Gold prices experienced renewed volatility, after struggling to hold above $2,900, but eventually the precious metal retreated to $ 2,880.38, down -1.61% at the time of writing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The precious metal is facing pressure as weak U.S. consumer data heightened economic concerns. Retail sales figures released Friday revealed a sharp 0.9% drop last month, significantly worse than the anticipated 0.2% decline, according to the Commerce Department. This downturn, following a revised 0.7% increase in December, paints a concerning picture of consumer spending.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Core sales, excluding vehicle purchases, also fell short of expectations, decreasing 0.4% versus the projected 0.3% rise. The control group, a key indicator for GDP calculations, showed an even more alarming 0.8% drop, missing the 0.3% increase forecast.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
These disappointing figures triggered selling pressure in the gold market, accelerating existing profit-taking. Spot gold traded down 0.53% at $2,912.30 an ounce. Economists expressed concern about the implications for first-quarter economic growth. While some weakness might be attributed to weather conditions, as noted by Capital Economics, the overall trend suggests a potential slowdown in consumption growth to around 2.5% annualized, with GDP growth potentially closer to 1.5%.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This weak retail sales data compounds a difficult period for U.S. consumers, who are also grappling with rising prices. The economic data places the Federal Reserve in a precarious position as it attempts to balance monetary policy between the risks of a slowing economy and persistent inflation. Despite this, some commodity analysts maintain that this environment is ideal for gold. They argue that gold’s safe-haven status makes it an attractive hedge against economic uncertainty and inflation. With the Federal Reserve maintaining a relatively neutral stance on interest rates, the argument goes, rising inflation diminishes the appeal of bonds, making gold a more compelling defensive asset.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Gold prices experienced renewed volatility, after struggling to hold above $2,900, but eventually the precious metal retreated to $ 2,880.38, down -1.61% at the time of writing. The precious metal is facing pressure as weak U.S. consumer data heightened economic concerns. Retail sales figures released Friday revealed a sharp 0.9% drop last month, significantly worse …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":96297,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[38,6827,49,37,36],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-111893","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","","category-commodities-news","category-daily-economic-reports","category-economic-reports","category-forex-markets","category-market-updates"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/noortrends.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111893","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/noortrends.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/noortrends.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/noortrends.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/noortrends.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=111893"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/noortrends.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111893\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":111910,"href":"https:\/\/noortrends.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111893\/revisions\/111910"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/noortrends.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/96297"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/noortrends.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=111893"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/noortrends.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=111893"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/noortrends.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=111893"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}