By Anthony Mirhaydari
InvestorPlace Market Strategist
It’s clear that the cheap money is going to keep flowing under new Federal Reserve chair Janet Yellen, and that in turn has brought life into precious metals and mining stocks.
Although Yellen indicated, in her first appearance in front of Congress since being sworn in on Tuesday, that the taper of the “QE3″ bond-buying program would continue apace — at around $10 billion per meeting — this was offset by a moving of the goalposts on when short-term interest rates would rise from the near 0% perch they’ve been sitting on since 2008.
Yellen said rates wouldn’t move until alternative measures of labor market health, such as long-term unemployment and the number of folks working part-time for economic reasons, improves as well as the overall unemployment rate. That suggests more work is to be done, despite a quicker-than-expected drop in the jobless rate to 6.6% in recent months.