gold futures ended lower on tuesday giving up earlier gains as comments from federal reserve chairman jerome powell suggested that the central bank might speed up tapering its monthly asset purchases when it meets next month prices for the metal shook off earlier gains that came after modernas mrna ceo stéphane bancel predicted that current vaccines would struggle against the omicron variant of the coronavirus comments from powell as well as bancel prompted steep declines in us benchmark stock indexes likely prompting investors to sell gold to cover margin calls february gold gcg22 fell 870 or 05 to settle at 177650 an ounce based on the mostactive contract prices ended the month down 04 according dow jones market data