Market Bizzz

Gold prices were little changed on Friday as cautious investors positioned themselves for key U.S. jobs data. The safe-haven bullion was still bound for a third straight weekly gain. The market’s focus shifts to the U.S. Labor Department’s closely watched nonfarm payrolls (NFP) data due at 1330 GMT.

“As long as the labor market is resilient, the Federal Reserve has to continue to tighten financial conditions to bring inflation down,” said that strategist who expects investors to be keenly focused on wage inflation in Friday’s jobs report.

Investors were poring over the Fed’s internal deliberations for clues about its future path. After the meeting, Fed Chair Jerome Powell had said more hikes were needed, and took a more hawkish tone than investors had expected back then.

“There was no other bidder so one can now say Ares has won the bid. Banks are still working on internal processes to take approvals to give the go-ahead for the takeover by Acre, and the process will take a few more days,” said a person familiar with the exercise.

RBI, in the annual report of ombudsman scheme, said that its consumer education and protection department is working towards extension of the scheme to HFCs. This may be done by March 31, 2023. Last year, the coverage of the integrated ombudsman scheme was extended to credit information companies and the non-scheduled urban cooperative banks with a deposit size of Rs 50 crore or above.