Gold continued its recent strong advance to trade at a new record price of $ 2161 a few hours ago.
➡️ The spot price of gold continued to rise steadily to reach new all-time highs. Trend traders will be interested in this on the Long side and investors will likely be looking to make sure they have some gold in their portfolios.
➡️ In his testimony before the US House of Representatives yesterday, Fed Chair Jerome Powell said that while progress has been made to bring inflation to a target of 2%, progress is not guaranteed. Powell said it would likely 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 that Powell and the Fed have been sending in recent months. Stock markets have reacted little to this and are mostly consolidating quietly. The US dollar has lost ground over the past day.
➡️ The Bank of Canada kept its overnight rate at 5.00% in yesterday's policy meeting and surprised no one by maintaining a cautious approach in guiding its monetary policy. This had little to no impact on the Loonie (Canadian Dollar).
➡️ There have been some interesting developments regarding the Japanese yen, as new data showed that Japanese wages are finally rising to around the 2% target, which the Bank of Japan saw as the trigger needed to start increasing wages taxi. This has led to growing speculation that we are not far from a first Bank of Japan rate hike since 2007. This has led to renewed strength in the yen.
➡️ In the Forex market, the Japanese yen has been the strongest major currency since Tokyo opened today. The US dollar was the weakest. This puts the USD/JPY currency pair in focus today.
➡️ The European Central Bank will hold a policy meeting today where it is expected to keep its main refinancing rate at 4.50%.
➡️ Yesterday's release of the US PD Non-Farm Employment Forecast projects that 140,000 new jobs were created last month, more or less in line with expectations.
➡️ Yesterday's release of JOLTS US employment data was in line with expectations.
➡️ Data on unemployment claims in the United States will be released today.
➡️ Fed Chair Powell will testify before the US Senate today.
Credit by DailyForex.com