Gold prices started the week a touch lower on Monday, hovering around their weakest level in a month, as investors awaited fresh comments from a number of Federal Reserve officials for greater signs on the timing of the next rate hike.

Comex gold futures were at $1,295.16 a troy ounce by 3:30AM ET (0730GMT), down $2.30, or around 0.2%. It fell to its lowest since Aug. 25 at $1,291.20 late last week.

The yellow metal suffered its second-straight weekly decline last week after the Federal Reserve signaled that it still intended to deliver another rise in interest rates by the end of the year.

The Fed is keeping itself in the market's sights this week, with Chair Janet Yellen due to deliver a speech titled "Inflation, Uncertainty, and Monetary Policy" at the National Association for Business Economics' Annual Meeting on Tuesday.

This week will also see comments from a handful of Fed speakers including influential New York Fed President William Dudley, Vice Chair Stanley Fischer, Governor Lael Brainard, Minneapolis Fed chief Neel Kashkari, Chicago Fed President Charles Evans and Philadelphia President Patrick Harker.

On the data front, final figures on second-quarter economic growth are due on Thursday, followed by reports on personal income and spending on Friday, which includes the personal consumption expenditures inflation data, the Fed's preferred metric for inflation.

Interest rate futures are now pricing in about a 72% chance of a December Fed rate hike according to Investing.com's Fed Rate Monitor Tool, up from under 40% just a few weeks ago.

Besides the Fed, investors digested elections in Germany over the weekend, which showed surging support for a far-right party that left Chancellor Angela Merkel scrambling to form a governing coalition.

Despite winning a fourth term in office, Merkel's bloc slumped to its worst result since 1949 and her current Social Democrat coalition partners said they would go into opposition after tumbling to 20.7% in projections, a post-war low.

The nationalist Alternative for Germany (AfD) won around 13.0% of the vote, above what polls had predicted. They will become the first far-right party to enter the German parliament since the 1950s.