The Russia-Ukraine Conflict: Involvement of Europe
Despite having a previous agreement on granting the security guarantee, last night, Russian President Putin rejected the idea of having Europe’s aid, stating that this guarantee should only involve one party.
After the rejection, the EU is also considering introducing secondary sanctions, targeting Russia’s oil and gas, albeit with some limitations. Therefore, they have urged the US to impose tighter and higher tariffs on Russia to pressure it to end the conflict as early as possible. For now, the US has already imposed 50% on India, although Navarro also stated that “India can receive a 25% discount if it halts purchases of Russian oil.”
Israel-Gaza: The fight still goes on with the current death count total of 51 Palestinians since dawn on Wednesday. Despite an effort to end the war in Gaza, Israel has still pushed through plans to seize Gaza City while signaling that it has no plan to accept the ceasefire for now. Even in the meeting with the White House, some reports cited the uncertainty of whether the Israelis would attend this meeting or not.
So, to conclude, uncertainty in the war conflict and the potential of having tariffs sparked the gold price last night while leaving some path for the Federal Reserve’s factor to cause further movement in the near term.
***The gold now started to shift the momentum in early Thursday as the Market is now eyed for the GDP data and PCE data tonight.***
The Federal Reserve Last Night
The Federal Reserve’s William expects to see a further slowing economy (not stalling the economy), despite having the solid labor market conditions and the “modestly restrictive” stance on policy. This refers to how the FED will lower the interest rate but still have somewhat “restrictive going forward,” although we are still unsure what the actual event will be.
