Market News Update – February 20th, 2013

On the economic data front, U.S. housing starts, building permits, and PPI released this morning at 8:30am EST. Most of the data came in as expected with some upside on the U.S. building permit number.

The meeting minutes from the last FOMC meeting in January was released at 2:00pm EST today.

Investors are looking to the minutes from the Fed’s January meeting for any clues on how long the current monetary policy will remain in effect.

The main takeaway from the meeting is that several Federal Reserve policy makers said that the central bank should be ready to vary the pace of their $85 billion in monthly bond purchases, amid a debate over the risks and benefits of further quantitative easing (which the Fed actually expanded at the time). This implies that they could lower the amount of QE in the future.

The CNBC video below speaks to extremely strong long term fundamental bullish factors for gold. Silver prices will of course follow gold and many expect silver to surpass gold’s ascent.

As well, John Paulson, another billionaire investor and long-time gold supporter, maintained his $US3.5 billion ($A3.40 billion) gold holdings.

At time of writing, Gold is trading at $1,565/oz. and Silver at $28.50/oz. It is important to remember that bad days in the market present great opportunities.