Investing.com - Gold prices rose a tad in Asia on Friday after a key manufacturing survey from China came in as expected and investors looked ahead to more remarks from Fed policymakers.
The Caixin manufacturing PMI for September came in at 50.1 as expected with holidays in China next week in focus going forward.
"The readings for the manufacturing PMI over the past three months seem to indicate that the economy has begun to stabilise," Zhengsheng Zhong, director of macroeconomic analysis at Caixin said.
But Zhong cautioned that an increasingly strained fiscal budget could pose a risk to sustainable growth. "Given that the growth rate of fiscal income has slowed recently while expenditures have swung, there is insufficient momentum to drive future economic growth, and there is a risk that industrial output may decline."
The official China manufacturing PMI for September from the National Bureau of Statistics and China Federation of Logistics and Purchasing will be released on Saturday and came in at 50.4 in August which was the highest since October 2014.
Gold for December delivery on the Comex division of the New York Mercantile Exchange rose 0.09% to $1,327.15 a troy ounce.
But Copper futures for December delivery fell 0.18% to $2.184 a pound. China is the world's top copper importer.
Overnight, gold prices extended modest overnight losses during North America's session on Thursday, falling to a fresh one-week low as investors digested better than expected U.S. economic data.
Official data showed that the third estimate of U.S. second quarter gross domestic product showed growth of 1.4%, revised from the previous reading of a 1.1% expansion. Analysts had expected a growth rate of 1.3%.
Separately, the U.S. Department of Labor said initial jobless claims in the week ending September 24 increased by 3,000 to 254,000 from the previous week’s total of 251,000. Analysts expected jobless claims to rise by 9,000 to 260,000 last week.
Markets will now turn their attention to comments from a barrage of Federal Reserve officials, including the Fed chair, later in the session for more clues on the likelihood of a December rate hike.
Atlanta Fed President Dennis Lockhart, Fed Governor Jerome Powell, Minneapolis Fed President Neel Kashkari and Kansas City Fed President Esther George are all scheduled to speak during the day.
There is also an appearance by Fed Chair Janet Yellen, who is due to speak via video conference at the Minority Bankers Forum in Kansas City at 4:00PM ET (20:00GMT).
Yellen told Congress on Wednesday that the central bank does not have a "fixed timetable" for modifying its monetary policy. However, she added that continued job creation at its current pace would cause the economy to overheat and, in that case, the Fed could be forced to raise rates faster than expected.
Markets are currently pricing in around a 52% chance of a rate hike at December's meeting, according to Investing.com's Fed Rate Monitor Tool.
Gold is sensitive to moves in U.S. rates, which lift the opportunity cost of holding non-yielding assets such as bullion.