MTS Help Center

Gold on Thursday held slightly above a four-week low touched in the previous session as the dollar lost some strength ahead of a speech by Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen that may yield clues on U.S. interest rate policy.

"Investors are positioning themselves largely on Yellen's speech with expectations that her message would be quite hawkish in terms of the outlook for the U.S. economy and the possibility of a rate hike," said Vyanne Lai, an economist at National Australia Bank. "Gold will be in a defensive mode for today and tomorrow as there aren't many market-moving data points apart from what Yellen is going to say. Any hawkish comments could turn gold prices bearish next week," Lai said.

The Bloomberg Dollar Spot Index, which tracks the currency against 10 peers, declined less than 0.1 percent, after climbing 0.8 percent over the last four trading sessions.

The dollar was range-bound in illiquid Asian trade on Thursday as major currencies continued to tread water ahead of the global central bankers' gathering in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, at which Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen may offer new clues on U.S. monetary policy.

Fed officials including Vice Chairman Stanley Fischer and New York Fed President William Dudley have recently prompted some investors to raise their bets that the Fed is poised to hike rates again sooner rather than later, and some predict Yellen to echo their signals.

Futures markets on Wednesday were indicating an 18 percent chance the U.S. central bank would hike rates at its policy meeting next month, and a roughly 50 percent chance of a rate increase in December, according to CME Group's FedWatch tool.

Reference: Reuters, Bloomberg