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Gold advanced for a second straight day amid speculation that the U.S. central bank will be slow to raise interest rates, with investors counting down to the release of the Federal Reserve’s minutes of its July meeting as the dollar declined.

Gold remains supported even as global equities advance, with a gauge of the dollar heading for the lowest close since June as the probability of the Fed tightening this year holds below 50 percent. Traders are looking for clues on the Fed’s path from the minutes, which are due Aug. 17, and from Chair Janet Yellen, who’s scheduled to speak next week at a meeting of global policy makers in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. Other Fed officials speaking this week include Dennis Lockhart, James Bullard and John Williams.

“Gold is not doing too much ahead of Fed minutes and more speeches from Fed policymakers,” Bernard Aw, market strategist at IG Asia Pte in Singapore, said in an e-mail. Still, the dollar’s pullback is helping prices a little, he said.

DailyFX said “Gold prices continue to tread water as markets wait for an update to Fed policy expectations to rekindle directional momentum. This puts July’s US CPI report in focus. The core year-on-year inflation rate is expected to remain unchanged from the prior month at 2.3 percent. An upside surprise may boost Fed rate hike bets, weighing against anti-fiat demand and punishing precious metals. Needless to say, a downbeat print will probably produce the opposite result.”

"The gold market is in the balance of long and short buyers. Both sides are waiting for more economic data to determine the trend," said Jiang Shu, chief analyst at Shandong Gold Group. “Most investors are not very aggressive as they are not certain about which road they should choose."

Reference: Reuters, Bloomberg