By Gina Lee

Investing.com – Gold was down on Wednesday morning in Asia. The dollar strengthened and fears about the recent surge in COVID-19 cases involving the Delta variant also eased, thus increasing investors’ risk appetite.

Gold futures edged down 0.18% to $1,808.05 by 1:10 AM ET (5:10 AM GMT). The dollar, which usually moves inversely to gold, inched up on Wednesday to a near three-and-a-half-month high. Benchmark 10-year U.S. Treasury yields also bounced off five-month lows.

Asian shares were also mostly up on Wednesday, as investors regained risk appetite thanks to upbeat earnings reports and revived economic optimism.

In Asia, the Bank of Japan (BOJ) also released the minutes from its latest policy meeting. Many BOJ policymakers were worried rising global commodity costs will gradually push up the country’s inflation, though some also said that weak consumption will keep any upward pressure modest.

Japanese trade data released earlier in the day was also better than expected, with exports growing 48.6% year-on-year, a fourth consecutive month of double-digit gains and imports growing 32.7% year-on-year in June.

Elsewhere, Swiss customs data released on Tuesday said exports of gold to India edged higher in June, although remaining far below levels seen earlier in the year, while shipments to China fell.

The Bank of Russia also said the country’s gold reserves stood at 73.7 million troy ounces at the start of July. Meanwhile, the European Central Bank and Bank Indonesia will hand down their respective policy decisions on Thursday.

Meanwhile, surface operations, including processing, resumed at Miner Barrick Gold’s Hemlo mine after being suspended during the previous week due to a worker fatality, the company said on Tuesday.

In other precious metals, silver was steady at $24.92 per ounce, palladium edged up 0.2% and platinum gained 0.3%.

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