Gold Down, Investors Continue to Digest Fed’s Firm Dovish Stance By Investing.com – Investing.com

Gold Down, Investors Continue to Digest Fed’s Firm Dovish Stance By Investing.com – Investing.com

© Reuters.

By Gina Lee

Investing.com – Gold was down on Friday morning in Asia but was hovering close to a more-than-one-month peak reached during the previous session. An unpleasant surprise jump in the number of also pushed gold towards a weekly gain of over 1%.

were down 0.34% at $1,752.20 by 12:55 AM ET (4:55 AM GMT), with the yellow metal gaining nearly 1.5% for the week so far after posting losses in the previous two weeks.

Investors continue to digest U.S. Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell's fresh comments defending the central bank's dovish stance during an International Monetary Fund event on Thursday.

He added that the stance would only shift after a few consecutive months of positive data, with St. Louis Fed president adding at a separate Southern Illinois University gathering that the central bank should not even discuss changes until there are clear signs that the COVID-19 pandemic is over.

As the Fed continued to maintain its stance, across the Atlantic the European Central Bank discussed a smaller rise in bond purchases, according to the released on Thursday.

On the data front, jobless claims in the U.S. unexpectedly rose to 744,000, higher than the 680,000 claims in forecasts prepared