Breaking four consecutive days of gains, gold prices declined today by $20 as market participants reacted to data revealing that the U.S. labor market is tighter than previously perceived. A tight labor market raises the expectations that the Federal Reserve will maintain the elevated interest rates for a longer period.

This afternoon the Federal Reserve released the minutes from last month’s FOMC meeting. Unanimously Fed officials agreed that the central bank should slow the pace of its aggressive rate hikes. This would allow them to continue to ratchet up the cost of credit to curb inflation.

For the last 6 months, gold futures have been unable to break above $1840. The price range from $1780 to $1840 had contained pricing for the last month of 2022 but today on the first trading day of 2023 Gold had a successful break out to higher pricing.

Dear Subscribers,

As we are winding down to the end of 2022, we have changed our schedule so that we can spend the needed time to produce two major videos one will be released on Friday, December 23 just before Christmas, with the last video of the year being released on Friday, December 30 which will contain our outlook for 2023.

Today's video is the last Kitco News interview for the year, it was recorded Friday, December 23, 2022. We will record an interview with Ivan Bayoukhi of WallStreet Silver tomorrow, Thursday December 29, 2022, our last interview of the year.

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As of 4:55 PM EST gold futures basis, the most active February 2023 contract is fixed at $1805.90 after factoring in a net gain of $10.80. Spot gold gained $6.00 and is currently fixed at $1798.51. Silver gained 1.37% or $0.32 with the most active March 2023 futures contract currently fixed at $23.935.

Editors Note:

We are beginning to go into the end-of-year holiday season schedule at the Gold Forecast. We will have one more video report and letter this week published on Friday. This will contain a review of the last year. It will also contain our wishes to all of our subscribers and readers for our Holiday greetings.

The Bank of Japan’s surprise decision that they would raise their benchmark interest rate cap from 0.25% to 0.50% sent ripples through the global financial markets. Since 2016 the Japanese Central Bank has set its target range for the yield of 10-year Japanese government bonds near zero, with a cap of 0.25%.

Gold began the trading week moving lower as market participants continue to digest and react to last week’s FOMC statement and economic projections. In essence, the Federal Reserve made it clear that they are committed to reducing inflationary pressures by continuing to implement rate hikes and then maintaining those elevated rates throughout the next year.

Two major events this week resulted in a roller-coaster ride for gold investors and traders.