Trump's instability continues to affect the markets.

BarcelonaThe nomination of a new candidate to chair the Federal Reserve (the Fed, the US central bank) has reignited volatility and turned many markets upside down, especially the US stock market and the dollar, while, on the other hand, the price of gold and other precious metals continued to fall on Monday after plummeting.

Thus, the price of gold was at $4,697 per ounce on Monday at 4:45 PM, down 1% from Friday. On that very day, the price of the precious metal collapsed 14.1%, according to two-month futures prices. The drop erased much of the gains accumulated in recent months, when gold and silver have reached historic highs

At the other end of the spectrum, stock markets and the dollar are also rising. On Wall Street, the two benchmark indices, the S&P 500 and the Dow Jones, were up approximately 1% at 5 p.m., after markets were closed last Friday. As for the greenback, last Wednesday it hit its lowest point in six months and has since recovered slightly against the euro, with which it is currently trading at 83 cents.

In Spain, the Ibex 35, the benchmark index, surpassed the symbolic 18,000-point mark for the first time ever, closing the day at 18,115 points, an increase of 1.31%.

Trump changes course

The shift in the markets is due to the change of course by US President Donald Trump in several areas of economic and international policy. First, Trump backtracked Regarding the possibility of annexing Greenland, following his speech at the Davos Forum on January 21, when he insisted that his country needed to control that Danish Arctic territory.

Then, after nearly a year of threats to fire Fed Chairman Jerome Powell, Trump announced on Friday Kevin Warsh's nomination as a candidate to chair the agency, which now begins the process of being ratified by Congress. Warsh is an economist very close to the US president, but the fact that Trump has finally proposed him puts an end to the possibility of the White House directly intervening in the Fed to remove Powell.

Warsh's nomination should allow, at least in the eyes of investors, Powell to complete his term and leave the US central bank in May, as planned. This would mean that, on paper, Trump continues to respect the independence of the Fed—guaranteed by law—and does not attempt to circumvent the Constitution, which prohibits the president from dismissing the heads of independent public agencies.

The instability caused by the potential annexation of Greenland, which is vehemently opposed by all other European Union and NATO countries, and the attempts to influence Powell to steer the Federal Reserve toward a monetary policy aligned with the US president's preferences, led many investors to sell off at least some of their dollars and shares in US companies, causing prices to fall. The alternative, as is typical in times of uncertainty, was a rise in the price of gold, the ultimate safe haven in the financial world. The fact that Washington is now abandoning its plans to intervene in Greenland and that Trump has ceased attacking allies and the Fed is reversing the market trend.