Gold Spot Price Open: $1,290
Gold Spot Price Close: $1,275
Change in Gold Spot Price: -$15
Silver Spot Price Open: $20.84
Silver Spot Price Close: $20.41
Change in Silver Spot Price: -$0.43
Gold and silver declined a bit on Monday as a bearish market for precious metals is still in full effect. On the day, gold lost over 13 dollars while silver lost over 30 cents.
It was a much quieter marketplace on Monday, though that’s likely going to change by Wednesday. The middle day of the week is scheduled to yield the latest FOMC minutes, the latest CPI index, and the most recent retail sales report. Also on the slate for Wednesday is a speech by James Bullard, president of the St. Louis Federal Reserve. With both the FOMC minutes and Mr. Bullard’s speech investors will be watching closely to see if they can uncover any clues regarding monetary policy in the US.
Thursday will be another busy day for investors with the release of the weekly jobless claims report as well as the PPI index. At this point economic reports will be closely watched by investors from all over the globe as it is expected that the US economy’s strength will directly correlate with the retention or tapering of Quantitative Easing. There is a rigid divide amongst investors now as some want to see QE tapered at this December’s FOMC meeting, while others are hoping that monetary policy will not be touched until the middle to latter stages of 2014.
Though there may be a pretty even distribution of investors who think QE will be retained and those who think it will be tapered in December, most market experts agree that QE will not be touched until sometime in 2014. The reasoning behind this school of thought says that the US economy is not strong enough, unemployment is not low enough, and EU monetary policy is so loose that a tapering of QE would not be ideal for either the world or US economies. Hopefully all of the Fed activity this week will give investors a more reliable, clear picture regarding monetary policy in the United States.
