NEW YORK-Gold plunged to its low­est lev­el since Jan­u­ary on yes­ter­day as a surg­ing dol­lar sapped de­mand for pre­cious met­als. Gold for June de­liv­ery lost US$57.90 to set­tle at US$1,614.10. That's a drop of 3.5 per cent and the biggest one-day fall for gold since Feb­ru­ary 29. Sil­ver fell even more, los­ing US$2.22 to US$31.044 an ounce, a loss of 6.7 per cent.

The dol­lar rose sharply against the eu­ro and oth­er cur­ren­cies af­ter min­utes from the Fed­er­al Re­serve's lat­est pol­i­cy meet­ing re­leased late Tues­day sug­gest­ed that the bank wasn't ready to take more ac­tion to push in­ter­est rates low­er. The dol­lar reached its strongest lev­el in al­most three weeks against the eu­ro. The eu­ro trad­ed at US$1.31, down al­most a pen­ny from Tues­day.

With the dol­lar ris­ing so much against oth­er cur­ren­cies, in­vestors had less ap­petite for gold. In­vestors of­ten hold pre­cious met­als when they think the val­ue of the dol­lar will fall, so when the dol­lar ris­es they tend to dump met­als. Plat­inum for Ju­ly de­liv­ery fell US$61.90, or 3.7 per­cent, to US$1,598.60 an ounce. Pal­la­di­um for June de­liv­ery fell US$26.85, or 4.1 per­cent, to US$632.75 an ounce, and cop­per for May de­liv­ery fell 12.85 cents to US$3.7905 a pound.