Gold Extends Downward Trend, Falling To Two-Month Low

(RTTNews) - Gold prices moved to the downside during trading on Thursday, extending the downward trend seen over the past two weeks.

The price of gold for April delivery fell $14.70 or 0.8 percent to $1,826.80 an ounce after edging down $1 or 0.1 percent to $1,841.50 an ounce in the previous session.

With the decrease, the price of gold closed lower for the fourth straight session, falling to its lowest closing level in two months.

An uptick in the value of the U.S. dollar contributed to the continued weakness of gold, with the U.S. dollar index inched up by 0.1 percent to another new one-month high.

Concerns about the outlook for interest rates also continued to weigh on the precious metal following yesterday's release of the minutes of the latest Federal Reserve meeting.

The Fed minutes offered few surprised but reiterated that the central bank will continue to raise interest rates in its battle against inflation.

With the Fed warning about the impact of labor market tightness, negative sentiment may also have been generated in reaction to a Labor Department report showing an unexpected dip in first-time claims for U.S. unemployment benefits in the week ended February 18th.

The report said initial jobless claims edged down to 192,000, a decrease of 3,000 from the previous week's revised level of 195,000.

The dip surprised economists, who had expected jobless claims to inch up to 200,000 from the 194,000 originally reported for the previous week.