Video News/This Week In Focus

(Kitco News) - The argument in markets is no longer whether the Federal Reserve cuts rates but whether it raises them, and three guests told Kitco News anchor Jeremy Szafron in separate interviews that the relationships long used to explain gold have stopped holding. Former St. Louis Fed president James Bullard, who led the bank from 2008 to 2023, put the rate-setting committee as split roughly 10 to nine, said foreign central banks have been diversifying out of Treasuries and into gold, and argued the United States should mark its gold reserves to market rather than carry them at a statutory $42.22 an ounce. Phil Streible of Blue Line Futures said a rate hike would be a policy mistake, arguing the current inflation is supply-driven and cannot be fixed by a tool designed to curb demand. Streible also said silver's structural deficit cannot be resolved quickly because roughly 70% of supply comes as a byproduct of copper, lead and zinc. John Feneck of Feneck Consulting pointed to tungsten, a metal with no futures market that he said has run from about $920 to more than $2,800 a tonne this year, and warned of a rotation out of AI and technology stocks before March. Gold came off its best month since January, up more than 10%, though it remains roughly a fifth below the record it set at the end of that month.