By Gina Lee

Investing.com – Gold was up on Thursday morning in Asia, while the remained near a two-year high after the maintained its hawkish stance in the .

The dollar rose 0.01% to $1923.30 at 1:54 PM ET (5:00 AM GMT). Although the US dollar moves in an opposite direction to gold, it was steady but not far from its two-year peak on Thursday.

It was within easy reach of multi-year records set in the preceding session.

On Wednesday, The Fed released minutes from the March 2022 Fed meeting. These documents indicated that the Fed is ready to act aggressively in order to lower high inflation.

“Many” policymakers said they were prepared to hike interest rates in half-percentage-point increments at incoming policy meetings, even as the risks stemming from the war in Ukraine held them to the standard 0.25% hike in March.

It will release minutes from the meeting later that day. Although the Fed is expected to be less hawkish than the ECB, it’s another central bank trying to find the right balance between inflation and avoiding a recession.

Asia Pacific will also present its policy decision Friday.

In a blog posting on Wednesday, the Perth Mint stated that gold product sales in March rose 68% to its highest point in one year. According to the refiner, the rise in sales of safe-haven gold metal was due to a greater demand for it after Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24.

Other precious metals saw a 0.2% decline and 0.1% increase, respectively, while they gained 0.5%.