Gold pricesare holding mild gains in early-afternoon U.S. trading Monday, in a quieter,choppy and two-sided session. Some safe-haven buying interest wasfeatured as world stock markets started out the trading week lower on some veryweak economic data coming out of China. However, U.S. stock indexessignificantly pared overnight losses by midday today and were just slightlydown, which did prompt the gold market to back down from its daily high. February gold futures were last up $2.30 an ounce at$1,291.80. March Comex silver was last up $0.019 at $15.675 an ounce.

European and Asian stock markets werealso lower overnight, as there is keener risk aversion in the market place tostart the trading week, following the downbeat economic news coming out ofChina. China’s exports in December were down a surprising 4.4%,year-on-year. Exports were up 5.4% in November. China’s imports fell 7.6% inthe same period. In past months both imports and exports saw double-digitgains. The trade war with the U.S. has really hurt China’s economy, the latestimport and export numbers suggest. Such will likely embolden the U.S. is itstrade posture against China. Last week the two sides met in Beijing and arescheduled to meet next in the U.S. There was also dour economic news comingout of the European Union Monday. The Euro zone’s factory output dropped1.7% in November from October, for the largest monthly drop in three years. Thereading was down 3.3%, year-on-year, for the biggest drop in six years.

Brexit is also back in the minds oftraders and investors in Europe. Voters in the U.K. on Tuesday arelikely to reject Prime Minister May’s latest Brexit plan, putting the entireBrexit situation into serious turmoil. That’s prompting a bit of safe-havendemand from U.K. traders.

The U.S. government partial shutdown isnow the longest on record. The matter is not a serious drag onthe marketplace, but many markets are lacking normal economic reports to drivetheir daily price action, which is causing uncertainty and some anxiety amidthe dearth of news, which is generally bearish for those impacted markets.