W/C 17th Mar - To cut or not to cut? That is the 0.25-0.50% question!

What the Fed does (or does NOT do) this week will likely have a major impact on the direction of the economy moving forwards

As usual, my apologies if any data and/or information has changed as a result of Asian/early European trading.

The US Government avoided a shutdown on Friday. This could be construed as being either good or bad but that depends on your political view. Friday 14th March 2025 saw an ok bounce in US Indices - no tariff news, no war news, no shutdown and various technical data all helped. Funny how that works!

I’m on record saying that we will get a blow off top first before a major recession will it. Whilst I’m not overly excited at the bounce on Friday, this could bode well for the week ahead!

Back to tariffs and this very useful article by

Portfolio Armor

shows how the tariff situation could be resolved quickly, swiftly and with the perception that everyone comes out on top.

The Fed

The biggest coming factor this week will be the Fed meeting on 18th - 19th March. At the time of writing, it will be highly unlikely that the Fed cuts rates and that move will likely happen in the May meeting.

That being said, if they do cut rates this week then that would provide fresh impetus into the markets and give them a reason to properly rebound.

My personal opinion is that the Fed should not be cutting rates at all yet if they decide to do so then they will do so in May and not this week. Let’s see what happens.

Podcast

Podcasts being recorded this week include talking all things Gold and macroeconomics with

Egon von Greyerz

. Looking at Paraguay as a potentially underrated Plan B destination and also (hopefully) with

Frank Wright

- where we will go more in depth into what is happening in the UK at the moment and the likely path ahead.

Gold

We can see the minute that Gold broke $3,000 USD. It certainly a reason for gold bugs to celebrate. It could move much higher from here and it will be interesting to see how the precious metals react to the Fed decision this coming week.

Basel III regulations will be implemented in the USA on 1st July 2025 and

VBL

/

GoldFix

does a superb job of explaining this in THIS ARTICLE.

Silver

Silver touched $34 on Friday before turning down. There are a lot of potential delivery issues out there at the moment. Silver will ultimately outperform gold in this precious metals bull market.

Let’s have a look at HYG, the US Indices and the DXY…….