Metals Stocks: Gold ends lower after longest weekly winning streak since August 2020

What’s more, traders are also waiting to see whether Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell will try to take investors down a peg by signaling that the Fed is nowhere near finished with its battle against inflation.

“Gold is seeing a modest corrective pullback and some mild profit-taking from the futures traders ahead of this week’s highly anticipated monetary policy meeting of the U.S. Federal Reserve,” said Jim Wyckoff, senior analyst at Kitco.com.

The Fed’s two-day policy meeting will conclude Wednesday with what’s expected to be a 25 basis point interest-rate hike and a policy statement, followed by Powell’s news conference. Several other central banks are set to meet this week, including the European Central Bank and Bank of England.

Read: Fed set to deliver quarter-point rate hike along with ‘one last hawkish sting in the tail’

The latest inflation figures out of the U.S. showed that the pace at which the price of consumer goods is rising continues to slow and “this has provided more bandwidth for the Fed to operate within and increased expectations that this week’s rate decision will bring a 25-basis point hike,” said Rupert Rowling, market analyst at Kinesis Monday. That’s “three times smaller than most of the increases in 2022.”

“This less aggressive stance by the Fed has long since been priced in for gold, with this change in sentiment being the catalyst for the precious metal’s impressive rally from early November onwards,” he said in daily market commentary.