Spot Gold extended its pullback from a 1-week low of $4,842.60/oz. on Thursday, as lingering geopolitical tensions between the US and Iran underpinned safe-haven assets.
There has been certain progress in the US-Iran talks this week, but distance on some issues has remained, the White House said.
At the same time, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov warned that any new US strike on Iran would lead to serious consequences.
“If there’s anything fundamental you could point to that would be supporting (gold) prices, it’s the prospect of conflict in the Middle East and the kind of safe-haven demand that goes along with it,” Kyle Rodda, senior market analyst at Capital.com, was quoted as saying by Reuters.
On the monetary policy front, the minutes from the Federal Reserve’s January meeting showed that FOMC officials were divided over the future trajectory of interest rates. Several policy makers signaled that further rate cuts would likely be appropriate in case inflation continued to subside in line with their projections.
Others said that it might be prudent to keep the policy rate on hold for some time. Some FOMC members even argued that rate hikes could become necessary in case inflation remained elevated.
Investors are currently expecting the first rate cut by the Fed for this year to occur in June.
Spot Gold was last up 0.66% on the day to trade at $5,010.28 per troy ounce.
TradingPedia.com is a financial media specialized in providing daily news and education covering Forex, equities and commodities. Our academies for traders cover 
