Investing.com - Gold prices gained in Asia on Thursday ahead of price data from China expected to set the regional tone.
On the Comex division of the New York Mercantile Exchange, Gold for August delivery rose 0.30% to $1,266.15 a troy ounce.
Silver futures for July delivery jumped 0.91% to $17.140 a troy ounce, while copper futures for July delivery gained 0.29% to $2.070 a pound.
Ahead in China, CPI data for May is expected to show a 0.2% drop month-on-month for an pace of a 2.3% gain year-on-year, while producer prices are seen down 3.3% year-on-year.
China is the world's top producer of gold and the second largest importer after India.
Overnight, gold rose sharply on Wednesday as the pace of hiring by U.S. employers in April decelerated to a two-year low in April, pushing the dollar down to fresh monthly lows and potentially lower the probability of a summer interest rate hike from the Federal Reserve.
On Wednesday morning, the U.S. Labor Department said in its monthly Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey, or JOLTS that the rate of hiring fell to 3.5% in April from 3.7% in March. It marked the lowest level since August, 2014. At the same time, job openings nationwide increased by 118,000 to a seasonally adjusted 5.79 million, the highest amount in 11 months. The job openings rate rose slightly by 0.1 to 3.9%.
The subdued hiring figures come on the heels of a dismal U.S. monthly employment report last week when the Labor Department reported that the economy added 38,000 in May, the fewest number of monthly jobs in nearly six years.
The downbeat report provided an unexpected shock to the labor market, which added an average of 200,000 jobs per month last year – one of the highest annual totals since the Great Recession. On Monday, Federal Reserve chair Janet Yellen attempted to soothe markets by downplaying the significance of a single report.
Yellen's comments, however, have done little to convince market players that the Fed could resume tightening in the coming months. The chances of a July rate hike, according to the CME Group's (NASDAQ:NASDAQ:CME) FedWatch tool, stood at 24.8% on Wednesday, down from 30.0% a month earlier. The market also sees practically no chance of a rate hike next week when the FOMC convenes for the two-day meeting next week. The current probability of a June rate hike fell to 1.9% on Tuesday from 3.8% during the previous day.
Any rate hikes from the Fed this year are viewed as bearish for gold, which struggles to compete with high-yield bearing assets in periods of rising rate environments.