Gold and silver prices are modestlylower in early-afternoon U.S. trading Tuesday. The safe-havenmetals are being pressured by upbeat trader and investor attitudes early thisweek. Still, the bulls can argue the price weakness in both metals is just anormal corrective pullback following recent gains that pushed gold to asix-month high and silver to a five-month high late last week. February goldfutures were last down $2.40 an ounce at $1,287.50. March Comexsilver was down $0.046 at $15.71 an ounce.

World stock markets are being boosted this week onperceived progress on U.S.-China trade talks presently taking place in Beijingand ideas of a more dovish Federal Reserve monetary policy in 2019.

The U.S. government shutdown is into its thirdweek, but the matter is garnering less attention from the marketplaceand is not a front-burner issue. President Trump will address U.S. citizens ina speech on a U.S. southern border wall Tuesday evening.

The key outside markets today see the U.S. dollarindex higher on a corrective bounce after hitting a two-month low onMonday. Such was also mildly negative for the precious metals prices today. TheUSDX has been trending sideways to lower on the daily chart for three weeks.Meantime, Nymex crude oilprices are higher and trading around $49.50 a barrel. There are chart clues theoil market has bottomed out, but the bulls still have heavy lifting to do tosuggest a price uptrend can be sustained.

Focus is turning to Wednesday’s Federal ReserveFOMC minutes report, out early in the afternoon. These reports have beenmarkets-movers in the recent past.