Gold has continued its recent strong advance to trade at a new record high price of $2161 a few hours ago.
- The price of spot Gold has continued to rise firmly to new all-time highs. Trend traders will be interested here on the long side, and investors will likely be looking to ensure they have some Gold in their portfolios.
- In his testimony before the US House of Representatives yesterday, Fed Chair Jerome Powell stated that while progress has been made on getting inflation down to a 2% target, progress is not assured. Powell said it will probably be appropriate to cut rates at some point in 2024 when there is more evidence of progress. This is essentially a continuation of the same message Powell and the Fed have been sending out over recent months. Stock markets reacted little to this and are mostly consolidating quietly. The US Dollar has lost ground over the past day.
- The Bank of Canada held its Overnight Rate at 5.00% at yesterday’s policy meeting, and surprised nobody by maintain a cautious approach towards steering its monetary policy. This had little to no impact on the Loonie (Canadian Dollar).
- There have been some interesting developments concerning the Japanese Yen as new data has shown Japanese wages are finally rising at approximately the 2% target which the Bank of Japan has seen as the necessary trigger for beginning to hike rates. This has led to increased speculation that we are not far from a first Bank of Japan rate hike since 2007. This has led to new strength in the Yen.
- In the Forex market, the Japanese Yen has been the strongest major currency since the Tokyo open today. The US Dollar has been the weakest. This puts the USD/JPY currency pair in focus today.
- The European Central Bank will be holding a policy meeting today at which it is widely expected to maintain its Main Refinancing Rate at 4.50%.
- Yesterday’s release of the US ADP Non-Farm Employment Forecast predicts a net 140k new jobs were created last month, roughly in line with expectations.
- Yesterday’s release of US JOLTS Job Data was in line with expectations.
- There will be a release today of US Unemployment Claims data.
- Fed Chair Powell will be testifying today before the US Senate.
