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Gold has moved half a percent higher leading into the EU session and taken out the previous wave high at $1875.28. Silver is also trading well and has moved past $25.50 to trade 1.60% higher overnight. The general risk sentiment overnight in the Asia Pac area is positive with the Nikkei 225 (0.18%), ASX (1.16%) and Shanghai Composite (1.13%) all moving in the right direction. The dollar index has taken another dive falling 0.57%.
The FOMC last night didn't throw up too many surprises. There was no change to the composition of stimulus and rates remained unchanged as expected. The Fed said it will maintain its huge bond-buying program until "substantial" progress is seen in employment and inflation. One notable point was the fact that the Fed refrained from extending the weighted average maturity of its purchases.
Germany has given its support to Chinese tech firm Huawei on the 5G network. High profile countries like the UK and Australia have notably rejected to use the Chinese telecommunications firm for their 5G rollout.
Stocking with Australia, their latest jobs numbers impressed overnight. Australian employment change for November came in at 90.0K vs the expected reading of 50.0K. The Australian dollar is one of the outperformers this morning and trades 0.63% higher against the dollar. GDP in NZ also beat expectations to print at 14.0% Q/Q for Q3 vs the consensus of 13.5%.
In the crypto space, Bitcoin hit an all-time high and the euphoria kicked in. Scott Minerd the chief investment officer for $5.3bn Guggenheim Macro Opportunities Fund even stated his team feel that BTC us undervalued and could hit $400K.
Looking ahead to the rest of the session highlights include the SNB rate decision, BoE rate decision. EU CPI, US building permits, Philly Fed data and comments from ECB's de Guindos, Schnabel, BoE's Broadbent, Bailey and Fed's Broadbent.
