Gelling for Yellen

Today the United States enters day nine of a partial government shutdown, minutes are released from last month's FOMC meeting and President Obama nominates Janet Yellen to be the next the chairman of the US central bank. This triad of events were the major factors that led the US stock market to trading higher and the US dollar getting stronger. These factors also put tremendous pressure on the precious metals markets.

The release of last month's FOMC minutes put gold in a defensive stance. The minutes release suggested that tapering our current monthly asset purchases from 85 billion could begin earlier than 2014. Members of the fed are still divided as to when to begin the tapering process, but in light of recent events it seems hard to fathom that any tapering could begin earlier than December 2013. It is still my belief that the fed cannot begin tapering this year unless dramatic changes to our current unemployment rate change.

The real issue right now is the stalemate and deadlocked United States government just eight days away from running out of money. Although most logical clearheaded analysts cannot conceive that such a dramatically foolish and nearsighted move could be made by government officials, both sides still remained deadlocked with strong convictions to not compromise.

.Will the US government allows the October 17 deadline to come and go, without resolving the crisis and avoiding a default on our credit obligations. There is only one thing that our current partial shutdown has revealed: The only certainty that remains is uncertainty

Wishing you as always, good trading,