The spot values of gold and silver have not moved all that much today, but have been heading downwards the entire time. Being that the Christmas holiday falls this week on Thursday, you can expect a generally quiet market atmosphere through this abbreviated week. There isn’t all that much economic data set to be made public, but what data is presented will be of the utmost importance to investors who may be trying to make a few more moves before we break and head into the new year.

Last week was an important 5-day trading session, but it failed to produce the results investors were so anxious to see. During the middle parts of last week, the Federal Open Market Committee of the United States convened for their monthly policy meeting. Of course, as you probably know very well by this point, the market is lying in wait for the FOMC to make a decision about when they will raise interest rates. Last week was when investors expected to be given a solid timeline with regard to when interest rates would be raised, but such did not prove to be the case.

Instead, Janet Yellen remained quite dovish during her post-meeting comments, reiterating that there is still “considerable time” until interest rates in the US are raised. This more dovish news afforded global equity markets enough room to move forward and recover from recent losses.

Russia Building Up Gold Reserves

Russia and its failing economy have been in the news a lot during recent weeks, and this week is already proving to be bringing about much of the same. Just today, a report published indicated that Russia, though struggling economically, is actually building up its precious metals reserves.

The report said that for the past 8 months, Russia has been continually adding to its gold stockpiles as a means of mitigating the negative impact of the falling ruble. As of December 1st, the report went on to say, Russia’s gold stockpiles had risen from 37.6 million ounces to more than 38 million ounces. So long as the ruble continues to fall in value, Russia will have to do something to keep the company afloat economically. It will be interesting to see, over the course of the coming months, if Russia’s commitment to gold does anything in the way of boosting its economic standing, or if it will continue to be a move that does more in the way of limiting the negative effect felt by such sluggish economic conditions.

As we look ahead to the rest of the week, investors the world over will continue to occupy themselves with the progress, or lack thereof, of equity markets from around the world. European and US stocks have been on the up and up for the last few days and it will be interesting to see if they can continue that trend through this shortened week. Of course, as equities do well and crude oil continues to slump, both gold and silver are feeling the downward pull.