• Gold fell on Friday to hit its lowest in a week, with stock markets climbing and the dollar firming after upbeat U.S. private sector job figures appeared to boost the prospects for an interest rate hike this month.
• Spot gold had dropped 0.3 percent to $1,260.96 per ounce by 0404 GMT. It earlier touched its weakest since May 26 at $1,258.60. Gold has fallen 0.4 percent for the week and could register its first weekly decline in four weeks.
• "A stronger dollar and firming U.S. equity markets, along with weaker oil are all headwinds that could hamper gold's advance over the short-term," said INTL FCStone analyst Edward Meir.
• "But on the flip side, the fact that prices have not dropped significantly so far suggests that funds continue to buy the dips."
• Investors will be looking for further clues on the timing of rate rises in U.S. non-farm payroll data due later in the day.
• Federal funds futures implied traders saw a 96 percent chance the U.S. central bank would increase key overnight borrowing costs by a quarter point, to 1.00-1.25 percent, at its June 13-14 policy meeting, CME Group's FedWatch program showed.
• "We are bearish on gold short-term into the Fed hike. There is good room to fallback to $1,200 within the next three months," said Dominic Schnider at UBS Wealth Management in Hong Kong.
• "The world economy is still in good shape, people are risk-on, inflation is leveling off, there is no real big inflation threat anymore, policy is normalizing still."
• Among other precious metals, silver was down 0.9 pct for the week and platinum 2.8 percent. Both are heading for their first weekly decline in four.
Reference: Reuters
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