By Barani Krishnan
Investing.com -- One week — that’s all it took for gold’s $2,000 highs to melt.
In Monday’s session, an ounce of the yellow metal on New York’s Comex was back to trading in $1,800 territory.
This came as the dollar flew on expectations the Federal Reserve would adopt a 50-basis point, or half percentage point, hike at its May policy meeting next week — double the 25 bps, or quarter point, approved in March in the first pandemic-era U.S. rate increase.
By 10:18 AM ET, Comex’s front-month gold futures for June was down $35.85, or 1.9%, at $1,898.45 an ounce. On April 18, June gold hit a six-week high of $2,003 on concerns that the United States could run into recession from aggressive Fed actions to control inflation. Gold typically acts as a hedge against economic and political troubles.
A succession of Fed speakers had soothed some market worries over the past week that the economy could turn negative from the central bank’s attempts to put a lid on price pressures growing at their fastest pace in 40 years.
While fears of a hard landing for the economy have not entirely evaporated, optimism, especially over the sterling labor market, has won over some pessimists. That has sent the dollar — the chief beneficiary of a rate hike — rallying instead, making gold and other safe-havens suffer.
In Monday’s session, the Dollar Index, which pits the U.S. currency against six major rivals, hit a 25-month high of 101.745.
U.S. bond yields, which often run side-by-side with the dollar, have decoupled lately from the greenback. The yield on the U.S. 10-year Treasury note declined for the third day in a row, losing almost 4% on the day.