Precious metals have been on the up and up straight from the offing this week. The market seems to slowly but surely be taking on a more risk-averse attitude and this, as you could have probably guessed, is good news for gold and silver. Due to the celebration of the Columbus Day holiday in the US and Thanksgiving in Canada on Monday, this week has admittedly gotten off to a bit of a slow start. While things will be picking up a little over the course of the coming days, it is not likely that we will be on the receiving end of too much economic data.
Investors, instead, will be turning their attention to the USD Index which has jumped all over the place in recent days. To begin this week, however, the greenback has done ok and, as of the writing of this post, is on the up and up. With interest rates expected to be held steady in the United States for the foreseeable future, it will be interesting to see where the US Dollar heads.
Equities Jump Forward on Better Than Expected Earnings
The last week or more has seen US equity markets jump all over the place; finishing drastically upward one day while falling dramatically the next. With such volatility beginning to become a theme across the US equity marketplace, some people began wondering if the equity market rally might finally be coming to a close. Though there is really no way of knowing if this is the case for sure, risk-aversion popped up over the past week as investors sought other, safer assets in lieu of what were perceived to be increasingly risky stock investments.
Today, however, saw things calm down a good bit as markets stabilized and began moving upward once more. Fueled by some better-than-expected earnings reports, the Dow, Nasdaq, and S&P 500 are all moving upward by considerably margins. Two of the biggest earners were Citigroup Inc. and Johnson&Johnson, both of which reported great earnings during the 3rd quarter. In addition to this, Johnson&Johnson increased their growth expectations for the rest of this year. As a result, J&J stock jumped by about 1.5% while Citigroup’s stock was up over 2% as of the writing of this post.
Though equity markets are performing better today, it is encouraging to see precious metals hanging in there and hanging on to marginal gains. Among experts, there is a growing belief that gold market bulls are beginning to gain momentum, and this could bode well for the metal as we head into the latter half of the month of October. Also helping metals is the growing belief that interest rates in the United States will be maintained at current levels more than likely through the summer of 2015.
