Gold climbs as dollar retreats ahead of Fed meeting

By Jan Harvey

LONDON (Reuters) - Gold rose on Tuesday as the dollar fell, but remained hemmed into a range ahead of a two-day Federal Reserve policy meeting this week, which will be closely watched for clues on the outlook for U.S. interest rates.

The dollar slid a quarter of a percent against a currency basket, largely due to a bounce in the yen after traders dialled back expectations of how much new stimulus Japanese authorities will inject into an ailing economy. [FRX/]

Spot gold was up 0.4 percent at $1,320.46 an ounce at 1402 GMT, while U.S. gold futures for August delivery were up $1.40 an ounce at $1,320.90.

The Fed is expected to leave policy unchanged at its meeting starting later in the day, but investors are watching for any signs that the U.S. central bank may move back to tightening later this year, a move that would be negative for gold.

Gold is highly sensitive to rising U.S. interest rates, which lift the opportunity cost of holding non-yielding bullion, while boosting the dollar, in which it is priced.

"The key thing for commodities in the past month is that the macro data in both the United States and China has definitely improved, and that is reflected in the probability of rate hikes," Oxford Economics' director of commodity services Daniel Smith said.

"We're looking at a 50 percent probability of a rate hike by year-end."

A scaling back of expectations for further increases in U.S. interest rates, which rose for the first time in nearly a decade in December, has helped push gold up 24 percent this year.

A surge in Western investment helped offset sliding Asian demand in the second quarter, GFMS analysts at Thomson Reuters said on Tuesday, as they hiked their gold price forecast for the year in response to jitters over the economic outlook.

Holdings of the world's largest gold-backed exchange-traded fund, SPDR Gold Shares, fell 0.46 percent to 958.69 tonnes on Monday. [GOL/ETF]

Top consumer China's net gold imports via main conduit Hong Kong fell 38.5 percent in June, data showed on Tuesday.

"Gold exports from China to Hong Kong reached a 6-month high of 12.2 tons in June, which contributed to lower net imports," Commerzbank analyst Carsten Fritsch said.

Palladium was up 1 percent at $691.47 an ounce, after earlier touching a nine-month high of $693.30.

Silver was up 0.5 percent at $19.62 an ounce, while platinum was 1.1 percent higher at $1,093.60 an ounce.

(Additional reporting By Vijaykumar Vedala and Nallur Sethuraman in Bengaluru; Editing by Alexandra Hudson and Louise Heavens)