By Gina Lee

Investing.com – Gold was down on Friday morning in Asia, easing towards its biggest weekly drop since late November 2021. Hopes that progress in ceasefire talks between Ukraine and Russia dented the yellow metal’s safe-haven appeal.

They were at $1,935.40 as of 12:24 PM ET (24:24 GMT), a drop of around 2.4% from the previous week.

According to Michael McCarthy, chief strategy officer at Tiger Brokers, “The truth is that the fears about Ukraine’s future have eased and the gold prices also fell.”

“To some degree, the U.S. dollars have been an important factor in that pullback of gold from those all-time highs.

After its February 24 invasion, Russia seemed to have stopped its march on the Ukrainian cities. However, the progress made by peace negotiations between these two countries was slow.

It was not surprising that a quarter point increase was anticipated, but six further increases in 2022 were unexpected. McCarthy stated that this was a U.S. Federal Reserve hawkish announcement. He was referring to the central bank’s interest rate to 0.5% as it handed down its on Wednesday.

The Bank of England raised its interest rates by 0.75% across the Atlantic as it issued its Thursday report. The Bank of England kept the interest rate at -0.10%, as it passed down the earlier rates in the day.

Palladium rose 2.7% in other precious metals but fell for the second week consecutively to around 8.8%. Silver dropped 0.3% to its lowest level in seven weeks. Platinum was unchanged at $1,021.62 and was scheduled for a weekly dip in 5%. It was the highest since November 2021.