© Archyde.com. Gold bars weighing 1 kilogram in Mendrisio, Switzerland, on July 13, 2022. Photo: Denis Balibos/Archyde.com.
From Kavya Gudoro
(Archyde.com) – It fell on Thursday to its lowest level since April 2020 as higher yields and the dollar’s rise, as bets that the US Federal Reserve will raise interest rates by a significant rate again reduce the attractiveness of the yellow metal.
It fell 1.8 percent to $ 1665.23 an ounce by 1816 GMT, after falling more than two percent to $ 1659.47 earlier in the session.
And US gold futures fell 1.9 percent to settle at $1,677.30.
Gold briefly pared losses after investors evaluated data showing US retail sales unexpectedly rose in August, while separate data showed that weekly jobless claims in the US fell by 5,000 to a seasonally adjusted 213,000 last week.
Markets are already expecting a rate hike of at least 75 basis points at the end of the US Federal Reserve meeting next week, and possibly as high as 100 basis points.
Gold is usually considered a hedge against inflation, but it does not generate returns, so it is sensitive to interest rates and Treasury yields.
Meanwhile, IMF chief Kristalina Georgieva said on Wednesday that central bankers should persevere in the fight against large-scale inflation.
As for other precious metals, it fell in spot transactions by 2.5 percent to $19.19 an ounce.
“The strength of this week, along with rising US Treasury yields and some US inflation data, have all kept gold and silver buyers mostly on the sidelines,” Jim Wyckoff, analyst at Kitco Metals, said in a note.
Platinum fell 0.2 percent to $ 904.01, while it fell 1.4 percent to $ 2133.76.
(Prepared by Amira Zahran, Noha Zakaria and Ahmed El-Sayed for the Arab Bulletin – Edited by Mustafa Saleh)