Investing.com – Gold prices continued to hover around the psychologically important $1,300 level ahead of a widely expected Federal Reserve interest rate increase due Wednesday.
Gold futures for June delivery on the Comex division of the New York Mercantile Exchange rose by $0.80, or 0.06%, to $1,303.50 a troy ounce.
Gold prices continued to be range bound as upside momentum in the yellow metal was capped by expectations the Federal Reserve will not only hike interest rates Wednesday but signal a hawkish tilt on monetary policy.
The Fed hike path is much more hawkish than futures market pricing, Goldman Sachs said, forecasting three and four rate hikes in 2018 and 2019, respectively, with the risk of four rate hikes in 2019 skewed to the upside.
Expectations for a faster pace of monetary policy come as "both inflation and employment are essentially at the Fed’s end-of-year targets," BNY Mellon said last week.
The European Central Bank is also expected to announce its intention to step up efforts to rein in its massive bond buying programme on Thursday.
The sideways action seen in gold prices at the start of the week emerged as data released Friday showed traders trimmed their bullish bets on gold.
CFTC COT data data last week showed speculative net long positions on gold decreased to 58,066 from 61,235 last week.
In other precious metal trade, silver futures rose 1.19% to $16.94 a troy ounce, while platinum futures were flat at $905.70 an ounce.
Copper fell 1.48% to $3.25.