Gold and silver suffered hefty losses for the second consecutive week as the only major news stories of the week ended up working against precious metals. First was the more bearish than expected FOMC minutes which were quickly followed by a disappointing preliminary manufacturing report out of China.

Despite the fact that next week will be a slow one due to Americans gearing up for the Thanksgiving day holiday, you can expect the speculation with regard to the future of monetary policy in the US to rage on.

FOMC Minutes

The main piece of information on every investor’s mind this week was the release of the latest Federal Open Market Committee minutes. These minutes are of particular interest to investors simply due to the fact that the marketplace has been divided with regard to when people think Quantitative Easing will begin to be tapered by the Federal Reserve. While there was a strong contingent who believed that Quantitative Easing would not be touched until sometime in the latter stages of 2014, there were also plenty of investors and market experts who were confident that QE would be wound down sometime in the near future.

The latter of those two sides got their way this week as the FOMC minutes showed a committee who was mostly in favor of a more immediate tapering of QE. Not only that, but many members of the FOMC also agreed that the rate of US economic growth has been and continues to be “moderate.” Though the minutes were indicative of a Fed who wants to see QE tapered sometime soon, the minutes offered no concrete timetable for when QE would be wound down. Despite this, gold and silver almost immediately sunk to their lowest points of the entire five day session. Now, with the December FOMC meeting looming, investors will more than likely ramp up the monetary policy talk. Next week will be a slow one due to Americans focusing on the Thanksgiving day holiday, but the speculation with regard to QE will undoubtedly be continued.