• Silver price trades sideways below $31.00 with Fed policy taking center stage.
• Market speculation for the Fed to start reducing interest rates aggressively remains firm.
• US Retail Sales surprisingly rose at a meager growth of 0.1% in August.

Silver price (XAG/USD) stays in tight range below the crucial resistance of $31.00 in Tuesday’s North American session. The white metal consolidates as investors have sidelined, focusing on the Federal Reserve’s (Fed) monetary policy decision, which will be announced on Wednesday.

The Fed is widely anticipated to start reducing interest rates. This would be the first interest rate cut decision by the Fed in more than four years. Investors will keenly focus on the likely Fed rate cut size. According to the CME FedWatch tool, the probability of the Fed reducing interest rates by 50 bps to 4.75%-5.00% in September has increased sharply to 67% from 34% a week ago.

Market speculation for the Fed pivoting to policy normalization aggressively has increased lately after the release of the softer-than-expected United States (US) annual headline Producer Price Index (PPI) data for August, published last week.