Gold prices fell to one week lows on Monday as rate hike hopes returned and the possibility of a rate hike is a threat to gold prices.

Following Friday’s jobs report Gold lost 1.68 percent and on Monday gold for December delivery lost 0.36 percent on the Comex of the New York Mercantile Exchange trading at 1,339.55 dollars a troy ounce after touching a low of 1,337.00 dollars.

The US Labour Department showed on Friday that the US Economy had added 255,000 jobs in July, much higher than expectations for a 180,000 increase. Unemployment rate was steady at 4.9 percent and average hourly earnings were 0.3 percent higher month on month.

The data returned hopes that the US economy might see a rate hike this year after analysts said that there is a chance no rate hike will take place until 2017. The last rate hike happened in December of 2015 for the first time in almost a decade.

A rate hike helps the dollar become stronger, which makes gold more expensive for foreign investors and therefore less desirable, and hence is considered a bearish event for gold prices.

So far in 2016, gold prices have increased by 26 percent, as investors turned to the safe haven in the midst of global economic instability.

Elsewhere on the Comex, silver futures for September delivery lost 0.78 percent trading at 19.66 dollars a troy ounce, while copper futures added 0.6 percent trading at 2.167 dollars a pound.