BullMarketRun.com

Gold has traded between $1,167 and $1,179 so far today…as of 10:30 am Pacific, bullion is up $4 an ounce at $1,176…Silver, at $16.73, has gained 25 cents…Copper is off slightly at $2.62…Nickel, the metal leader of the day, has jumped 11 cents to $5.14…Crude Oil has added 22 cents to $51.28 while the U.S. Dollar Index has retreated one quarter of a point to 100.58…

The Fed is widely expected to hike interest rates at its next policy meeting on December 13–14…Ned Naylor-Leyland, fund manager at Old Mutual Gold and Silver Fund, made this wise observation on CNBC’s “Squawk Box”:  “Right now, people are expecting, for some reason, more rate hikes than inflation even though (Fed Chair Janet) Yellen has explicitly said that the pace of rate hikes will undershoot inflation.  So what the central banks are telling is that you are continuing to lose purchasing power holding cash, which is good for Gold, but the market has decided otherwise short-term and is running away with this idea that you are going to accumulate purchasing power holding cash.”

Markets are also not yet focused on the likely worsening trend of U.S. budget deficits and debt, a situation that should certainly come into play by January…historically there has been a close correlation between the Gold price and the trend in U.S. budget deficits…

Today’s U.S. jobs report did nothing to lessen the near-certainty of a Fed rate hike in less than 2 weeks…employers hired at a steady clip in November while the unemployment rate fell to the lowest level in 9 years, though of course that’s not the complete jobs picture…non-farm payrolls rose by a seasonally adjusted 178,000 in November from the prior month, in line with expectations, while average hourly earnings for private sector workers declined 3 cents from October…earnings were up 2.5% from a year earlier, a small step down from October’s 2.8% which was the strongest annual wage growth since June 2009…

Italy’s much anticipated referendum on Sunday – will it impact Gold? – kicks off a momentous electoral year in where populist parties are expected to do well…on the same day as the Italian vote, Austrians go to the polls to elect a new president, in a race that could install the country’s first right-leaning populist head of state since World War II…support for anti-establishment parties is surging in France and Germany, too, both of which have elections next year…

Crude Oil Update

New support could be forming at the $50 level in Crude Oil following Wednesday’s OPEC agreement, and that’s consistent with the cartel’s desire to see a higher trading range…markets, however, will be carefully monitoring the implementation and impact of the group’s first production agreement since 2008…

Crude prices eased off overnight but reversed around $50 and are now back above $51…technically, WTI is on the cusp of a breakout above the “neckline” after an extended inverted head-and-shoulders pattern this year…

OPEC, which accounts for a third of global Oil supply, says it will reduce production starting in January by 1.2 million barrels per day, or over 3%, to 32.5 million bpd…Russia also agreed to cut output by 300,000 bpd and is set to meet with OPEC a week from today along with some other non-OPEC producers…Russia reported today that its output in November rose slightly to 11.2 million bpd, a post-Soviet high…

The market focus now shifts to the implementation and impact of OPEC’s first production agreement since 2008…

Russia said on Friday that its output in November rose slightly to 11.21 million barrels per day, a post-Soviet high…

In Today’s Morning Musings…

1. What Probe Metals (PRB, TSX-V) is eyeing at Val d’Or East…

2. Canadian Zeolite’s (CNZ, TSX-V) secret sauce…

3. A busy week for Canopy Growth (CGC, TSX)…

4. Daniel’s Den – a bottom in Gold stocks?…

Plus more…click here to read the rest of today’s Morning Musings and all BMR exclusive content, through a risk-free Pro, Gold or Basic package, or login with your username and password…