Bullion prices settle higher

Prices rise following FOMC minutes

Bullion prices settled higher on Wednesday, 20 May 2015 at Comex. Prices moved up after minutes from the Federal Reserve Open Market Committee's April meeting showed that only a few officials expect an interest-rate hike in June.

Gold for June delivery settled at $1,208.70 an ounce, up $2, or 0.2%, on Comex.

July silver gained 4.2 cents, or 0.3%, to end at $17.113 an ounce.

The April minutes of the policy-setting FOMC were released shortly after the close of regular metals trading on Comex. Only a few Fed officials thought economic data would improve enough to trigger a rate hike at the next meeting in June. The latest FOMC meeting minutes revealed the majority of committee members do not want to raise interest rates in June. The minutes also suggested the Fed will continue to be data-dependent and that the price weakness of the first quarter was transitory. Recent U.S. economic data has been a mixed bag and has provided no solid clues on when the FOMC might make an interest-rate hike.

Gold prices were trading with modest gains in afternoon U.S. trading Wednesday, on a corrective bounce from the strong selling pressure seen Tuesday. The latest minutes of the Federal Reserve's Open Market Committee meeting produced just a little upside movement in the gold market.

The feature in the market place so far this week has been the resurgent U.S. dollar index. The index is a basket of six major world currencies weighted against the greenback. Many raw commodity markets, including the precious metals, have been hit hard this week, mainly due to the appreciation of the dollar.

Reports overnight said there is progress being made in the Greece-EU/IMF debt restructuring talks. The existing bailout deal expires in June. The reports said Greece will run out of cash in June without a new cash infusion from its EU-IMF creditors. Despite the progress reportedly being made, this is a big, messy situation that will continue to cause major problems for the European Union. This is a major underlying bearish factor for the Euro currency.

The Bank of England's minutes of the latest monetary policy meeting, released Wednesday, showed the BOE reckoned U.K. economic growth will accelerate in the second quarter, following a slow start to the first quarter.

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