Gold weathered the Federal Reserve's 7th rate hike of this cycle this week. Gold-futures speculators and to a lesser extent gold investors have long feared Fed rate hikes, selling ahead of them. Higher rates are viewed as the nemesis of zero-yielding gold. But contrary to this popular belief, past Fed rate hikes have proven very bullish for gold. This latest hike once again leaves gold set up for a major rally in coming months.
The Fed's Federal Open Market Committee meets 8 times per year to make monetary-policy decisions. These can really impact the financial markets, and thus are closely watched by gold-futures speculators. These elite traders wield wildly-outsized influence on short-term gold price action due to the truly extreme leverage inherent in gold-futures trading. What they do before and after FOMC decisions really impacts gold.
This week's latest Fed rate hike was universally expected. Trading in the federal-funds-futures market effectively implies rate-hike odds. Way back in mid-April they shot up to 100% for this week's meeting, then stayed there for 5 weeks. In the last several weeks they averaged 91%. So everyone knew another Fed rate hike was coming. That's typical, as the FOMC doesn't want to surprise the markets and ignite selloffs.
The big unknown going into the every-other FOMC meetings followed by press conferences from the Fed chairman is the future rate-hike outlooks. Top FOMC officials' individual federal-funds-rate outlooks are summarized in a chart traders call the "dot plot". That was hawkish this week, with 2018's total expected rate hikes climbing from 3 to 4. More near-term rate hikes projected have really hammered gold in the past.
But on this week's Fed Day gold didn't plunge despite these hawkish dots and 7th rate hike of this cycle....