Precious metals news

Turkish annual inflation climbed to a new 24-year high of 85.51% in October, official data showed on Thursday, slightly below forecast, after the central bank cut its policy rate despite surging prices.

Wall Street major Morgan Stanley is expected to start a fresh round of layoffs globally in the coming weeks, three people with knowledge of the plan said, as dealmaking business takes a hit due to rising inflation and an economic downturn.

Rumour has it the cuts are coming soon.

There remains a chance that the U.S. economy can escape a recession as the Federal Reserve raises interest rates to lower inflation, but that window of opportunity for a "soft landing" has narrowed this year as price pressures have been slow to ease, Fed Chair Jerome Powell said on Wednesday.

As last week's third quarter gross domestic product showed, there have been four categories of economic activity that have been significant drags on growth this year. Two of those are the result of consumer behaviors normalizing after the pandemic, and two were caused at least in part by the Fed's rate increases.

Bond investors are seeing no relief from the most aggressive Federal Reserve hiking cycle in decades. While the latest Fed statement dangled the prospect of rate hikes being downsized starting as soon as next month, chair Jerome Powell struck a hawkish tone that prompted traders to price in greater odds of policy staying high for much of next year.

The Federal Reserve on Wednesday approved the fourth straight jumbo interest-rate hike, bringing its benchmark interest rate to the highest level in 15 years.

European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde warned that a “mild recession” is possible but that it wouldn’t be sufficient in itself to stem soaring prices.

The cost of borrowing sterling against high quality collateral is sliding away from the Bank of England’s key rate, a distortion that risks impeding the central bank’s ability to tighten policy effectively.

Stocks and bonds fell as Jerome Powell’s warning that the Federal Reserve would raise interest rates more than previously anticipated sapped risk appetite. The pound held declines after the Bank of England raised its key rate to 3%.

The market expects the Bank of England to raise interest rates by 75 basis points on Thursday, its largest hike since 1989.

After the Fed's rate hike and announcement of continued hikes yesterday, the markets and metals sold off.  However, silver held up pretty well today as it was the only metal in the green.  However, there continues to be more liquidation of metal from the major Gold & Silver ETFs, suggesting even short-term weaker prices ahead...

Gold is the most resilient asset to own if the Federal Reserve continues to raise rates, while stocks are the worst place to be, with non-dollar currencies falling between the two. Gold has had an empirical duration of just over three years in the current Fed cycle, compared with stocks at 7.1 years. The non-dollar currencies that make up the G-10 have seen a duration of 5.3 years.

Last year, Nigeria launched its much-ballyhooed eNaira, Africa’s first central bank digital currency (CBDC). Central bankers, academics, politicians, and an assortment of elites from over 100 countries hoping to launch their own CBDCs have closely followed the eNaira. They used Nigeria—Africa’s largest country by population and size of its economy—as a Petri dish to test their nefarious plans to use CBDCs to enslave the people of North America, Europe, and beyond. The jury is now in. The eNaira has been a massive failure. According to Bloomberg, only 1 in 200 Nigerians use the eNaira. That’s even after the government implemented discounts … Continue reading →

The window has narrowed “because we haven’t seen inflation coming down,” Fed Chair Powell says. “We need to have policy be more restrictive.”

The U.S. Federal Reserve raised interest rates Wednesday by 75 basis points for the fourth straight meeting while hinting at a potential slower pace in the future — and then Fed Chair Jerome Powell reiterated the central banks commitment to tame multi-decade highs in inflation.

Effective July 29, 2021, the Federal Reserve directed the New York Federal Reserve’s Trading Desk (the Desk), to: Conduct overnight repurchase agreement operations with a minimum bid rate of 0.25 percent and with an aggregate operation limit of $500 billion; the aggregate operation limit can be temporarily increased at the discretion of the Chair. What does this mean? Per the Desk: In a repo transaction, the Desk purchases securities from a counterparty subject to an agreement to resell the securities at a later date.

Collectively, banks are now sitting on almost $3 trillion in reserves, and the bulk of that money is held at the largest institutions, not the smallest ones. These payments are one of the reasons the Federal Reserve is now officially in the red, losing several billion dollars instead of remitting money to the U.S. Treasury.

While the environment of excess reserves and collateral scarcity has been the norm for a number of years, it has led to major market dislocations only on a limited number of occasions, notably certain year-end reporting periods and the COVID- induced turmoil of March-April 2020.

The Fed is expected to hike its target Fed Funds range by another 75bps for November and there is talk of a “stepping down” on the severity of future rate hikes afterwards. Here's ZH's take from today's: FOMC Preview: Time To Step Off The Brake