LONDON: Gold steadied on Thursday after rising nearly 1 per cent in the previous session as the dollar sank on reduced expectations for US interest rate hikes next year.

The dollar suffered its biggest drop in five months on Wednesday after minutes from the US Federal Reserve’s showed ‘many participants’ were concerned inflation would stay below the bank’s 2pc target for longer than expected.

The greenback was still nursing losses on Thursday, supporting dollar-priced gold by making it cheaper for non-US investors.

Spot gold was 0.1pc lower at $1,290.82 per ounce by 1313GMT on Thursday. “Gold is obviously still in need of a spark but we still see a chance of it reaching our year-end target of $1,325,” said Ole Hansen, head of commodity strategy at Saxo Bank. In other precious metals, silver slipped 0.2pc to $17.12 an ounce, platinum fell 0.9pc to $930.20 an ounce, while palladium was flat at $1,001.95 an ounce.

Published in Dawn, November 24th, 2017