Gold advanced by 0.15% after the release of the Fed minutes

Gold finished higher following the release of the minutes from Fed’s meeting for the month on June which suggested that policy makers could not reach a consensus as to the monetary steps needed to boost the American economy.

Gold futures for August delivery added as much as $2.50 to their value and closed at $1,221.70 an ounce. Spot gold edged up more than 0.15 percent to trade at $1,225.41 an ounce following its decline by 0.21 percent before the Fed’s minutes were released.

The Fed sketched out a deal to cut its $4.5 trillion balance sheet of bond holdings since the balance sheet has been continuously increasing lately. However, policy makers could not come up with specific timetable for this move.

The Majority of U.S. stocks finished higher with Nasdaq and S&P climbing by 0.7% and 0.2% respectively

Most of the stocks in Wall Street finished Wednesday’s session in the positive territory after technology stocks had been falling for three days in a row. Technology companies have contributed to most of the gains. Nevertheless, it should be borne in mind that they did not perform well this past month with drops of about 5 percent.

The Nasdaq composite rose by 0.67 percent or 40.80 points to end at 6,150.86. Most gains were recorded by Amazon, Netflix, Facebook, Alphabet and Apple.

The S&P 500 also climbed by 0.2 percent or 3.53 points to close at 2,432.52.

In contrast, the Dow Jones went slightly lower by 0.01 percent or 1.10 points to finish at 21,478.17, with Nike and IBM as the leading decliners.