Spot gold was sitting at $1,832/oz at around 9am UK time. Shares in London-listed Endeavour Mining and Centamin were up 3.56% and 2.22% respectively in early trading.

"Gold's recent bounce likely reflects the slowdown in liquidations more than an urgency to build positions at this stage," UBS said this week.

"That said, the selling in futures over recent weeks has left net speculative positions at their leanest since the end of March, which could start to look supportive in the short term as this is basically where the market started before it staged its Q2 rally towards US$1,900."

Powell is standing firm despite a couple of big inflation prints from the US in the last few days. Yesterday's US PPI figure showed an increase of 1.0% after an already strong 0.8% increase in May.

Only three out of the TSX's top gold miners fell overnight, with the gold sector rising by a collective 0.3% overall.

Base metals were softer overnight, with nickel losing 1% to $18,574 per tonne, and copper down 0.8% to $9302.55/t.

Iron ore was slightly lower, while oil dropped 2.8%.

The S&P 500 was down by 0.24%% and ASX futures were down 10 points.