Gold Spot Price Open: $1,284
Gold Spot Price Close: $1,286
Change in Gold Spot Price: +$2
Silver Spot Price Open: $19.62
Silver Spot Price Close: $19.60
Change in Silver Spot Price:-$0.02
Gold and silver experienced mixed, yet stagnant results on Wednesday as both metals stayed within a small range of movement throughout the duration of the day. When all was said and done gold picked up about 2 dollars while silver lost a few pennies.
Today’s biggest story is that the world marketplace is still attempting to digest what Dennis Lockhart, president of the Atlanta Federal Reserve, had to say yesterday. While almost every other person at the Fed, including the Open Market Committee and Ben Bernanke himself, has recently insisted that monetary policy, specifically QE, is not on a predetermined course to be wound down by the end of 2013, Lockahrt seems to be part of a different school of thought. Even though Ben Bernanke’s address two weeks ago, and the FOMC’s meeting last week gave precious metals investors a bit of confidence in gold and silver as safe-haven assets going forward, that confidence was delivered a blow yesterday. Lockhart made an announcement saying that there is still a strong likelihood that QE will be tapered by the end of 2013, even though the FOMC made completely opposite remarks last week.
The fact that nobody in the Fed seems to know what is going on in regards to the future of monetary policy is worrisome to investors because if anyone should know what is going on with monetary policy in the US, it should most assuredly be the US Federal Reserve. Hopefully the next few days will shed some light on what the Fed is actually thinking in regards to the future of QE, though I would not hold my breath.
In other news, Europe has now clocked a third straight day of positive economic reports, this news coming in the form of an increase in German industrial production from May to June. Actual industrial production figures rose by 2.4% during the May-June timeframe, and at the same time the German economic growth forecast rose by a few percentage points as well. Have we seen the end of a struggling European economy? Many think so, though at this point it is hard to say for certain.