Considering that as recently as June we had the highest level of inflation recorded in the last 40 years today’s CPI report from December was a welcome change as inflation continues to slowly dissipate. Just six months ago overall inflation peaked at an alarming 9.1%. The historical rise in inflation was a long process after coming in at 0.329% in April and 0.118% in May 2020.

It is a given that the potential for inflation to decline in the December report. The assumption that inflation continues to diminish and has for the most part been factored into market pricing., Tomorrow’s Consumer Price Index will occur after the strong and hawkish speech by Chairman Powell delivered yesterday at a central bank conference in Sweden.

Now that the jobs report has come and gone market participants are awaiting two exceedingly important events that will occur today and on Thursday. Today the chairman of the Federal Reserve, Jerome Powell delivered a speech at 9 AM EST at a central bank conference in Riksbank, Sweden. Then on Thursday, the BLS (US Bureau of Labor Statistics) will release the CPI report for December.

Gold futures and spot pricing closed moderately higher today. However, traders and investors bid the precious yellow metal lower with dollar weakness accounting for all of today’s gains. As of 4:40 PM EST gold futures basis, the most active February contract is currently up $5.80 or 0.32% and fixed at $1875.60.

Yesterday’s strong price decline in gold could easily be a “one and done” price dip based on today’s strong gains following the release of the jobs report for December. The report revealed that the labor market finished 2022 on a strong note with December adding 223,000 new jobs. This was well above estimates which anticipated an additional 200,000 jobs were added last month.

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.

___________________________________________________________________________________________