From Reader Kyle:

By Mike Gleason

Precious metals markets enter November’s trading with bulls eying a potential year-end rally.

Gold and silver prices did manage to post gains on Wednesday and Thursday after the Federal Reserve announced a quarter point rate cut. But the Fed followed up its move with language suggesting interest rate policy is now on pause.

News Anchor #1: The Federal Reserve cut the benchmark rate by a quarter of a percentage point. It’s now at 1.5% to 1.75%. The rate cuts come on a global slowdown; they say. Also muted inflation. Now the Fed does signal in this statement a pause for future rate cuts. The Federal Reserve statement changes the words from “act as appropriate” to “assess.”

News Anchor #2: Fed Chairman Jerome Powell signaled that the rate-cutting exercise is likely over for now.

Jerome Powell: We think that the current stance of policy is likely to remain appropriate, likely to remain appropriate, as long as incoming information about the economy is broadly consistent with our outlook, which is a positive one of moderate economic growth, strong labor market and inflation moving close to 2%.

Fed chairman Jerome Powell may say the current Fed funds rate is “likely to remain appropriate,” but Fed officials aren’t necessarily the most reliable forecasters of their own policy moves.

This time last year, they certainly weren’t expecting to be delivering rate cuts and bailing out the repo market with hundreds of billions of dollars in liquidity injections.

In fact, Fed policymakers were giving guidance that 3 to 4 more rate increases were planned. Instead, they have done the opposite. They just cut rates for a third time in 2019.

The Fed could end up orchestrating more unplanned interventions in the months ahead. With so much uncertainty in the economy, in U.S. politics, and in geopolitics, investors should brace for some surprises and potential black swan events that nobody sees coming.

Gold is historically and remains a premier asset to hold during uncertain times.

Global demand for physical precious metals is on the rise this year from a number of different sources. It’s not making major headlines in the United States, but robust gold buying from the Far East including China and Russia is slowly changing the dynamics for precious metals markets.