NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- Gold prices slipped early Wednesday as investors waited to get a look at the minutes of the Federal Reserve's most recent policy meeting.
Gold for August delivery was down $2.30 to $1,577.50 an ounce at the Comex division of the New York Mercantile Exchange. The gold price traded as high as $1,583.40 and as low as $1,565.50 an ounce, while the spot price was climbing $11.40, according to Kitco's gold index.
"Today we're sort of watching the currencies ahead of the Fed minutes," said James Moore, a precious metals analyst at FastMarkets.com. The greenback was off 0.21% in recent trades, according to the dollar index, which measures the buck's strength against a basket of foreign currencies.
Silver prices for September delivery were up about 29 cents to $27.17 an ounce, while the U.S. dollar index was down 0.16% at $83.27.
A tight trading range could continue through the rest of the week if the Fed doesn't offer up any substantial quantitative easing signals.
Stanley Dash, vice president of applied technical analysis at TradeStation Securities, puts the low-end level of gold's current trading range in the $1,552 to $1,547 area and sees resistance kicking in at around $1,615 to $1,625.
"We keep sort of compressing into these different range areas ... and every time we try and pick out levels -- that's the definition of a trading range, if you get to those levels you think will be a break out it stays in the range," said Dash.
Beyond Wednesday's Fed minutes, investors may be peeking ahead to Thursday's economic indicators from China that include reports on GDP, industrial production and retail sales -- all of which could point to relative health of the world's most populated country.
FastMarkets.com's Moore said that the Chinese have already expressed a commitment to investment in infrastructure to stimulate growth.
Gold mining stocks were mostly lower Wednesday. Goldcorp(GG_) led the sector sell-off, down 8.4%, after the company lowered its gold production outlook for 2012 to reflect operational issues at two of its mines.
Among other mining stocks, Barrick Gold(ABX_) was down 1.9%, Eldorado Gold(EGO_) was falling 2% and Kinross Gold(KGC_) was rising 0.76%.
