The EUR/USD pair traded flat on Thursday, trading around 1.1596, as market liquidity thinned during the US Thanksgiving holiday. Despite the limited movement, pressure on the US dollar remained as expectations mounted that the Federal Reserve would cut interest rates soon. The combination of declining inflation, weak retail sales data, and declining consumer confidence has made the market increasingly confident that borrowing costs in the US will fall. According to the CME FedWatch Tool, the market now prices around an 85% chance of the Fed cutting interest rates by 25 basis points. This...
Silver (XAG/USD) remains near its highest level since mid-October, supported by a combination of expectations for global interest rate cuts and a weakening US dollar. The prospect of lower interest rates makes non-yielding assets like silver and gold relatively more attractive than bonds. At the same time, concerns about the global economy and geopolitical uncertainty are driving some investors to seek "safe haven alternatives" to gold, and silver is also benefiting from these inflows. Fundamentally, silver has a dual advantage: it is not only a precious metal that hedges against inflation...
The US dollar weakened and is heading for one of its worst weeks since mid-year as markets increasingly believe the Federal Reserve will cut interest rates in December. Expectations of this policy easing arose after a series of data showed inflation starting to tame, retail sales slowing, and consumer confidence declining. Fed interest rate futures now project a probability of a 25 bps rate cut at over 80%, much higher than a week earlier. In such a situation, US bond yields tend to fall, weakening the dollar's appeal as a yield-bearing asset. Dovish comments from several Fed officials have...
Gold (XAU/USD) sticks to intraday gains near a two-week top heading into the European session on Friday, with bulls awaiting a sustained move beyond the $4,200 mark before placing fresh bets. The increasing likelihood of another interest rate cut by the US Federal Reserve (Fed) in December turns out to be a key factor that continues to benefit the non-yielding yellow metal. The intraday move up could also be attributed to technical buying above the $4,170-4,175 hurdle. Meanwhile, the US Dollar (USD) looks to build on the overnight bounce from an over one-week low and acts as a headwind for...
Brent crude oil futures inched up on Friday as drawn-out Russia-Ukraine peace talks kept geopolitical risks elevated, while traders kept one eye on the outcome of an OPEC+ meeting on Sunday for clues about potential output changes. However, U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude futures were frozen after a system outage at exchange operator CME Group. Traders said they were informed by CME just before 0300 GMT of the halt due to a cooling issue at its CyrusOne data centres, which affected trading of all futures and options contracts on Globex. Brent oil trades on the Intercontinental Exchange,...