By Saumya Vaishampayan and Carla Mozee, MarketWatch
NEW YORK (MarketWatch) — Gold futures extended declines into a seventh consecutive session on Wednesday, pressured by expectations that the Federal Reserve will soon begin to scale back stimulus.
Gold for December delivery GCZ3 -0.10% fell $5.20, or 0.4%, to $1,277.10 an ounce on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
That followed Tuesday’s fall of $19.90, or 1.5%, with losses accelerating after two Federal Reserve officials said they expect the central bank to reduce its asset purchases this year from their current $85 billion a month because of economic improvement.
Stimulus from the Fed has been seen as a benefit for gold prices.
Mostly bullish recent U.S. data have “deterred investors from creating new longs,” or bets for higher gold prices, VTB Capital analyst Andrey Kryuchenkov told clients on Tuesday.
There’s also been liquidation on exchange-traded funds’ long positions, “with only opportunistic buying on the lows in the past week, while physical flows still exert a subdued influence on prices,” he said.
Chicago Fed Bank President Charles Evans said Tuesday the Fed is “quite likely” to begin slowing the pace of monthly bond buying by year’s end. Separately, Atlanta Fed Bank President Dennis Lockhart said tapering of monetary stimulus, or quantitative easing, could be announced at any of this year’s remaining policy meetings.
But the July employment report last week showing the economy added a less-than-expected 162,000 jobs also created uncertainty about the tapering time frame, as weakness in the labor market suggested to many that the economy remains in need of monetary aid from the Fed.
The September meeting is “still looking like a good starting place” to begin tapering, said Kryuchenkov. “In any case, the upside in gold will be particularly limited if numbers continue to improve, while [quantitative-easing] uncertainty will fuel further jittery trading ahead of the autumn.”
The week’s lineup of Fed speeches continues Wednesday, with remarks due from Philadelphia Fed President Charles Plosser and Cleveland Fed President Sandra Pianalto.
Elsewhere in the metals complex Wednesday, September silver SIU3 -0.73% dropped 16 cents to $19.36 an ounce and October platinum PLV3 -0.01% fell $3.20, or 0.2%, to $1,424.80 an ounce.
September copper HGU3 -1.17% lost 3 cents, or 1.2%, to trade at $3.14 a pound, and September palladium PAU3 -0.58% gave up $7.90, or 1.1%, to exchange hands at $714.90 an ounce.
Saumya Vaishampayan is a MarketWatch reporter based in New York. You can find her on Twitter @saumvaish.
Carla Mozee is a reporter for MarketWatch, based in Los Angeles. Follow her on Twitter @MWMozee.
