Last FOMC of the Year
General:
Keep an eye out for tomorrow’s release of the Minutes of the Federal Reserve’s December FOMC meeting (1:00 P.M., Central Time).
Metals:
Gold and silver futures markets tumbled after touching record highs, bringing a parabolic move in the precious metals space to a screeching halt.
Gold
After touching Friday’s all-time intraday high of $4,584 per ounce, Feb gold futures tumbled more than $200 per ounce today – a $20,000 per contract move – to hover near $4,340 per ounce.
Gold All-Time Intraday High
As well, after trading up more than $5.00 per ounce from Friday’s close to its own intraday all-time high of $82.67 per ounce, March silver futures dropped more than $12.00 per ounce to near $70.00 per ounce – a whopping ~15% intraday decline and a $60,000 per contract move – and is currently trading slightly above $71.00 per ounce.
Silver
Traders were on edge going into Monday’s session after the Chicago Mercantile Exchange raised the initial margin requirement on the March 5,000-oz. silver futures contract to $22,000, forcing higher leveraged traders to either add cash to their accounts or reduce their positions.
Despite today’s sell-off, silver’s whopping +174% rise this year has turned the metal into the third most valuable asset in the world, trailing only gold and Nvidia and outstripping tech titans such as Apple, Alphabet (Google) and Microsoft.
Silver Market Cap
According to CompaniesMarketCap, silver’s market cap stands at $4.485 trillion dollars. Gold tops the list with a market cap of $31.719 trillion, followed by Nvidia at $4.638 trillion. |
