Gold Holds Firm as Ukraine Concerns, Inflation Counter Interest Rate Hike
Last week, the Federal Reserve released the minutes of its meeting held in March. The minutes revealed that the U.S. Central Bank would be increasing interest rates by 25 basis points. The breaking of this news didn’t cause ripples in the gold markets for a number of reasons. First, markets had been expecting the interest rate to be increased by 50 basis points, and the actual increase fell short of that anticipation. This explains why the price of gold hardly lost any ground in the wake of the rate hike announcement. Under normal circumstances, an increase in interest rates reduces…