LONDON: Gold eased on Wednesday as the dollar climbed to a 14-year high against a currency basket, extending a week-long rally driven by a surge in Treasury yields after Donald Trump's election to the US presidency.
The metal has shed more than $100 an ounce from last Wednesday's post-election high on the back of the sharp rise in bond yields and burgeoning appetite for risk.
Spot gold was down 0.1 percent at $1,226.85 an ounce at 1453 GMT, while US gold futures for December delivery were up $2.40 an ounce at $1,226.90.
Major banks and investors have begun to debate the possibility of another move towards parity between the dollar and the euro, as the US currency benefited from expectations of an inflationary push from the future Trump administration.
"Gold is trying to stabilise despite continued headwinds from rising real rates and a stronger dollar," Saxo Bank's head of commodity research Ole Hansen said.
"Following the initial reset of expectations after the election, the market will begin to ask questions about how much of his pledges Trump will be able to carry out," he said. "The dollar remains the biggest challenge at this stage, with calls for parity between the euro and dollar starting to grow again."
Investors resumed post-US election selling of bonds and buying stocks on Wednesday after a pause earlier this week, albeit less aggressively.
Gold is also expected to be feeling the pressure from an imminent hike in US interest rates, which are tipped to rise for only the second time in nearly a decade next month.
It would need a surprise for the Federal Reserve not to raise US interest rates in December, one of the central bank's policymakers, James Bullard, told reporters at a banking conference on Wednesday.
"With Fed officials' recent comments, talk of a rate rise will hardly inspire gold to go higher," HSBC said in a note.
Investor appetite for gold remained slack, with the world's largest gold-backed exchange-traded fund, SPDR Gold Shares , saying its holdings fell another 1.5 tonnes on Tuesday to a 4-1/2 month low of 927.45 tonnes.
In the major physical markets, some Indian gold traders are placing bulk short-term import orders on fears that Prime Minister Narendra Modi might soon add curbs on overseas purchases of the metal to his withdrawal of high-denomination banknotes in his fight against 'black money'.
Silver was down 0.7 percent at $16.96 an ounce, and platinum was 0.2 percent lower at $933.24. Palladium was up 1.2 percent at $714.25.
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