Gold Prices Climb as Fed Keeps Interest Rates At Record Lows

From Chris Mullen at GoldSeek.com...

Gold Prices fell $4 to $1541.00 at about 6:30am EST on Wednesday, but then rose to as high as $1558.09 by late morning in New York and ended with a gain of 0.48%.  

Silver Prices fell to $35.878 in London, but it then climbed to as high as $36.763 in New York and ended with a gain of 0.8%.

Euro Gold Prices climbed to about €1078. 

Gold Mining and silver equities rose about 2% by midmorning before they fell back off a bit in the last couple of hours of trade, but they still ended with about 1% gains.

Platinum gained $3.25 to $1749, and copper remained at about $4.09.

Oil remained higher after the Energy Information Administration reported that crude inventories fell 1.7 million barrels, gasoline inventories fell 500,000 barrels, and distillates rose 1.2 million barrels.

The US Dollar rose and US Treasuries fell in late trade in reaction to Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke's press conference that ultimately sent the Dow, Nasdaq, and S&P modestly lower.

The Federal Reserve acknowledged Wednesday that the economy is growing more slowly than it expected. But it said it will complete its $600 billion Treasury bond buying program by June 30 and announced no further efforts to boost the economy.

Ending a two-day meeting, the Fed repeated a pledge to keep interest rates at record lows near zero for "an extended period", a promise it's made for more than two years.

Among the big names making news in the market on Wednesday were Apple, FedEx, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, Yahoo, Adobe, Ford, and Transocean.

Thursday at 8:30am EST brings Initial Jobless Claims for 6/18 expected at 413,000 and at 10am is the New Home Sales report for May expected at 305,000.

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