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1. Gold has traded between $1,309 and $1,316 so far today, ahead of a Fed policy statement and a Jerome Powell news conference…as of 7:00 am Pacific, bullion is off $2 an ounce at $1,309 (nearest resistance on the short-term chart is $1,313)…Silver, attempting to conquer key resistance at $15.75, has added 9 cents to $15.90…base metals continue to climb, led by Nickel which has jumped another 14 cents to $5.53 (see below)…Copper is 6 cents higher at $2.77 while Zinc has gained another 2 pennies to $1.22…Crude Oil is up 78 cents at $54.09 while the U.S. Dollar Index has firmed one-tenth of a point to 95.93…a slew of market-moving events are due today and tomorrow including the Fed, earnings results from major companies (Facebook, Microsoft, Tesla, General Electric and Amazon), and U.S.-China trade talks in Washington…private U.S. payrolls grew at a much faster pace than expected in January as the labor market shrugged off the longest U.S. partial government shutdown in history, according to data released this morning by ADP and Moody’s Analytics…companies added 213,000 jobs this month, the data show…economists polled by Refinitiv expected payrolls to grow by only 178,000…“The job market weathered the government shutdown well.  Despite the severe disruptions, businesses continued to add aggressively to their payrolls,” stated Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics…“As long as businesses hire strongly the economic expansion will continue”…

2. Is the Federal Reserve about to embark on a monetary policy ‘U-Turn’?…we’ll find out later this morning when the FOMC concludes its 2-day meeting with a policy statement at 11:00 am Pacific followed by a Jerome Powell news conference starting 30 minutes later…at the very least, the Fed will almost certainly “water down” the language from its December statement in which it stated “some further” rate increases would be warranted this year…such a move could pave the way for a possibly extended pause in monetary tightening, buying the Fed time to gauge global risks to U.S. economic growth…meanwhile, inflation in the U.S. remains very much in check, especially in a lower Oil price environment…what many traders/investors will be keying in on today is how the Fed handles the growing spotlight on its practice of running off up to $50 billion in Treasury bonds and mortgage-backed securities from its balance sheet each month…a report last Friday in The Wall Street Journal that the Fed is considering slowing down its “quantitative tightening” drove equity and commodity markets higher, with Gold in particular making a robust move…that sets up the possibility for a disappointment today…

3. Nickel is at a 3-month high as investors weigh the potential impact of last week’s Iron Ore tailings dam disaster on Vale’s Nickel assets…Vale Chief Executive Fabio Schvartsman vowed today to take up to 10% of its Iron Ore output offline to decommission 10 dams similar to the one that burst last Friday in the Brazilian town of Brumadinho, leaving hundreds missing and presumed dead…Chinese Iron Ore futures have surged, and shares of mining rivals BHP Group, Rio Tinto and Fortescue Metals Group lifted Australia’s benchmark metals and mining index to its best day in 2 years…the dramatic move by Vale was an effort to pre-empt tough questions about its safety record, as the Friday disaster at the Corrego do Feijao mine – where the death toll has reached at least 84 people – came just over 3 years after a similar dam burst at the nearby Samarco mine it co-owns with BHP…after landing near strong technical support at more than a 2-year low around $4.80 on January 2, Nickel has rallied nearly 20% and is currently 2019’s best performing metal…

4. On top of being bullish on Gold prices this year, Goldman Sachs’ favorite commodity play at the moment is “long Gold“…Jeffrey Currie, global head of commodities research at Goldman Sachs, has made some big calls on Gold in recent years and now says the yellow metal has the potential to hit $1,450…his reasons for such an optimistic outlook on bullion this year include recession fears, Gold’s wealth-effect, and central bank buying…“We believe the world is A-ok right now.  However, recessionary fears remain high and that is increasing the physical demand for Gold.  Wealth-effect is better for Gold, and finally central banks are buying,” Currie said…in terms of which banks are buying, Currie highlighted that India bought 70 tonnes last year and China started re-entering the market…“One hundred tonnes of central bank buying gets you to $1,425 alone.  Our target is $1,450,” he concluded…

5. Official-sector Gold purchases during the 4th quarter came to a whopping 196 tonnes, according to a GFMS report, pushing total estimated net purchases for 2018 to 571 tonnes…“A shift in central-bank behavior, in which further EM (emerging-market) countries are seeking to build their Gold reserves, has resulted in some countries reporting their first transaction in 2018 since the turn of the century,” GFMS said…“China, which has not reported a change in its Gold holdings since October 2016, reported for the first time in December a 10-tonne increase in its holdings, with weakness in the Asian equity market driven by trade tensions with the U.S. a key influencer”…meanwhile, GFMS reported that global mine output increased by 27.7 tonnes, or by 1.2% year-on-year, during the first 9 months of 2018…Indonesian output surged 32.4%, helped by higher grades, while Australian production was up 8.3% and Canada’s climbed 9.6%…the largest decreases were posted in China, South Africa and the United States, with a combined fall of 56.7 tonnes…average all-in sustaining costs increased 4.5% year-on-year to $924 (U.S.) an ounce…

6. The Dow is up 222 points through the first 30 minutes of trading…Boeing surged as the company reported year-end results that smashed Wall Street’s expectations, with record revenue and airplane deliveries driving the blow-out…Boeing reported a massive 4th-quarter earnings result of an adjusted $5.48 a share, beating analyst expectations by 91 cents…revenue was also strong at $28.3 billion – over a billion more than analysts expected…Apple is higher after reporting a quarterly profit that barely beat estimates…by the end of this week, more than 100 S&P 500 companies will have released their quarterly results…so far, 71% of companies that have reported have surpassed earnings expectations, according to FactSet data…the TSX is off 29 points as of 7:00 am Pacific while the Venture is flat at 615…Torino Power Solutions (TPS, CSE) has announced it is targeting a major potential new market – the Asia-Pacific region – for its Power Line Monitoring (PLM) System through a relationship with Maser Technology Group, a leading Chinese-based technology company…Rav Mlait, CEO of Torino, commented, “The fact our PLM system has grabbed the attention of a major Canadian utility is just the beginning of what we envision as a large potential global market for this unique technology.  We look forward to developing a strong win-win relationship with Maser“…

7. Big hit: Ivanhoe Mines (IVN, TSX) announced this morning that exploration hole DD1450 drilled at the Kamoa North prospect area, on the 397-sq. km Kamoa-Kakula mining licence in the Congo, has intersected 13.05% Copper over 22.3 m (true thickness), at a 2% Copper cut-off grade, in a remarkably-thick, flat-lying, ultra-high-grade deposit beginning at a depth of only 190 m below surface…drill hole DD1450 includes multiple 1-m intersections with Copper grades higher than 20%, including a 40%-Copper intercept, and is further evidence of the emergence of Kamoa North as a prospective new, shallow mining area…the drill hole was collared approximately 18 km north of the Kamoa-Kakula Project’s planned initial mine at the Kakula deposit, and approximately 8 km north of Kamoa’s Kansoko mine development…”DD1450 exceeds anything previously encountered in all of our years of delineating resources on the project,” stated CEO Robert Friedland…“The flat-lying, 10% Copper intersection in hole DD1450 is almost 30 m, or 100 feet, thick – essentially equivalent to a 10-storey building – and the high-grade Copper is less than 200 m below surface”…too bad such a rich hit wasn’t in a friendlier jurisdiction…

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