Gold faces third weekly decline as dollar, Treasury yields firm

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Gold prices edged lower on Friday and

looked set to fall for a third straight week, weighed down by a

robust dollar and rising yields, while investors await the U.S.

jobs report to assess its impact on monetary policy.

FUNDAMENTALS

* Spot gold fell 0.4% to $1,869.26 per ounce, as of

0137 GMT, while U.S. gold futures slipped 0.4% to

$1,869.10. Bullion has declined about 1.5% so far this week.

* Benchmark 10-year U.S. Treasury yields firmed, while the

dollar held near a 20-year high against a basket of currencies,

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making non-yielding bullion expensive for other currency

holders.

* New claims for U.S. unemployment benefits increased to a

more than two-month high last week, but remained at a level

consistent with tightening labor market conditions and further

wage gains that could keep inflation hot for a while.

* Investors will focus on U.S. Labor Department’s non-farm

payrolls numbers for April due later in the day.

* The Fed on Wednesday raised its benchmark rate by half a

percentage point, the most in 22 years, but Chairman Jerome

Powell explicitly ruled out a 75 bps raise in a coming meeting.

* The Bank of England sent a stark warning that Britain

risks a double-whammy of a recession and inflation above 10% as

it raised interest rates on Thursday to their highest since

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2009, hiking by quarter of a percentage point to 1%.

* SPDR Gold Trust , the world’s largest gold-backed

exchange-traded fund, said its holdings fell 0.4% on Thursday.

* In other metals, spot silver slipped 1.1% to $22.25

per ounce, platinum declined 2.9% to $952.67 and

palladium fell 0.6% to $2,174.64.

DATA/EVENTS (GMT)

0600 UK Halifax House Prices MM April

0600 Germany Industrial Output MM March

0645 France Reserve Assets Total April

1230 US Non-Farm Payrolls April

1230 US Unemployment Rate April

1230 US Average Earnings YY April

(Reporting by Swati Verma in Bengaluru;

Editing by Vinay Dwivedi)