Gold slips on firmer dollar, market looks to Fed minutes

By Sethuraman N R

REUTERS - Gold slipped on Wednesday as the dollar firmed, with investors looking to minutes from the U.S. Federal Reserve's latest meeting for clues on the timing of interest rate hikes.

Spot gold had dropped 0.2 percent to $1,233.41 per ounce by 0645 GMT, while U.S. gold futures fell 0.4 percent to $1,234.60. Spot gold dropped as much as 1 percent to touch a one-week low of $1,225.73 in the previous session.

"Although U.S inflation has risen, the expectation of a rate hike in March is not very high," said Jiang Shu, chief analyst at Shandong Gold Group.

"Since gold has only risen since the beginning of this year, the market has some hesitation in moving up further ... but still (prices) have some way to go up."

Traders are looking ahead to the minutes from the Fed's Jan. 30-Feb. 1 meeting, due at 1900 GMT on Wednesday.

Spot gold looks neutral in a range of $1,233-$1,240 per ounce, and an escape could suggest direction, according to Reuters technical analyst Wang Tao.

"We are relatively agnostic on the outlook for gold, with our 3-, 6-, and 12-month targets at $1,200, $1,200 and $1,250 an ounce respectively," Goldman Sachs said in a note.

"Our economists expect three rate hikes in 2017 and see the probability of a rate hike by June at 80 percent, and we see U.S. long dated real rates rising slightly, placing downward pressure on gold."

The U.S. dollar, which was boosted by hawkish comments from various Fed officials in the previous session, was firm on Wednesday.

San Francisco Fed President John Williams warned Tuesday that the global drop in interest rates since the financial crisis is likely to persist and will make it harder for central banks to keep world economies healthy.

Philadelphia Fed President Patrick Harker suggested he would support an interest rate increase at a mid-March policy meeting as long as inflation, output and other data until then continue to show the U.S. economy is growing.

However, Minneapolis Fed President Neel Kashkari said the U.S. labour market had "more room to run", suggesting he did not believe the central bank should raise rates quickly to head off inflation.

Gold is highly-sensitive to rising U.S. interest rates, which increase the opportunity cost of holding non-yielding bullion, while also boosting the dollar.

Spot silver was firm at $17.95 an ounce.

Platinum rose 0.2 percent to $1,001, while palladium was firm at $780.

(Reporting by Nallur Sethuraman in Bengaluru; Editing by Joseph Radford)