After moving upward for the past week or more, precious metals spot values are trading slightly lower on Wednesday as a result of profit-taking after recent gains. A quiet marketplace today has led investors who have made massive gains over the past 7 days or so to cash in on them by selling off now higher-valued gold and silver.
From an economic standpoint, there have been a number of reports made public, but the overwhelming majority have been a non-factor for the precious metals market. Instead, worries with regard to the EU economy and the Iraqi civil war are taking up the headlines and drawing a lot of investor attention away from any and all economic developments. After the FOMC meeting last week concluded with Janet Yellen holding fast to her belief that interest rates should remain low for the time being, investors flocked to precious metals and abandoned the riskier assets they have accrued over the past month or two.
Civil War In Iraq Intensifies As US Military Advisers Touch Down
The first US military advisers recently landed in Baghdad, though it is still unclear how their limited numbers are going to do much of anything when it comes to fighting of the ISIS rebels. ISIS has been seen advancing further southward into the depths of Iraq and have since fanned out as to make pinpointing their exact locations a near impossibility.
Safe-haven demand for gold and silver has been on the rise because of the violence and is looking more and more like it will stay elevated as no one has yet come up with a viable solution. Apart from the United States, very few other countries are willing to help out Iraq and the country is falling city by city. If something is not done quickly, ISIS will have taken over majority control of the country before too long. The US has since called upon Middle Eastern regional powers Iran and Turkey to help their Iraqi neighbors, but so far those calls have fallen upon deaf ears.
With few other major geopolitical developments to pay attention to, investors will continue to pick apart and mull over the situation in Iraq. What’s more, tensions are still high in Ukraine and the situation in that part of the world is also far from resolved. The country is now on the verge of bankruptcy and is unable to pay gas bills, something that has the rest of the world and Europe worrying.