Gold prices inch up on weaker dollar

REUTERS - Gold prices edged up on Monday on a softer U.S. dollar and as investors bought the yellow metal as a hedge against inflation.

FUNDAMENTALS

* Spot gold rose 0.2 percent to $1,350.51 an ounce at 0120 GMT. It hit a three-week high oft $1,361.76 on Friday.

* The metal rose 2.4 percent last week, its best weekly gain since the week ended Sept. 1.

* U.S. gold futures slipped 0.2 percent to $1,353.10 per ounce.

* The dollar index, which measures the greenback against a basket of currencies, fell 0.1 percent to 88.999.

* The U.S. currency has been weighed down by a variety of factors this year, including concerns that Washington might pursue a weak dollar strategy and the perceived erosion of its yield advantage as other countries start to scale back easy monetary policy.

* Hedge funds and money managers cut their net long positions in COMEX gold and copper contracts in the week to Feb. 13, U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) data showed on Friday.

* Asian shares ticked up on Monday, joining a global recovery for equity markets as sentiment improved gradually from a recent shakeout that stemmed from fears of creeping inflation and higher borrowing costs.

* On Wall Street, the S&P 500 rose marginally on Friday to mark its biggest weekly increase in five years, although earlier gains evaporated after a 37-page indictment filed by U.S. Special Counsel Robert Mueller charged 13 Russians and three Russian companies for meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

* Trading is expected to be slower than usual due to market holidays in the United States as well as Hong Kong and China.

* SPDR Gold Trust, the world's largest gold-backed exchange-traded fund, said its holdings rose 0.39 percent to 824.54 tonnes on Friday from 821.30 tonnes on Thursday.

* India's federal police detained two employees of Punjab National Bank, the state-run lender that says it has been the victim of a $1.77 billion fraud, in the first arrests in a fast-widening probe into the country's biggest-ever bank scam.

* Physical gold was sold at a discount in India last week for the first time in three weeks as demand for the metal slumped due to a jump in local rates, while the Lunar New Year holiday capped buying at the end of the week elsewhere in Asia.

(Reporting by Nallur Sethuraman in Bengaluru; Editing by Biju Dwarakanath)