PRECIOUS-Gold trims gains after US Fed minutes

By Pablo Sinha and Ashitha Shivaprasad

Nov 19 (Reuters) - Gold prices pared gains on Wednesday after the release of minutes from the Federal Reserve's latest meeting, while market participants focused on upcoming economic data for further clues on the U.S. interest rate path.

Spot gold XAU= was up 0.2% at $4,073.79 per ounce, at 2:25 p.m. ET (1925 GMT), after climbing over 1% earlier in the session. U.S. gold futures GCcv1 for December settled 0.4% higher at $4,082.80.

A divided Fed cut interest rates last month even as policymakers cautioned that lower borrowing costs could risk undermining the fight to quell inflation that has been above the U.S. central bank's 2% target for four and a half years, the minutes from the October 28-29 meeting showed.

Fed Chair Jerome Powell said in unusually blunt terms in his post-meeting press conference that a rate cut at the Fed's December 9-10 meeting was not a "foregone conclusion".

"The minutes are sort of water under the bridge. It's more important to see what happens in December and the Fed needs more data to decide that," said Marex analyst Edward Meir.

"The Fed is going to get data in drips and drabs and that will be the focus."

Traders now see just a 30% chance for a rate cut in December, the CME FedWatch tool showed.

U.S. President Donald Trump doubled down on his criticism of Powell for not lowering rates more quickly.

Non-yielding gold tends to do well in a low-interest-rate environment and during times of economic uncertainty.

On tap is the release of September's job report on Thursday, delayed due to the U.S. government shutdown.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics said it would not be publishing the employment report for October, after the recently ended shutdown of the government prevented the collection of data for the household survey.

Data showed on Tuesday that the number of Americans receiving unemployment benefits stood at a two-month high in mid-October.

Spot silver XAG= rose 0.7% to $51.05 per ounce, platinum XPT= added 0.7% to $1,543.12, while palladium XPD= fell 1.6% to $1,378.