Gold Spot Price Open: $1,310
Gold Spot Price Close: $1,312
Change in Gold Spot Price: +$2
Silver Spot Price Open: $20.12
Silver Spot Price Close: $19.92
Change in Silver Spot Price: -$0.20
Precious metals experienced mixed outcomes on Wednesday as the market had little time to properly digest the latest FOMC minutes. When all was said and done, gold finished marginally higher while silver remained down by about 20 cents.
Today was an important day due to the release of the latest FOMC minutes from the Fed’s March 18th-19th policy meeting. After last week’s unexpectedly poor payrolls data from March, investors were eager to gain more insight into just how quickly the Fed plans on raising interest rates in the wake of Quantitative Easing being completely eliminated. In the immediate aftermath of last month’s policy meeting, the Fed issued a statement saying that it would wait “considerable time” before it thought about increasing interest rates. However, Janet Yellen provided additional insight just a week or two after the policy meeting by defining considerable time as “around six months.” The 6 month timeline provided by Ms. Yellen unnerved some investors who were under the impression that interest rates would remain steady for well beyond a year from now.
Unfortunately, today’s minutes provided little to no new insight into just when the Fed anticipates it will raise interest rates. The US Dollar continued to feel some pressure today and ended up giving spot gold the ability to turn early morning losses into marginal gains. There were a few additional pieces of US economic data on the slate today, including the MBA mortgage applications survey and monthly wholesale figures, but none of it had any major impact on precious metals spot values.
The situation in Ukraine is continuing to catch the attention of the marketplace, though there have been very few new developments since Monday. Despite Ukraine being significantly calmer now than it was a few weeks ago, it is still a powder keg and threatens to escalate without much notice.
