Silver slips below $15 as dollar rises with Fed meeting in focus

Silver futures tilted lower in a tight range during the Asian session as the dollar index rose for the sixth consecutive session, showing the longest daily gains rally in four months, according to the inverse relationship between them, after the United States and China resumed talks to discuss trade relations and amid the anticipation of the outcome of the FOMC meeting and the Federal Reserve Governor Jerome Powell's press conference later today.

As of 05:30 GMT, silver futures futures (July delivery) fell 0.07% to currently trade at $14.99 per ounce from the opening of $15.00, with the US dollar index rising 0.01% to 97.65 compared to the opening at 97.64. .

Trump said through his Twitter account "We will have an extended meeting next week in the G20 in Japan," he said. "Our teams will talk before our meeting," Which boosted the hopes of investors about a resolution to the trade disputes between the world's two largest economists to end the trade war between them.

In another context, we also followed yesterday the ECB Governor Mario Draghi saying that the central bank's monetary policy makers is ready to adopt further stimulus if necessary, thus enhancing the chances for the ECB to expand monetary policy by next July's meeting In the shadow of inflationary pressures in the euro area, to stimulate the cycle of risk appetite in the markets.

In contrast, US President Trump commented, "Mario Draghi has just announced that more stimulus will come, which has led to the euro immediately falling against the dollar, making it unfairly easy for them to compete against the United States, as the have done for years, along with China and others,"  amid the proceedings of the Federal Open Market Committee meeting on June 18-19 in Washington.

Investors are anticipating the FOMC meeting decision, where interest rates are expected to remain between 2.25% and 2.50%, as markets look for a reveal of the committee forecasts for growth, inflation and unemployment as well as the future interest rates for the next three years ahead of Fed Chairman Jerome Powell's upcoming press conference later in the day.

We would like to point out that US Federal Reserve Governor Paul Powell recently expressed his belief that the Fed does not know how and when trade tensions will be resolved, considering that the Federal Commission takes inflationary pressures impacts seriously for an extended period which may affect the committee's inflation forecasts later, which boosted prospects that the Federal Reserve will abandon its policy of patience and reduce interest on federal funds in the coming period.

The Russian Ministry of Finance reported last month that the production of Russia of silver (the fourth largest producer of silver in the world) during the first three months of the year 2019 fell to 223.28 metric tons compared to 250.76 in the same period last year 2018, while more than 60% Of global demand for silver comes from the industrial sector, which is negatively affected by the trade protectionism pursued by the US administration and its trade war with China.