Gold prices are nearsteady in early-afternoon U.S. trading Wednesday, and have recovered mild earlylosses as the U.S. dollarindex has softened and is trading near its daily low at midday. U.S.stock indexes have lost their early gains, which is also benefitting theprecious metals market bulls. February goldfutures were last up $0.60 an ounce at $1,284.10. March Comexsilver was up $0.045 at $15.37 an ounce.

TheBank of Japan Wednesday left its interest rates unchanged at its regularmonetary policy meeting. However, the BOJ did lower its inflation expectationsfor the next two years, which continues a worldwide theme of lessening worriesabout problematic inflationary pressures.

Tradersare looking ahead to the European Central Bank’s regular monetary policymeeting on Thursday, including ECB President Mario Draghi’s press conference.

Newsreports out of the annual World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland suggest asomewhat gloomy picture that the elite bigwigs attending are painting, and onseveral fronts. The U.S., Britain and China governments are not in attendancethis year.

TheU.S. government remains in partial shut-down mode with no agreement between theDemocrats and President Trump to reopen it imminent. This is starting to dragon the U.S. economy, including the lack of fresh economic news to help drivemany markets. Many of those markets are seeing some selling pressure due to theuncertainty created by the lack of fresh economic news.