Gold Spot Price Open: $1,606

Gold Spot Price Close: $1,565

Change in Gold Spot Price: -$41

Silver Spot Price Open: $29.44

Silver Spot Price Close: $28.59

Change in Silver Spot Price:-$0.85

Gold and silver were slammed on Wednesday after news from the US alluding to the fact that there may be a huge shift in monetary policy. When the dust had settled, gold was down about 41 dollars while silver was down just fifteen cents shy of a whole dollar. This is on top of recent days of continued decline.

The reason there was such a downward shift in the price of precious metals was due to a Federal Open Market Committee meeting that took place Wednesday. In the meeting it was discussed that the current monetary program, quantitative easing (QE), may no longer be what is needed for an improving economy. The thought is that the United States economy has improved past the point where QE is needed to foster growth. The conclusion was that the FOMC will pick the topic back up in March, at which point they may make some sort of lasting decision about monetary policy going forward.

Wednesday’s steep decline saw gold stoop to a point that is the lowest it has been in almost 8 months. It has been almost a whole week since we have seen any sort of upward movement in precious metals, but especially gold.