Gold Spot Price Open: $1,167
Gold Spot Price Close: $1,169
Change in Gold Spot Price: +$2
Silver Spot Price Open: $15.96
Silver Spot Price Close: $16.00
Change in Silver Spot Price: +$0.04
Precious metals remained steady for much of the day on Tuesday as the investing world patiently awaits the Fed’s post-meeting statement and any fresh information that may come with it. When all was said and done, gold managed to eek out gains of a few dollars while silver inched forward by roughly 4 pennies. Platinum and palladium, however, both finished the day having posted losses, however neither metal lost more than ten dollars on the day.
Stocks Mixed Ahead of Fed Statement
As has been made quite clear today, the investing world is quite interested in what the Fed has to say with regard to interest rate hikes and the US economy in general. This was expressed clearly both yesterday and today in the choppy nature of trading on Wall Street. On the day, Apple climbed by a bit more than 1% on reports that sales of new iPhones in China are going to add a good bit of value to the company’s 4th quarter revenue.
Social media giant, Twitter, on the other hand, was handed a big loss today thanks to less than stellar sales projections. With 4th quarter revenue now not necessarily expected to eclipse $700 million, people are less confident in the stock than they were a few months ago when 4th quarter projections were initially made. For what it’s worth, those initial projections expected Twitter to rake in nearly $750 million during 2015’s 4th quarter.
The Fed is now being put under the spotlight as their monthly meeting is expected to wrap up tomorrow afternoon and be followed by the all-important statement, likely to be given by Janet Yellen. For some, the high likelihood of the Fed holding off on rate hikes for yet another month is something that seriously calls into question the US Central Bank’s credibility. While other global central banks have delivered on promises of economic and monetary policy change, the Fed has sat back and for nearly a year now pushed off the hiking of interest rates in the United States. Though their move is assuredly being seen as a strategic one up to this juncture, one has to wonder how much the market is going to buy into the Fed’s words when it comes to future monetary policy decisions. This is an interesting sub-plot that is developing alongside the Fed’s current plan of staying the course.
Gold Holds Steady as Oil Dips
The value of crude oil fell to a 2-month low on Tuesday as the same worries we spoke about on Monday continue to affect the commodity’s outlook. Thanks to an overarching supply glut and an increasingly realistic global economic slowdown, demand and projected demand for crude oil remains pinned to the lower end of expectations. Barring some major changes across the global economic marketplace, however, there are not too many people who see the value of crude oil surging forward anytime soon.
All in all, this is not such great news for precious metals, whose movement is often dictated by that of crude oil’s.
Wrap-Up
It goes without saying that the next major piece of news we are going to have to deal with is the pending statement by the US Federal Reserve. While I am not expecting much to come from the statement, it is really the only thing gripping the marketplace at present. Interest rates in the US will forever remain a headline-worthy topic, but until rates are changed as has been expected for quite some time now we cannot expect the attention of investor’s to stray too far at all from the topic.
