Investing.com – Gold prices dipped on Thursday as the dollar remained strong following Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell’s comments that spurred concerns of faster-than-expected rate hikes, while investors await his second appearance this week later in the day.
Gold Futures for April delivery on the Comex division of the New York Mercantile Exchange fell $1.60, or 0.12%, to $1,316.30 a troy ounce by 11:23pm ET.
Gold suffered its first monthly loss last month since October. Buying interest in the precious metal has been limited as concerns over rising interest rates put pressure on the metal because bullion pays no interest. Meanwhile, the dollar continued its bullish trend amid improving sentiment on the pace of rate hikes.
The US dollar index that tracks the greenback against a basket of currencies gained 0.04% to reach a five-week high at 90.65 at 10:52pm ET thanks to Powell’s hawkish tone of rate hikes on Tuesday.
Asian stock markets fell in morning trade on Thursday, following a drop in their U.S. counterparts, with the Dow and the S&P 500 closed 1.5% and 1.1% lower respectively. Mainland Chinese markets were the exception with both Shanghai Composite and Shenzhen Component trading in the green. Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 skidded 0.9% after the country’s Q4 seasonally adjusted CAPEX fell 0.2% QoQ, missing the market estimates of a 0.9% growth.