CORRECTED - Gold holds steady at near three-week high as dollar firms

(Corrects final bullet point to show SPDR holdings fell for a sixth, not fifth, day)

REUTERS - Gold held steady early on Thursday after marking a near three-week high in the previous session as the dollar firmed, while palladium remained close to an over 16-year peak touched on Wednesday.

FUNDAMENTALS

* Spot gold was nearly unchanged at $1,280.81 per ounce at 0101 GMT. On Wednesday, it rose 0.4 percent and touched its highest since Oct. 20 at $1,287.13 an ounce.

* U.S. gold futures for December delivery dipped 0.2 percent to $1,281.40.

* Palladium gained 0.1 percent to $1,014.25 an ounce. It touched its highest since 2001 at $1,019 on Wednesday.

 

* The dollar index against a basket of six major currencies was up 0.1 pct.

* Asia stocks hovered near a decade high on Thursday following another record-breaking day on Wall Street.

* A Senate tax-cut bill, differing from one in the House of Representatives, was expected to be unveiled on Thursday, complicating a Republican push to overhaul the federal tax code.

* North Korea and trade will likely top the agenda when U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping sit down for formal talks on Thursday, a day after Trump warned Pyongyang of the grave danger of developing nuclear weapons.

* The IMF on Wednesday urged Japan to maintain its massive monetary stimulus to boost consumer prices, a view echoed by a central bank board member, reinforcing expectations policy will remain accommodative.

* The Bank of Japan's nine-member board debated calls from one of its policymakers to target the longer end of the yield curve at a rate review in October, a summary of their opinions showed on Thursday, with several stressing that the current stimulus was sufficient.

* India's gold imports in the last quarter of 2017 could drop by a fourth from a year ago due to weak demand during key festivals and as investors seek better returns from riskier assets such as equities, industry officials and analysts said.

* Holdings in SPDR Gold Trust, the world's largest gold-backed exchange-traded fund, fell for the sixth straight day on Wednesday by 0.14 percent to 843.09 tonnes.

(Reporting by Vijaykumar Vedala in Bengaluru; Editing by Amrutha Gayathri)