gold futures declined wednesday settling at their lowest in more than a week as investors awaited further clues on the federal reserves interest rate path in the past week gold prices basically remained within a trading range of about 2 from the lower to higher end of the trading range said peter cardillo chief market economist at spartan capital in a note to clients the fact that the debt ceiling crisis was resolved without a default did indeed deflate prices somewhat however the intermediate shortterm prices will likely remain locked in the 1950 2000 range as the market eyes the next fed move he wrote the federal reserve is expected to hold its policy interest rate steady when policy makers meet next week fedfunds futures traders have priced in just a 229 probability of a quarter percentage point rate rise on june 14 but see a 65 chance rates will have risen by a quarter or half a percentage point at its july 26 meeting the question is whether the fed is going to stick to its guns or try to shoot down inflation further said naeem aslam chief investment officer at zaye capital markets in emailed commentary the dollar index is certainly suggesting that there is a large possibility for this and the strength in the dollar index is keeping old traders somewhat worried following the loss on wednesday gold futures turned negative for the week down less than 01 week to date still the price level that puts the bulls on the higher ground is 2000 and gold currently trades below this key mark said aslam this means that there is some hallucination among gold traders who think that the odds are stacked in their favour this content was created by marketwatch which is operated by dow jones  co marketwatch is published independently from dow jones newswires and the wall street journal