Gold Steadies as Investors Turn Their Focus to Fed Minutes

(Bloomberg) -- Gold steadied as investors stayed on the sidelines before the release of minutes from the Federal Reserve’s latest policy meeting.

Traders are turning their focus to the Fed minutes due Wednesday afternoon and next week’s Jackson Hole symposium, which may offer clues on the timing of the central bank’s tapering. In a town hall meeting Tuesday, Fed Chair Jerome Powell flagged that the pandemic is “still casting a shadow on economic activity,” but didn’t discuss the outlook for monetary policy or make specific comments on growth and the risks from the delta variant.

Bullion had slipped Tuesday, snapping four days of gains amid mixed U.S. economic data and lingering concerns over the global recovery as the coronavirus delta variant spreads.

“The biggest positive in gold’s corner may be that the market has likely accounted for coming asset purchase reductions,” said James Steel, chief precious metals analyst at HSBC Securities (USA) Inc. “While this does not argue that gold will go higher, it supports the notion that gold may not go much lower. We think gold may be stalled in front of $1,800 an ounce.”

Spot gold fell less than 0.1% to $1,784.71 an ounce at 10:19 a.m. in New York after slipping 0.1% Tuesday. The Bloomberg Dollar Spot Index also held steady after a 0.5% gain in the previous session. Silver and platinum also slipped. Palladium extended declines from the prior day, falling as much as 2.5% to $2,428.61 an ounce, the lowest intraday level since mid-March.

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