Investing.com - Gold prices edged forward on Tuesday, as a weaker dollar helped to support demand for the precious metal.
At 10:59 AM ET (14:59 GMT), gold futures for August delivery on the Comex division of the New York Mercantile Exchange gained $3.00, or 0.24%, to $1,228.60 a troy ounce.
Meanwhile, the U.S. dollar index, which measures the greenback’s strength against a trade-weighted basket of six major currencies, fell 20% to 94.23.
A weaker greenback makes the dollar-denominated metal more affordable for holders of other currencies.
With the week getting off to a slow start as far as top-tier data is concerned, investors’ focus was directed elsewhere as a slew of positive earnings reports including from Google-parent Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL) helping the Nasdaq reach a new record high.
U.S. President Donald Trump was back behind his guns, repeating on Tuesday that “tariffs are the greatest” and insisting that he had the situation under control.
“Either a country which has treated the United States unfairly on trade negotiates a fair deal, or it gets hit with tariffs,” he said via Twitter.
The economic data agenda will get underway again on Thursday with weekly jobless claims and durable goods orders for June.
That ahead of the week's main appointment on Friday with the U.S. GDP report for the second quarter.
The data is expected to show that growth accelerated in the three months to June, boosted by an increase in consumer spending.
Consensus is looking for strong growth of 4.1%, more than doubling the expansion seen in the first three months of the year. But the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta is currently predicting a stronger rise of 4.5% while a Bloomberg survey of economists saw some predictions rising as high as 5.4%.
Trump insisted on Tuesday that the U.S. is “doing great” with the “best financial numbers on the planet”.
Stronger-than-expected economic growth would support the Fed’s plans to continue with gradual rate hikes.
Fed fund futures currently price in a quarter-point hike for September, with the probability for a second increase in December hovering around 70%, according to Investing.com’s Fed Rate Monitor Tool.
Higher interest rates tend to weigh on demand for gold, which doesn’t bear interest, in favor of yield-bearing investments.
In other metals trading, silver futures gained 1.13% at $15.600 a troy ounce by 11:01 AM ET (15:01 GMT).
Palladium futures advanced 1.75% to $918.40 an ounce, while sister metal platinum traded up 1.82% at $846.10.
In base metals, copper rose 3.04% to $2.834 a pound.