Commodities: Gold lower on the day after initial Fed-fuelled rally

Gold rallied overnight after the release of the Fed’s policy statement, initially continuing into the London session on Thursday, with oil prices also retaining their relative strength.

The FOMC confirmed no change in policy as expected, with the key interest rate fixed at 1.25%, and highlighted that it was expecting inflation to "stay below the 2% over the next 12 months" as well as the labour market continuing to strengthen and "economic activity rising moderately."

Overnight trading saw gold rally on the back of the FOMC statement, taking the precious metal to month highs of $1,265 by 0400 BST, and again during UK trading by 1300 BST.

From a technical point, gold has seen much psychological price action at this level, going back to October 2016.

After Wednesday's excitement, a failure to break $1,265 and relative dollar strength on the day, investors could have seen this as a level to take some profit, consequently pushing gold lower 0.18% trading at $1,258 by 1700 BST.

Brent crude continued its climb higher, despite a stronger dollar indicating speculator strength and dominance.

Overnight trading was fairly subdued with a tight range taking hold.

Come midday, sellers were seen at $51.20 pushing the oil down to the day low of $50.59 before recovering to end the day higher at $51.48 by 1800 BST, up 0.89%.

Spot silver saw some sellers entering the market on the back of a stronger dollar.

Hitting the day high of $16.83 at 1300 BST, the precious metal saw a near 20 cent drop to trade at $16.62 by 1700 BST.

Copper was range bound for the day, stagnant between $6,343 and $6,378 a tonne, trading at $6,335 by 1700 BST.

The base metal recently ran into heavy resistance at the $6,400 mark.

Chilean Mining Minister Aurora Williams explained that "the [copper price] rise for 2017 is due, in part, to the better performance of economic activity indicators in China, which surpassed market expectations."