Business

In perhaps the least anticipated FOMC statement in months - with expectations of no rate-change and normalization on path - all eyes were on inflation/growth wording.

As traders commemorated the 30th anniversary of Black Monday, amid the rising uncertainty of US tax reform, European sedition, MidEast tensions, ongoing Asian sabre-rattling, and global monetary policy hawkishness, US equity markets experienced the quietest month in their history.

Despite historically being the most volatile month of the year...

The CBOE Volatility Index recorded the lowest monthly average in its history, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

As we previewed earlier this morning, today's FOMC announcement will most likely be a snooze-fest, with consensus expecting the Fed to leave its target range for the federal funds rate unchanged at 1.00-1.25% as it continues to evaluate to what degree recent disinflation is temporary or persistent.

Gold prices are rallying, but retail gold dealers and shops are struggling to survive.

As The Wall Street Journal reports, businesses that sell gold coins and other products made from the precious metal usually thrive during years like 2017.

Gold futures have gained more than 10%, boosted by a weaker dollar and by big investors looking for a haven during recent geopolitical tensions surrounding North Korea and Iran.

Earlier this year we wrote about a series of court documents that were unsealed and seemingly revealed a startling effort on the part of both Monsanto and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to work in concert to kill and/or discredit independent, albeit inconvenient, cancer research conducted by the World Health Organization's International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) related to their key herbicidal product, RoundUp.  The efforts to kill the research came even as Monsanto's own lead toxicologist, Donna Farmer, admitted that she "cannot say that Round