Though the first day of this week is set to be particularly quiet simply because the United States is celebrating the Columbus Day holiday, precious metals are moving ever so slightly upward as the US Dollar continues to move the opposite direction. The early parts of this week are bound to be slow, but as the week moves on, I expect we will see a bit more action due to the release of some economic data.

Last wee brought with it additional poor economic data from the European Union, and investors are just as perplexed as ever with regard to what the European Central Bank plans on doing in order to stem deflationary pressures and give the EU economy as a whole the impetus to begin showing signs of growth. At present, the EU and its assortment of economies are doing particularly poorly and have been for quite some time now.

FOMC Minutes Mostly Disappoint Marketplace

The biggest data point of last week came on Wednesday in the form of the latest minutes from the FOMC’s September meeting. While, as always, the market was expecting to hear more information regarding interest rate hikes in the United States, the minutes did not provide much of that.

With that said, however, the marketplace digested the minutes as meaning that the Fed will hold off, for some time, on the raising of interest rates in the United States. Citing slow economic growth in places like Europe and Asia, the FOMC simply does not feel comfortable being in a rush to raise rates. Now, instead of the expected June or July of 2015 dates for interest rate hikes, the marketplace is slowly but surely coming to terms with the “fact” that rates may not be raised until this time next year. As a result, the precious metals market has benefited greatly and is on its way to posting a fourth consecutive positive day of trading.

Increased safe-haven demand coupled with very low prices has drawn a lot of people to precious metals over the past few days. As this week plays out, it will be interesting to see if gold and silver can continue adding value or if they will top out sometime soon.