Next Week Macro Outlook: Federal Reserve Minutes May Signal Key Rate Cut Next Year

Although last week coincided with the Christmas holiday and global markets traded lightly overall, the precious metals sector experienced a powerful end-of-year rally. Safe-haven demand and rate cut expectations resonated, pushing gold, silver, and platinum prices to new historical highs, with the year-end rally showing a clear acceleration.

Among them, spot gold repeatedly hit new highs, approaching $4,550 per ounce on Friday, with a total annual increase of over 70%; silver performed even more aggressively, breaking through key integer levels consecutively, reaching a high of $79 per ounce on Friday, with a single-day increase of over 10%, and market sentiment extremely euphoric.

Key macro events next week:
- Wednesday 03:00: Federal Reserve releases the minutes of the monetary policy meeting, where the market will look for clues about the rate cut path and policy shift in 2026;
- Wednesday 21:30: US initial jobless claims for the week ending December 27, a high-frequency indicator of employment resilience, which may influence short-term interest rate expectations;
- Friday 22:45: US December S&P Global Manufacturing PMI final reading, to verify marginal changes in economic activity.

Overall, rate cut expectations, safe-haven funds, and year-end capital allocation needs will remain the core variables influencing global markets next week, with volatility likely to significantly increase around the release of key data and minutes.