(Kitco News) - Gold prices are trading at session highs this morning after the latest data showed the U.S. economy grew above expectations, while inflation came in cooler than the consensus.
The U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) announced on Thursday that the advance reading of fourth-quarter Gross Domestic Product showed that the economy expanded by 3.3%, well above economists’ expectations of 2.0%, but below the final Q3 estimate of 4.9%.
The gold market rallied following the GDP data and is trading near session highs. Spot gold last traded at $2,019.59, up 0.27% on the day.
The BEA's featured measure of inflation, the price index for gross domestic purchases, came in at 1.5%, below the consensus of 2.3%. The price index for personal consumption expenditures (PCE) was 1.7%.
Excluding food and energy, the core PCE price index was 2.0%, in line with the consensus and the same as the third-quarter print.
"Although GDP growth came in hotter than expect in the fourth quarter, underlying inflation continued to slow, with annualised core PCE inflation running at the 2% target in the fourth quarter," wrote analysts at Capital Economics. "The upshot is that an early spring rate cut by the Fed is still the most likely outcome."
The analysts cautioned that the GDP report wasn’t all good news for the U.S. economy.
"The beat relative to consensus was partly because inventories ended up being a slight positive for overall GDP growth when, after the big positive contribution in the third quarter, we were expecting a reversal last quarter," they wrote. "Net exports also added 0.4% points to GDP growth, as exports increased by a bigger-than-expected 6.3%. The latter was due to a slightly-suspicious looking 9.5% increase in services exports. The upshot is that we still expect GDP growth to slow markedly to less than 1% annualised in the first quarter."
