobody really seems to be doing very much. Investors want to see how other markets react, equity markets in particular," said Nick Trevethan, senior metals

strategist at ANZ in Singapore.

"If we start to see a bit of a gain in equity markets, gold will probably follow suit. I suspect investors in this part of the world want to see how Europe and U.S. investors react," he added.

US gold for February rose $6.50 an ounce to $1,682.30 an ounce Stocks hit a five-month high in Asia and the dollar fell as a last-minute deal ended the U.S. fiscal crisis which threatened to send the economy back into recession and roil world financial

markets.

"In the first quarter of 2013, economic uncertainty on the

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