Mid-Day Gold & Silver Market Report – 7/18/2014

Peter LaTona

7/18/2014 12:02:00 PM

GOLD,  SILVER DROP AS GEOPOLITICAL TENSIONS BECOME OLD NEWS

Speculations that the Federal Reserve will raise interest rates sooner than expected have trumped yesterday’s geopolitical fears, causing Gold and Silver prices to fall. Yesterday, Gold jumped sharply on news about the Malaysia Airlines plane crash and Israel sending forces into the Gaza strip. Today, investors are not as worried. “There’s a little bit of concern that the Fed starts tightening,” Rob Kurzatkowski, a senior commodity analyst at optionsXpress, a Chicago-based brokerage unit of Charles Schwab Corp., said in a telephone interview. “Some of the fears that we’ve seen yesterday have dissipated.”

U.S. stocks are ignoring yesterday’s news and potential interest rate hikes, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average has been up more than 100 points. Friday's “gains are related to earnings that are better than expected from companies like Google, and second, after the worries due to the downing of the airliner and invasion of Gaza, the fact that there is no escalation is being taken as a good sign,” Edward Jones investment strategist Kate Warne said. “It's disappointing that both of these conflicts have worsened, but it doesn't seem that either is escalating.”

At 1 p.m. (ET), the APMEX Precious Metals spot prices were:

• Gold, $1,308.90, Down $9.00.
• Silver, $20.90, Down $0.24.
• Platinum, $1,490.00, Down $14.70.
• Palladium, $882.50, Down $3.70.

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