WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - Gold prices are slightly lower Wednesday morning, ahead of the minutes from the Federal Reserve's October policy meeting.
While announcing the decision to end its monthly asset buying program at the meeting, the Fed had said that interest rates will remain at historic lows for 'considerable time'.
Still, markets will be looking for clues about how fiercely the Fed debated its 'considerable time' pledge, and whether the criteria for hiking interest rates has changed.
Unemployment has already improved to 5.8 percent, better than the Fed's 6 percent target.
The Fed minutes will be out at 2 pm ET.
Subsequent speeches by various Fed officials have not yielded a wide variety of opinions on the timing of rate hikes.
Gold futures for December are down $2.00 or 0.16 percent at $1,195.10 an ounce, still holding near a more than 2-week high.
Fairly steady global equity markets and the dollar's recovery against some major currencies are putting a cap on the recent rally.
On Tuesday, gold futures ended up $13.60 or 1.2 percent at $1,197.10 after rising to $1,204.10 an ounce, a near three-week high.
Silver for December is up $0037 or 0.21 percent at $16.211 an ounce. Meanwhile, copper is up $0.012 or 0.41 percent at $3.014 per pound.
The U.S. Commerce Department will release its housing starts report for October at 8:30 am ET.
In economic news from eurozone, data from the European Central Bank showed eurozone current account surplus to have increased to a seasonally adjusted Euro 30 billionin September, from Euro 22.8 billion in the preceding month.
Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX