* Investors eye Fed, BOJ meetings after last week's ECB
* Gold inches up after Friday's drop from 13-month peak
* GRAPHIC-2016 asset returns: http://reut.rs/1WAiOSC (Releads, updates prices, adds comment)
By Jan Harvey
LONDON, March 14 (Reuters) - Gold steadied on Monday, paring earlier gains as stock markets and the dollar gained, with moves muted ahead of closely watched policy meetings of U.S. and Japanese central banks this week.
The metal, which is highly sensitive to monetary policy and resulting currency moves, bounced to a 13-month high on Friday after the European Central Bank signalled an end to rate cuts, pushing the euro sharply higher versus the dollar.
It later fell back to post its biggest one-day loss in nearly a month, and struggled to gain traction on Monday as U.S. and European stocks rose and the dollar climbed 0.3 percent versus the euro.
Spot gold XAU= was little changed at $1,248.66 an ounce at 1442 GMT, off an earlier high of $1,260.71.
"The expectation is for the market to go through a period of consolidation before moving ahead," said Ross Norman, chief executive of Sharps Pixley.
The Federal Reserve's two-day policy meeting, starting on Tuesday, will be watched for clues on the future pace of U.S. rate increases after the central bank hiked rates for the first time in nearly a decade in December.
"We don't have the certainty that many had in the last two years that we would see a rate hike this year," Norman said. "We'll wait for the Bank of Japan and the Fed to make their announcements before we have any real clarity on that."
Further U.S. rate hikes could lift the opportunity cost of holding non-yielding bullion, while boosting the dollar, in which it is priced. The metal has risen 18 percent this year as expectations for further near-term hikes faded.
Investors are also keeping a watch on the Bank of Japan meeting. The BOJ's policy board is set to discuss this week whether to exempt $90 billion in short-term funds from its newly imposed negative interest rate. funds and money managers increased their bullish position in COMEX gold to the highest in 13 months in the week to March 8, U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission data showed on Friday, as safe-haven buying lifted prices to the highest since February 2015.
"This was the eighth increase in net long positions in the last nine weeks," Commerzbank (DE:CBKG) said in a note. "Since the beginning of the year, the equivalent of 481 tons of gold have thus been purchased via the futures market."
U.S. gold futures GCv1 for April delivery were down $9.60 an ounce at $1,249.80.
Silver XAG= was up 0.5 percent at $15.54 an ounce, while platinum XPT= was up 0.2 percent at $962.24 an ounce and palladium XPD= was down 1 percent at $566 an ounce.
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