Bullion Slightly Lower Again, Upcoming Fed Comments Important

Gold is down slightly during the APAC session after rising to $1954.62/oz. It is currently trading around $1949.44/oz, close to the intraday low of $1947.86. It is 2.2% lower this week as comments from Fed officials suggesting that there could be further tightening weighed on bullion. Yesterday Powell didn’t comment on the outlook for policy or the economy, but he is speaking again today, as well as a number of others. The USD index is flat but off session lows.

• The USD OIS market has very little priced in for the December and January Fed meetings, which should be supportive of gold, but any change in this position would be significant for bullion.
• Gold has also begun to trend lower as the conflict in the Middle East currently looks contained and so the flight-to-quality flows that followed the October 7 Hamas attack are unwinding.
• Later there are more Fed speakers with Chairman Powell scheduled to participate on a panel discussing monetary policy challenges at the IMF research conference at 1900 GMT. Harker, Bostic, Barkin and Paese are also on today’s calendar. The ECB’s Lagarde and Lane are due to appear. The focus is on central bankers as in terms of data there are only US jobless claims.