Gold futures eked their way up across international markets, this week, to peak at heights not seen since about a month ago.
Specifically, spot gold saw a bump of 0.5%, to $1,984.58 per ounce. This helped to shore up US gold futures, for June, by 0.7%, with a value of $1,987.70. And, this is all in contrast to stagnant activity from Bitcoin and Ethereum, which traded below $40,000 and $3,000, respectively. These are down 5% and 8% just on this past week, alone, and comes after highs that the crypto market had not seen realized since January.
Early Monday morning, the Multi-Commodity Exchange (MCX) noted that gold contracts are up 0.8 percent. Silver appears to be faring a little better, jumping nearly twice as much—by 1.43 percent.
Obviously, concerns about inflation have tempered confidence across the economy, but with data showing that inflation is even higher than had been expected, gold futures have climbed to $1980 per ounce (on Comex). Of course, inflation is up within many major nations, but inflation in the United States is the highest it has been in four decades. Combined with balance sheet cuts and rapid interest rate hikes, analysts are certainly concerned that inflation could continue to strain households and investors alike.
And again, the issue is not isolated to the US economy. For example, the World Bank cut its global forecast from 4.1% to 3.2% for the year. The institution cites the Russia-Ukraine conflict as a major contributor to the financial stress. World Bank president David Malpass also made sure to point out that upwards of 60 percent of low-income countries are already in notable debt or at extremely high risk of it. Goldman Sachs has seems to share this opinion as well, having recently expressed concern of a looming recession in the United States.
Should a recession come, the Federal Reserve—along with global central banks—will feel even more pressure to combat inflation. Some analysts suggest this will likely result in raising rates by as much as 4 to 6%. Still, that may help assuage some concerns nationally, but it will not likely encourage normalization across the international market.
