Gold Spot Price Open: $1,274
Gold Spot Price Close: $1,245
Change in Gold Spot Price: -$29
Silver Spot Price Open: $20.39
Silver Spot Price Close: $19.90
Change in Silver Spot Price: -$0.49
Gold and silver spot values both took significant hits on Wednesday as the FOMC minutes were more bearish than anything else. When the day was through, gold managed to lose 29 dollars while silver’s losses clocked in just under a half dollar.
The FOMC minutes were the main focus of every investor today, and the information those minutes exhibited was taken as a mild shock by the marketplace. Members of the FOMC were quoted as saying that they may begin to taper Quantitative Easing as early as one of the next couple meetings. This means that even if we don’t see QE tapered before the year’s end, we may see the monetary policy downsized as early as 2014’s first quarter sometime. The minutes also mentioned that the US economy has been and continues to grow at an acceptable rate. An interesting facet of the FOMC minutes included the committee’s mentioning that they plan on being more direct and clear when announcing or talking about monetary policy decisions going forward. This was welcomed by investors who have, up to this point, seen the Fed do nothing but flip-flop and beat around the bush when it comes to addressing the possibility of executing changes to US monetary policy.
This more bearish allotment of FOMC minutes put hefty amounts of downward pressure on gold and silver while simultaneously propelling the US Dollar to its session high. While only a few days ago the notion that the Fed would taper QE before the end of the year was dwindling, today’s FOMC minutes gave this belief renewed strength. Now it becomes a guessing game as to whether these minutes mean that the Fed will follow through with tapering QE at this December’s FOMC meeting or whether they will wait until sometime in the early parts of 2014. Regardless of what action is pursued by the FOMC, the outlook for precious metals is quickly devolving into a bleak one.