There is extreme duplicity between inflation and gold. Currently, that duplicity is acting as a double-edged sword with both sides honed to razor sharpness. On the one hand, as inflation moves higher, it makes gold a favorable asset to hold in your portfolio. It is considered one of the better inflationary hedges.

Job growth was moderate at best last December, according to the U.S. Labor Department’s nonfarm payroll jobs report which was released today. Economists polled by various news sources predicted that there would be an additional 400,000 jobs added to payrolls last month. The actual number was roughly half of the projected forecast revealing that only 199,000 additional jobs were added.

Recently Jerome Powell, Chairman of the Federal Reserve, said that “transitory has different meanings to different people.” I believe that their pledge to have “full transparency” has the same ambiguity with a lack of full clarity. Following the conclusion of every FOMC meeting, the Fed releases a written statement and the Chairman holds a press conference.

The Federal Reserve released the November FOMC meeting minutes today. What followed was a decisive shift in market sentiment in multiple financial sectors. All three major indices had strong selloffs immediately following the release of the November minutes. Concurrently the dollar lost value and did both gold and silver.

A tremendous spike of Covid-19 infections in the United States has broken previous records with 1 million new infections on Monday, according to the John’s Hopkins University of Medicine. According to the CDC, the new variant “omicron” represents 95% of all new cases in the U.S.

The first trading day contained strong bullish market sentiment for U.S. equities and dollar strength. The dollar gained 0.632 points or a percentage gain of 0.66%. Concurrently U.S. equities all traded to higher ground, with all three major indices closing near their record highs. The Dow Jones industrial average gained 246.76 points, a percentage gain of 0.68%.

It is getting to feel a lot like Christmas. Today market participants witnessed rallies across the financial markets. U.S. equities, precious metals, and cryptocurrencies all experienced gains today with a broad-based rally across most asset classes.

Both gold and silver had significant gains resulting from a combination of dollar weakness and continued fears regarding the economic effect of the Covid-19 variant omicron.

Today, we had a mixed bag in the precious metals markets, resulting in gold declining for the second consecutive day, and silver recovering and trading higher after yesterday’s decline. Yesterday, market participants in U.S. equities were solidly risk-off, taking all three major indices lower. Today U.S. equities reversed, scoring solid gains across-the-board.

As of 4:10 PM EST gold futures basis, the most active February 2021 Comex contract is currently fixed at $1789.80 after factoring in today’s net decline of $15.10 (-0.84%). Gold opened at $1800.20, traded to a high of $1804.60, and is currently trading $0.90 off the intraday low of $1789.