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Gold and silver are both trading flat leading into the EU open this morning. Gold had a pretty impressive session yesterday rising 1.58% and pushing past the previous wave high on the daily chart. Silver also did pretty well and moved back into the middle of the long term consolidation area between $21.66/oz and $30.09oz to trade at $25.77/oz.
After inheriting a positive risk tone from the U.S. bourses in the Asia Pac area traded well overnight. The ASX (0.07%), Nikkei 225 (0.14%) and Shanghai Composite (0.77%) all traded higher.
In FX markets, GBP/USD was the biggest mover overnight and moved 0.30% in the red. Elsewhere after some mild USD strength, the dollar index trades 0.07% higher. In the rest of the commodities complex, spot WTI trades 0.57% higher while copper lost 0.73% of its value overnight.
In terms of news stories, there was lots of Chinese data overnight. GDP for Q1 2021 came in at +0.6% q/q (expected +1.4%) and the March industrial production also missed expectations to print at +14.1% y/y (expected +18%). The Chinese unemployment rate moved lower to 5.3% from the last reading of 5.5%. The good news came from the retails sales data which rose to 32.5% vs the analyst consensus of 28%.
More from China as the nations US Treasury holdings hit US$1.104tln, highest since the middle of 2019.
Turkey has banned the use of cryptocurrencies to purchase goods and services. The price action in Bitcoin reflected the news as BTC/USD fell 2.76% leading into the EU open.
We also heard from some central bank members. Fed’s Daly is concerned about the frequency of Federal Reserve market interventions. While Fed's Mester noted the economy has a long way to go until sustainable recovery. Mester also stated that she is not concerned about inflation getting too high.
The White House's infrastructure bill could be passed in small bills and congress will work out the path moving forward (according to U.S. press).
Looking ahead to the rest of the session highlights include EU CPI data, U.S. building permits data, Michigan data and comments from BoE's Woods and Cunliffe.
By Rajan Dhall
For Kitco News
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