Investing.com - Gold prices inched lower on Tuesday as the dollar remained steady with investors expecting the first rate hike this year at the meeting of the Federal Open Markets Committee (FOMC) on Tuesday and Wednesday.
Gold futures for April delivery on the Comex division of the New York Mercantile Exchange fell by $1.70, or 0.13%, to $1,316.10 a troy ounce by 11:40pm ET (03:40 GMT).
The U.S. dollar index that tracks the greenback against a basket of six major currencies last stood at 89.48, up 0.01%.
Dollar-denominated assets such as gold are sensitive to moves in the dollar – a gain in the dollar makes gold more expensive for holders of foreign currency and thus, decreases demand for the precious metal.
Investors await the FOMC meeting to see whether the Fed is planning three or four rate hikes this year. Analysts are also watching closely to see what will come from new Fed head Jerome Powell’s first meeting as chair. The Fed’s target inflation rate is 2%, and it has said it expects to hit that by the end of the year.
In other precious metal trade, silver futures fell 0.12% to $16.305 a troy ounce, while platinum futures slipped 0.02% to $954.60 an ounce.
Meanwhile, Asian stocks were also lower in morning trade on Tuesday, with technology shares leading the drop amid reports of a Facebook data breach, as the company had allegedly shared the data of up to 50 million users with political data analytics Cambridge Analytica.