Gold and silver are mixed leading into the European open

Gold is trading marginally lower heading into the European open and this comes after a 0.32% fall in yesterday's session. Silver performing slightly better trading 0.30% higher but this also comes after a drop on Monday's session.

After inheriting a negative close from Wall Street bourses in the Asia Pac area are pretty mixed. The ASX (-0.68%) and Nikkei 225 (-1.97%) took a tumble but India's Nifty (0.25%) and South Korea's Kospi (0.68%) both performed well while the Shanghai Composite traded flat.

In the FX markets, the dollar index fell 0.11% and the biggest mover was AUD/USD which rose 0.67%. In the rest of the commodities complex, copper moved another 1% higher and spot WTI also moved 0.86% in the same direction.

In terms of news stories, UK March jobless claims change came in at 10.1k vs 86.6k prior. The unemployment rate (Feb) also fell to 4.9% vs the analyst consensus of 5.1%. There was also German PPI data this morning and it continued to rise to reach 0.9% m/m for Match (exp 0.6% prior 0.7%).

Following the Fed's rhetoric, the RBA April monetary policy meeting minutes noted that unemployment too high. The RBA also said they would "reasonably" do what they can to support the Australian economy.

The PBOC sets China's 1-year loan prime rate at 3.85%, 5-year at 4.65%. Both are unchanged and this was expected.

Sticking with China, Premier Li also warn other countries against meddling in other nations affairs.

There was UK media report that "Russia 'planning large-scale warship assault on Ukraine water supplies'". US expresses deep concerns re Russia's plans to block parts of the Black Sea, seems the situation is escalating pretty quickly.

White House issues a statement saying infrastructure talks were fruitful. This comes after some reports yesterday that the U.S. administration where set to talk about how to section off parts of the bill.

In Australia, Rio Tino said their iron ore shipments increased but they also noted that production moved slightly lower. Brazil's Vale reported iron ore output of 68.0 tons vs expectations of 72 tons.

Looking ahead to the rest of the session highlights include NZ CPI and GDT. We could also hear from German Buba Vice President Buch and ECB's de Cos.
 

By Rajan Dhall

For Kitco News

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