The Federal Reserve will conclude its September FOMC meeting and release a written statement at 2 PM EDT tomorrow. This will be followed by Chairman Powell’s press conference a half-hour later. It is widely anticipated that the Federal Reserve will raise the “Fed funds rate” by 75 basis points.

Gold remains relatively muted as market participants await the start of the Federal Open Market Committee meeting tomorrow. As of 5 PM EDT gold futures basis, the most active December contract is currently trading at $1685 with a net gain of $1.50 today. The December contract opened at $1685.40, traded to a low of $1667.60 and a high of $1688.80.

Yesterday gold closed below the support level of $1680 closing at $1674. This was the first instance of a close below $1680 since gold broke above that price point in April 2020. The yellow rectangle on the left-hand side of “chart 1” illustrates the break above that level. It is marked with a large letter” R” on the weekly gold chart below.

Unless you’ve been living under your computer screen you are well aware of recent price action pressuring gold dramatically lower. Over the last six months since gold hit its highest value this year gold has been devalued by $400 per ounce or 19.45%.

Today the government reported a fractional decline in headline inflation through the release of the August CPI inflation report. The August 2022 CPI report revealed that inflation was both stickier and larger than expected, with the actual numbers exceeding the forecasts by major economists and analysts.

Tomorrow at 8:30 EDT, the BLS (Bureau of Labor Statistics) will release the latest inflation report vis-à-vis the CPI index for August 2022. This will be the most recent data that the Federal Reserve will have on inflation and therefore be a key component to their decision on the size of the next rate hike during next week’s FOMC meeting.

As of 5:05 PM EDT gold futures basis, the most active December contract is currently fixed at $1729.50 after factoring in today’s gain of $16.60 or 0.97%. Dollar weakness was a primary contributor to moving gold higher accounting for approximately 60% of gold’s $17 price increase. Currently, the dollar index is fixed at 109.55 which is a daily decline of 0.59%.

Well before the Federal Reserve enacted its first interest rate hike in March the dollar has been on a dynamic upside surge. In July 2021 the dollar index traded to a low of 89.45 and in just over a year moved to a 20-year high with the dollar index currently trading above 110. When analysts talk about dollar strength it is a little misleading on the surface.