As we begin the final trading day of August and traders begin to focus ahead to the Friday U.S. non-Farm Payroll report gold traders are finding gold continue to remain in the same trading range for the past 4 sessions.
Gold (GLD, quote) traders and traders alike are looking to the NFP report for hints to how the Fed will react at September’s meeting.
Will the Fed finally hike? That was the question on everyone’s mind during Friday’s Stanley Fischer, Federal Reserve Vice Chairman speech. He suggested that Fed has left the “door” open for the possibly of a rate hike at the September 16-17 meeting.
As with many of the speeches from the Fed you had to sift through the comments to attempt to determine what is really be said. My take was the comment surrounding a rate hike in September was “pretty strong” although he went on to say it was too soon to say.
If the Fed is truly going to be data dependent then Friday’s NFP will be a key factor in the Fed’s decision.
Right now economists consistent is for NFP will have increased to 220k new jobs an increase of 5k from July. Along with a .01 increase to 5.3% in the unemployment rate.