gold futures settled higher on thursday recouping most of losses from a day earlier that pulled prices to their lowest finish in just over a week the precious metal found support from weakness in the us dollar following us data showing a weekly rise in the number of people who applied for unemployment benefits to a nearly twoyear high us jobless claims rose 28000 to 261000 for the week ended june 3 the labor department reported thursday the ice us dollar index declined by 076 to 10335 following the data raising the appeal of dollardenominated gold the rise in jobless claims helps support the possibility that the federal reserve will not increase interest rates at their policy meeting next week expectation is mounting that the us central bank will hit pause on its interest rate hikes said rupert rowling market analyst at kinesis money in market commentary ahead of the jobless claims data however investors and traders are reluctant to fully commit their funds until this does indeed prove accurate the fact that gold continues to trade at such high levels that although they may be about 100 lower than golds early may peak are still at a range seen only a handful of times in the precious metals long trading history reflects the fragile state of market confidence he said he believes gold looks set to slide slowly but steadily lower over the coming weeks and months proving the barometer of investors true confidence in the global economic outlook a series of fed rate hikes that have taken the fedfunds rate from near zero to 5 to 525 since march 2022 overall continued strength in the us labor market hawkish fedspeak and wednesdays bank of canada rate hike have ramped expectations that the fed will hike by another 25basis points at next weeks fomc meeting peter grant vice president and senior metals strategist at zaner metals told marketwatch still gold is showing some resiliency he said as it trades relatively close to its alltime high the underlying trend remains bullish and i still believe well see new alltime highs this year read why us stockmarket investors were rattled by the bank of canadas surprise rate hike in a research note dated wednesday strategists at citi research led by aakash doshi reduced their zero to threemonth gold pricepoint target to 1915 an ounce from 2100 they said equity volume compression the recent backup in treasury yields and bounce in the us dollar amid a resolution to an imminent us debt ceiling breach provide a potential cap on nearterm gold market cheer gold remains a viable macro portfolio tail hedge historically and during the current postpandemic era despite the hawkish fed regime they said we believe bullish bullion sector tailwinds will reemerge before end2023 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