By Gina Lee
Investing.com – Gold was down on Friday morning in Asia. The yellow metal was set to end the week on a down note as the dollar strengthened and uncertainty over the U.S Federal Reserve’s timeline to start asset tapering grows.
Gold futures edged down 0.03% to $1,799.45 by 12:27 AM ET (4:27 AM GMT) and was down 1.6% for the week. The dollar, which normally moves inversely to gold, inched up on Friday.
Some Fed officials, including Fed Governor Michelle Bowman, were confident that the weaker-than-expected U.S. jobs report for August would not delay asset tapering later in 2021.
However, Bowman’s colleague, Chicago Fed President Charles Evans, said on Thursday the U.S. economy is “not out of the woods yet,” and that challenges, including supply chain and labor market bottlenecks, remain.
Across the Atlantic, the European Central Bank (ECB) handed down its policy decision on Thursday.
Although the central bank kept its interest rate unchanged at 0%, it indicated it would slow the pace of purchases under its Pandemic Emergency Purchase Program in the fourth quarter of 2021. However, ECB President Christine Lagarde was quick to assure markets that “the lady isn’t tapering”.
On the data front, data released on Thursday showed a total of 310,000 U.S. initial jobless claims throughout the week. Meanwhile, SPDR Gold Trust (P:GLD) said its holdings fell to 998.17 tons on Thursday from 998.52 tons on Wednesday.
In other precious metals, silver was down 0.3% while platinum edged up 0.2%. Palladium jumped 1.3%, rebounding from an over one-year low of $2,143.69 hit during the previous session.