Gold Slips as Dollar Strengthens (Update 1)

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- Gold prices fell Wednesday as traders spent most of the session waiting to get a look at the minutes of the Federal Reserve's most recent policy meeting.

Stocks fell sharply after the release of the minutes, which showed the central bank still has a pretty high bar for embarking on another round of quantitative easing.

The selling in U.S. equities corresponded with a strengthening in the U.S. dollar, putting pressure on gold. The greenback was up 0.14% in recent trades, according to the dollar index, which measures the buck's strength against a basket of foreign currencies.

Gold for August delivery settled down $4.10 to $1,575.70 an ounce at the Comex division of the New York Mercantile Exchange. The gold price traded as high as $1,583.40 and as low as $1,565.50 an ounce, while the spot price was climbing $7.60, according to Kitco's gold index.

Silver prices for September delivery settled up about 14 cents to $27.02 an ounce, while the U.S. dollar index was down 0.19% at $83.57.

A tight trading range could continue through the rest of the week after the Fed didn't offer up any immediate quantitative easing signals. Members were divided, but generally agreed that economic conditions continued to show moderate growth since the previous meeting.

Stanley Dash, vice president of applied technical analysis at TradeStation Securities, puts the low-end level of gold's current trading range in the $1,552 to $1,547 area and sees resistance kicking in at around $1,615 to $1,625.

"We keep sort of compressing into these different range areas ... and every time we try and pick out levels -- that's the definition of a trading range, if you get to those levels you think will be a break out it stays in the range," said Dash.

Beyond Wednesday's Fed minutes, investors may be looking ahead to Thursday's economic indicators from China that include reports on GDP, industrial production and retail sales -- all of which could point to relative health of the world's most populated country.

James Moore, a research analyst at FastMarkets.com, said the Chinese have already expressed a commitment to investment in infrastructure to stimulate growth.

Gold mining stocks were mostly lower Wednesday. Goldcorp (GG) led the sector sell-off, down 10.2%, after the company lowered its gold production outlook for 2012 to reflect operational issues at two of its mines.

Among other mining stocks, Barrick Gold (ABX) was down 2.3%, Eldorado Gold (EGO) was falling 5.2% and Agnico-Eagle Mines (AEM) was down 3.3%.

-- Written by Joe Deaux in New York.

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