Today the Federal Reserve concluded its July FOMC meeting leaving only three remaining meetings this year. As expected, the Federal Reserve raised rates by ¼% taking its terminal benchmark rate to between 5 ¼% and 5 ½%, no surprise there. This took the fed funds rate (which is used to set the prime rate) to its highest level since 2001 or in 22 years.

ox·y·mo·ron [ˌäksəˈmôrˌän]

NOUN: A figure of speech in which apparently contradictory terms appear in conjunction (e.g. faith unfaithful kept him falsely true):

"that fashionable rhetorical novelty, the humblebrag, is itself an oxymoron" 

Members of the Federal Reserve tend to keep their future actions close to their chest revealing little insight as to any upcoming revisions to their aggressive monetary policy that has been in play since March 2022.

Gold futures are definitely under pressure today, with the most active August 2023 contract down $8.70 or 0.44% and fixed at $1972.10. The root cause is dollar strength that overcame fractional buying and still was able to take gold prices moderately lower.

The CME’s FedWatch tool is predicting that there is a 99.8% probability that the Federal Reserve will implement a ¼% rate hike on July 26 when the next FOMC meeting concludes. It is also likely that this month’s rate hike will conclude the series of hikes by the Federal Reserve that began in March 2022.

Investors are hoping for the rate hike pause implemented by the Federal Reserve to continue into the July FOMC meeting. Last month after 10 consecutive rate hikes at each FOMC meeting the Federal Reserve left their benchmark interest rate between 5% and 5 ¼%.

This interview was filmed on March 17th, 2023. It was published the Vancouver Resource Investment Conference channel on You Tube.

Unquestionably, gold has had an exceptional week rising dramatically after the release of last month’s CPI index earlier this week. However, market participants must be laser-focused on gains or losses as they pertain to dollar strength or weakness. This is because the dollar has been the largest influence on daily price change. Over the last week, the dollar has dropped considerably.

On the surface, traders are witnessing higher pricing in physical and forex gold, as well as gold futures in trading today. Gold futures basis the most active August contract is currently up $3.30 or 0.17%, spot gold is currently fixed at $1960 up $2.70, and Forex gold is currently up four dollars or 0.20% and fixed at $1960.40.

At 8:30 EDT the Labor Department released the latest inflationary report, the Consumer Price Index (CPI) for June. The report revealed that inflation has declined to its lowest monthly increase since August 2021. The Consumer Price Index gained 0.2% last month double the increase of 0.1% in May.