Gold off slightly in early Asian trading

             

       Gold futures fell modestly in the early part of Monday’s Asian session following a small increase last week. 

On the Comex division of the New York Mercantile Exchange, gold futures for April delivery fell 0.07% to USD1,575.80 per troy ounce in Asian trading Monday. Last week, gold futures prices posted a modest 0.15% gain. 

Gold prices were likely to find support at USD1,554.80 a troy ounce, the low from February 21 and resistance at USD1,602.20, the high from February 28. 

With U.S. stocks soaring last week, demand for gold has waned as investors have embraced riskier assets. Last week, the S&P 500 advanced 2.2% and is now trading 1% away from its all-time high. For its part, the Dow Jones Industrial Average made a succession of record intraday highs last week. 

Gold futures came under pressure in the U.S. last Friday after the U.S. Department of Labor said the economy added 236,000 jobs in February, beating expectations for a 160,000 increase. The unemployment rate in the world’s largest economy also fell to 7.7% from 7.9%. 

On the bright side for gold bugs, an unemployment rate of 7.7% is still a far cry from 6.5%, the jobless rate where the Federal Reserve has said it will consider boosting U.S. interest rates. Higher interest rates would likely boost the U.S. dollar, in turn imperiling gold, which is denominated in greenbacks. 

U.S. Retail sales on Wednesday and the consumer price index data, due out Friday, will be among the data points traders watch this week. 

Elsewhere, silver for May delivery fell 0.09% to USD28.923 per ounce while copper dropped 0.37% to USD3.501 per ounce. 

Official data released over the weekend showed that consumer prices in China rose 3.2% in February from a year earlier, above expectations for a 3% increase and accelerating sharply from a 2% rate of increase in January. China is the world’s largest copper producer. - investing.com