Precious metals news

The Conference Board's Leading Economic Indicators (LEI) continued its decline in January, dropping 0.3% MoM (vs -0.3% exp).

Well, here we are again. Back to 2007 and the housing bubble and subsequent financial crisis. The US Treasury 6-month yield is back over 5%, a yield we haven’t seen since August 8, 2007. Well…

As inflation continues to eat into the budgets of American families, such is a recession signal that should not be dismissed.

What they mean is “monetary policy,” which is in fact very difficult to understand—given it effectively operates as a political program within the muddled field of macroeconomics. Monetary policy, unlike money per se, is ad hoc, highly technical, reliant on vast amounts of data, and dictated by political expediency.

Central banks have been buying gold in quantities not seen since 1967. After decades of efforts to demonetize gold, why would the guardians of the monetary system suddenly invest large sums into a metal that demands crippling mining costs and offers little return? The answer is not so simple.

Gold price comes under some renewed selling pressure on Friday and drops to a fresh YTD low during the first half of the European session.

Bitcoin fell the most in about a week as hawkish rhetoric from Federal Reserve officials and further signs of an aggressive US regulatory clampdown stirred caution.

On the one hand, Fed officials are more confident they will avoid a rapid slowdown or even a recession in the short term, which means a “soft” landing is still in sight. More unsettlingly, however, the central bank’s battle against high inflation appears far from over.

US futures and global equities extended Thursday's selloff as a global wave of risk aversion swept across the markets after two of the Fed's most hawkish (nonvoting) policymakers - Loretta Mester and James Bullard - signaled they may favor returning to bigger, 50bps rate hikes in the future, while European Central Bank Executive Board member Isabel Schnabel also warned that markets may be underestimating inflation, and the risk that the ECB “may have to act more forcefully” against it. S&P 500 futures fell 0.7% as of 7:30 a.m. in New York as the risk-off tone continues with MegaCap Tech underperforming, Nasdaq 100 contracts slide 0.9%.

Individual investors have been snapping up stocks at the fastest pace ever as U.S. equity markets charge higher this year.

BofA declined to comment on the report. Global banks including Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley are in the process of cutting thousands of jobs as profits at lucrative investment banking units come under pressure, according to a Reuters tally.

Long extensions of debt beyond current maturity dates are among the options Group of 20 nations and others are considering to help poor countries relieve the stress of unmanageable debt burdens, World Bank President David Malpass said.

Norway's central bank governor on Thursday said the economy was "operating above potential" and that there should be no doubt that Norges Bank will bring down soaring consumer price inflation, which is running at its highest level in decades. In her first annual policy address since taking office last year, Ida Wolden Bache said Norges Bank's rate hikes were aimed at "softening...

\Japan will start a pilot programme in April to test the use of a digital yen, its central bank said on Friday, joining a growing number of countries seeking to catch up with front-runner China in launching a central bank digital currency (CBDC). The widely expected move follows two years of experiments that the Bank of Japan (BOJ) has been conducting to decide whether to issue...

]The dollar advanced against all major peers Friday, with a gauge of the currency wiping out its losses for the year, on growing bets for more Federal Reserve rate hikes.

St. Louis Fed President James Bullard on Thursday said more interest-rate hikes would help inflation to move lower this year.

One of the European Central Bank’s most senior officials said that investors risk underestimating the persistence of inflation, and the response needed to bring it under control.

The delayed arrival of a US recession will weigh on stocks in the second half of the year, according to Bank of America Corp. strategists, who say a resilient economy thus far means interest rates will stay higher for longer.

German bonds erased losses and money markets trimmed bets on further European Central Bank tightening after Bank of France Governor Francois Villeroy de Galhau said rate bets have been excessively volatile.

It's getting harder for Americans to make ends meet without dipping into their cash reserves, a new report finds.