Gold edges up on bargain hunting after hitting over three-week low

(Reuters) - Gold prices edged up on Wednesday as investors resorted to bargain hunting after the yellow metal's sharp decline of over 1 percent to its lowest in more than three weeks in the previous session.

FUNDAMENTALS

* Spot gold was up 0.2 percent at $1,327.97 an ounce, as of 0106 GMT. Prices touched their lowest since Jan. 11 at $1,319.96 on Tuesday.

* U.S. gold futures were up 0.1 percent at $1,330.70 per ounce.

* Asian share markets were trying to find their footing on Wednesday as a semblance of calm returned to Wall Street where major indices bounced into the black after days of deep losses.[MKTS/GLOB]

* Stock markets were routed around the globe as resurgent U.S. inflation raised the possibility that the U.S. Federal reserve would tighten policy more aggressively than previously expected.

* The original trigger for the U.S. stock market sell-off was a sharp rise in U.S. bond yields late last week, after data showed U.S. wages increasing at the fastest pace since 2009. That raised the alarm about higher inflation and, with it, potentially higher interest rates.

* Monday's rout on Wall Street frayed investors' nerves, but it is not enough to knock the Federal Reserve off course from its intended path to further raise interest rates in 2018 as the economy continues to hum along, analysts say.

* Barrick Gold Corp expects to record a pre-tax charge of around $429 million at its stalled Pascua-Lama project in South America in the fourth quarter due to reclassifying its gold reserves.

* SPDR Gold Trust, the world's largest gold-backed exchange-traded fund, said its holdings fell 1.44 percent to 829.27 tonnes on Tuesday from 841.35 tonnes on Monday. [GOL/ETF]

* U.S. exported about $21 billion worth of non-monetary gold last year, up 4.4 percent from 2016 when it totalled $20.1 billion, federal data showed on Tuesday.

DATA AHEAD (GMT)

0700 Germany Industrial output Dec

0745 France Trade data Dec

0800 China Forex reserves Jan

(Reporting by Nallur Sethuraman in Bengaluru; Editing by Sherry Jacob-Phillips)