Gold and Silver Regain Ground Ahead of Fed Minutes Release

(Bloomberg) — Gold advanced back above $4,900 an ounce as dip-buyers snapped up the metal after a two-day drop, with traders looking ahead to the release of minutes from the Federal Reserve’s recent meeting.

Bullion rose as much as 1.3% in thin trading on Wednesday, with much of Asia offline due to the Lunar New Year holiday. The metal had lost more than 3% over the previous two sessions.

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Throughout the holiday period investors “can reasonably expect a soft patch” for precious metals, analysts at BMO Capital Markets wrote in a note, opening a window for dip buying.

A powerful rally carried gold to an all-time high above $5,595 an ounce in late January, but the market overheated after a surge in speculative buying and snapped back almost to $4,400 in just two sessions. Though the metal has regained nearly half of these losses, trading has been unusually choppy since the rout.

Many banks, including BNP Paribas SA, Deutsche Bank AG and Goldman Sachs Group Inc., forecast that prices will resume their upward trend, with the factors that underpinned gold’s earlier, steady ascent still intact. These include heightened geopolitical tensions and concerns over the Federal Reserve’s independence.

In the near term, investors will be looking to comments from Fed officials for clues on US monetary policy, as well as the minutes — due later Wednesday — from the bank’s January meeting, when policymakers opted to hold interest rates steady. An appetite for cutting rates would be a tailwind for non-yielding precious metals – gold rallied briefly on Friday when modest inflation data boosted the case for lowering borrowing costs.

Fed Governor Michael Barr said on Tuesday rates should remain steady “for some time” until officials see more evidence that inflation is heading toward the central bank’s 2% goal. Fed Bank of Chicago President Austan Goolsbee, meanwhile, said there was potential for more cuts this year if inflation continued on its path toward that target.

Spot gold rose 0.8% to $4,917.45 an ounce by 9:59 a.m. in London. Silver climbed 3.1% to $75.78 an ounce. Platinum rose 1.4% and palladium was up 1.8%. The Bloomberg Dollar Spot Index edged 0.1% higher.