Gold prices slip as dollar gains

Gains to the globe's largest economy and the world's reserve currency helped drive the price of gold toward its sharpest weekly loss in three months, Reuters reports.

This week's losses are driving toward 3.3 percent and the last time the precious metal performed this poorly was in December, according to MarketWatch. Gold lost roughly 10 percent of its value in December of last year.

"Consumer prices are accelerating, and inflation expectations are higher still," research head Adrian Ash with BullionVault told MarektWatch. "Together with bargain-hunting by Asian consumers, that's likely to put a floor under gold soon enough. People buy gold when they fear inflation ahead."

At 2:28 p.m. on Friday, the price of gold slipped 0.16 percent, a $2.60 drop to $1,656.90 per troy ounce.

This past week saw the U.S. Federal Reserve reduce the likelihood of a third round of quantitative easing, which strengthened the value of the U.S. dollar. That pulled down the value of the precious metal.

Another factor that played into gold's dive this week is India, the globe's second largest consumer of bullion, noting it intends to double tariffs on imports of gold. China recently displaced India as the globe's biggest consumer of gold.