By Gina Lee

Investing.com – Gold was up on Tuesday morning in Asia, with a weaker lending support and with U.S. inflation data due later in the week.

By 11:13PM ET (4:13 GMT), they were up 0.3% to $1,805.25 On Tuesday, the dollar fell, as it normally moves in the opposite direction to gold. Benchmark yield fell from a nearly two-year peak of 1.808% at 1.778% on Tuesday to 1.778%.

Margaret Yang, DailyFX’s strategist at DailyFX, stated that “Pullback in both dollar yields and 10-year treasury yields is supporting gold prices but that the markets continue to see three or four interest rate rises this year is limiting upside potential.”

The nomination hearing of Jerome Powell, the U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman, will take place later today before investors can get more insight into the pace and timing of tightening monetary policy. Fed vice-chair nominee Lael Brainard’s hearing before the committee will take place on Thursday.

Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (along with analysts at J.P. Morgan & Deutsche Bank) expects the Fed’s interest rate to rise four times by 2022.

According to Markets, core inflation is rising at 5.4% annually. Should these figures exceed the forecast, it could lead to the dollar going up and gold prices falling. Yang said that gold may be able to take some of the pressure off if inflation rates fall below expectations.

Data-wise, U.S. and The will be published on Wednesday. Following day.

China, Asia Pacific will publish its price indexes Wednesday. Australia’s grew 7.3% in November and reached AUD9.423 million in November.

The other precious metals saw silver rise 0.4% while platinum rose 1.1% and palladium gain 0.5%.