Investing.com -- Gold prices drifted Wednesday after stronger-than-expected growth figures for the U.S. economy failed to dent hopes of an interest rate cut from the Federal Reserve later in the day.
By 11:25 AM ET (1525 GMT), gold futures for delivery on the Comex exchange were up 0.4% at $1,496.85 a troy ounce, while spot gold was up 0.4% at $1,494.01.
Silver futures were up 0.2% at $17.87 an ounce while Platinum futures fell 0.4% to $921.70. Palladium futures stabilized after coming off new all-time highs caused by the inability of miners to meet increased demand from the auto industry quickly.
Most precious metal prices are still well within recent ranges and likely to stay that way at least until 2 PM ET, when the Federal Reserve announces its monetary policy decisions. Fed Chairman Jerome Powell’s press conference is due to follow half an hour later and either the Fed’s statement or Powell’s guidance should tell gold investors what they have been waiting to hear, namely how much more monetary easing they should expect.
While the market has fully priced in a 25-basis-point cut to the fed funds target range later Wednesday, the third this year, bets on further easing thereafter have moderated as the U.S. and China on the one hand, and the EU and Britain on the other, have moved to clear some of the biggest near-term tail risks to the world economy.
Even so, figures released earlier showed the U.S. economy growing at its slowest annual rate since 2016, as the stimulus from President Donald Trump’s tax cuts ebbed and the U.S.-China trade war bit into investment spending. As such, the hope for further Fed easing is unlikely to die any time soon.
“There is no question that global economy is slowing down,” Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin told a conference in Saudi Arabia earlier Thursday. “That has had some modest drag on the U.S. economy,”