By Gina Lee

– Gold was down on Thursday morning, retreating from a five-month peak as the dollar strengthened. Record-high inflation in the U.S. saw the yellow metal hit a five-month high during the previous session.

Gold futures inched down 0.08% to $1,846.85 by 10:12 PM ET (3:12 AM GMT). The dollar, which normally moves inversely to gold, inched up on Thursday.

U.S. data released on Wednesday showed that the consumer price index (CPI) grew 6.2% year-on-year and 0.9% month-on-month in October, while the core CPI rose 4.6% year-on-year and 0.6% month-on-month.

Data from Tuesday showed that the producer price index grew 0.6% month-on-month and 8.6% year-on-year. The core PPI grew 0.4% month-on-month.

The inflation data suggests that inflation could remain high well into 2022, as bottlenecks persist in supply chains.

San Francisco Federal Reserve Bank President Mary Daly said on Wednesday that she expects high inflation to moderate once COVID-19 recedes and said it would be “quite premature” to hike interest rates and speed up the Fed’s asset tapering.

Dovish monetary policy in the U.S. amid COVID-19, which intends to drive economic growth, has pulled gold to new highs over the last two years. Low interest rates also gave gold a boost.

On the U.S. job markets front, the number of initial jobless claims fell to 267,000 over the past week, the lowest level since mid-March 2022. Forecasts prepared by predicted 265,000 claims, while 270,000 claims were filed during the previous week.

In other precious metals, silver was up 0.34%, platinum jumped 1.03% and palladium gained 0.59%.