Gold And Other Precious Metals Plus Oil And Dudley Making News Today

Today’s big news is coming from gold and the rest of the precious metals complex.

Gold is up 1.35% and silver is up 3.50%. Platinum higher by 2.25% and palladium is bringing up the rear with a 1.00% gain.

Much of the action is chart based, which will be discussed in our video today and in Market Forecast. Oil is strong; equities are modestly higher.

The fundamental cause for the precious metals thus is hard to discern. Regardless, a $16+ gain in gold is always welcome.

Among stocks, energy, financials and materials were the big winners for most of the day but the markets faded as the closing bell neared. It ought to be noted that we will be seeing the first of Q1’s reporting of income and earnings after hours today when Alcoa checks in. That will be the main driver of the prices of equities and resultantly of everything else.

One reason we love the charts on gold but are lukewarm on fundamentals concerns other haven plays today.

U.S. Treasury yields and face prices are essentially flat. If a full-on haven day had shaped up, the yield would be going assertively lower.

And, the yen would be rising more than it has today. The Japanese currency would be booming if it were keeping up with gold’s quick uptick. But it is not exactly a risk off day.

It is more like a “let’s get gold back to a normal price again.” Gold (and the other precious metals) suddenly hit traders with a bolt of lightning that said, in effect, “You have oversold these trades by a wide margin, so adjust, adjust, adjust.”

Both West Texas Intermediate and Brent North Sea oils were up on hopes for a round of talks within and beyond OPEC and outside producers. The hope is that production will be frozen.

But, there is no reasonable chance for that and there are too many other producers that would immediately undermine such a move, which would be an attempt to force prices to rise.

President Obama and Vice President Biden are meeting with Janet Yellen, Chairwoman of he Federal Reserve Bank. No surprise that they will be discussing the economy. Earlier in the day, the president had warm words of praise for Ms. Yellen, expressed through one of his staff.

"The president has been pleased with the way she has fulfilled what is a critically important job," White House spokesman Josh Earnest said at a news briefing.

New York Federal Reserve Bank President William Dudley in a speech given in Bridgeport, Connecticut, today focused on the links between economic and geographic mobility in the United States and did not comment on monetary policy or the economy, Reuters reported.

The head of the most important Fed bank had many interesting things to say, among them that Americans have to be willing to move and take chances in order to prosper. He did take pains to say that further interest rate rises will be gradual and that the central bank will be cautious in their approach. (Kudos to Dudley for saying that.)

A good breezy article about the rest of his speech can be found here. http://freebeacon.com/issues/fed-official-u-s-no-longer-top-country-achieve-american-dream/

Wishing you as always, good trading,