Gold steadies below $1,800 as firm dollar, yields weigh

Gold prices steadied on Wednesday, after slipping 1.6% in the previous session when it breached the key psychological level of $1,800, as gains in the dollar and a rise in US Treasury yields hurt bullion's appeal.

FUNDAMENTALS
Spot gold rose 0.1% to $1,796.03 per ounce by 0116 GMT, hovering slightly above the more than one-week low of $1,791.90 hit on Tuesday.

US gold futures were steady at $1,799.40.

The dollar hovered near a one-week peak against major peers.

The benchmark 10-year Treasury note rose as high as 1.385% on Tuesday for the first time since mid-July, increasing the opportunity cost of holding non-interest bearing bullion.

US President Joe Biden will present on Thursday a six-pronged strategy intended to fight the spread of the Delta coronavirus variant and increase vaccinations.

Japan's economy grew faster than the initially estimated in the April-June quarter, helped by solid capital expenditure, although a resurgence in COVID-19 is undermining service-sector consumption and clouding the outlook.

Russia's Nornickel, world's largest producer of palladium and high-grade nickel, has extracted additional metals from waste products as part of new technology it tested to support its 2021 output from its Arctic mines that were hit by flooding, it said on Tuesday.

Venezuela's gold reserves fell by three tonnes in the first half of 2021 to their lowest level in 50 years, central bank data showed on Tuesday, as President Nicolas Maduro's cash-strapped government continues selling gold as a source of income.

Silver rose 0.1% to $24.32 per ounce, platinum edged 0.3% higher to $1,001.36 and palladium was up 0.2% to $2,376.37.