Thursday 17 December 2015

Gold prices slightly up in early Asia, rebounding from overnight drop


Gold prices nudged higher in Asia on Friday with the focus on the pace of future Federal Reserve rate hikes.On the Comex division of the New York Mercantile Exchange, gold for February delivery rose 0.05% to $1,051.10 a troy ounce.Silver futures for March delivery gained 0.11% to $13.720 a troy ounce, while copper futures for March delivery fell 0.07% to $2.041 a pound.Overnight, gold futures slid by nearly $30 an ounce on Thursday tumbling back down to near six-year lows in their first full session since the Federal Reserve hiked interest rates for the first time in nearly a decade.Gold suffered its worst one-day fall since late-October, marking the seventh session it crashed by more than 2% on the calendar year. At Thursday's intraday lows, gold came within a dollar of dropping to its lowest level since 2009. The precious metal has flirted with multi-year lows since the start of December.Investors on Thursday reacted to the Federal Open Market Committee's historic decision to abandon a zero interest rate policy it maintained over the previous seven years since the height of the Financial Crisis. In a unanimous decision, the FOMC, lifted the Federal Funds Rate by 25 basis points to a range between 0.25 and 0.50%. Before Wednesday's decision, the FOMC had held short-term interest rates at near zero levels for 56 consecutive meetings, a streak which dated back to December, 2008. The Fed Funds Rate is the rate offered by institutions on overnight, interbank loans held at the Fed.Citing solid labor market conditions and expectations that sluggish inflation will improve over the next several years, the FOMC judged the U.S. economy has improved enough to handle a modest interest rate hike. Less than 24 hours after the announcement, global markets maintained a calm temperament, according to a number of prominent analysts providing the Fed with the ideal reaction it had hoped for.Major rate hikes, though, are viewed as bearish for gold, which struggles mightily to compete with high-yield bearing assets.Investors now await two FOMC meetings in the first quarter of fiscal year 2016 for further indications on the Fed's path for normalizing monetary policy. At Wednesday's press conference following the announcement, Fed chair Janet Yellen said the FOMC will employ a data-driven approach for its next rate hike. Unlike the Fed's previous tightening cycle a decade ago, Yellen insists that the U.S. central bank will avoid taking a mechanical course to normalization by approving equally-spaced, evenly-timed rate increases.In median projections released on Wednesday, the FOMC anticipates that Fed Funds Rate will reach 1.4% by the end of 2016, before approaching 2.5% by the completion of 2017.The projections suggest that the FOMC could approve as many as four rate hikes next year.

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