Precious-Gold was little changed on Friday amid mixed data from the United States and uncertainty about the situation in Ukraine.

While the recent data from the U.S. showed improvement, initial jobless claims for the week through May 17 soared to 326,000 from an upwardly revised of 298,000.

Another important figure signaled a rise in existing home sales to 4.65 million in April from 4.59 million in March, coming below forecasts of 4.69 million.  

Inflation risks are muted and therefore the Fed does not “face a trade-off between its employment and inflation objectives, and an expansion of aggregate demand would result in further progress relative to both objectives,” minutes of the Fed’s monetary meeting for April said.

The Fed discussed the options of raising short-term interest rates, but this does not mean this does not mean that an interest rate hike would come any soon, the minutes showed. 

A report due later in the day may show U.S new home sales climbed to 425,000 last month from 384,000 a month earlier.

In Ukraine, the unrest continued ahead of the critical Presidential elections on Sunday, which may help the country to regain its stability.

Meanwhile, gold is trading below key level of $1300 around $1295.22 an ounce after hitting a high of $1295.33 and a low of $1292.84.

The metal continued to trade below $1296.68, which represents Daily SMA 200, where over the recent past weeks the trading remained range bounded.

The U.S. dollar was little changed versus a basket of major currencies to hover around 80.30, after touching a high of 80.33.

Crude oil for July’s delivery inched down to trade around $103.70 a barrel.

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