Gold Spot Price Open: $1,197
Gold Spot Price Close: $1,199
Change in Gold Spot Price: +$2
Silver Spot Price Open: $16.62
Silver Spot Price Close: $16.58
Change in Silver Spot Price: -$0.04
Precious metals did not do much moving on what proved to be a fairly quiet day of trading on Wednesday. When all was said and done, gold was able to gain about two dollars while silver lost roughly four pennies. Platinum and palladium both finished up by more than $5.
Pre-Holiday Trading Leads to Quiet Day
For much of the day on Wednesday, gold and silver spot values did not move all that much. The lack of movement has been mostly attributed to quiet, pre-holiday trading as well as the fact that so many businessmen and women have taken the day off to travel or make other holiday preparations. Even though Friday isn’t an official holiday, it tends to be one of the quietest trading day of the year.
Today played host to a number of economic reports from the United States, but none of them had any major impact on the precious metals market. Once again, the fact that today was such a quiet day of trading likely explains why there was little to no reaction to today’s slate of US economic data. Perhaps the beginning of next week will see a more delayed reaction to the data released today.
Eyes Turn to Europe, ECB
It seems as though there is at least one big economic or geopolitical story out of Europe every week. The last few weeks this has been especially true as rumors with regard to the European Central Bank’s next meeting abound and morph with each passing day. Just this morning, an ECB official hinted that quantitative easing measures could be enacted as early as the first parts of the first quarter of 2015. Though no one from the ECB has officially confirmed this, the market was abuzz once this report was made public.
In unrelated news from Europe, a 10-year government bond auction in Germany fetched a record low yield of .74%. As if it weren’t already obvious, today’s German bond auction only serves to reiterate the fact that European investors are incredibly skittish, worried, and uncertain about what the future holds for the EU economy. As it stands right now, the December 4th ECB policy meeting is one of the most important events for the market to consider in the foreseeable future.
OPEC Meeting Looms
US investors will be off the trading bloc Thursday, but the rest of the world will be paying close attention to what, if anything, comes as a result of OPEC’s meeting. Right now, many believe that OPEC will either reduce daily oil production quotas for member countries or, as some others believe, they will more strictly see to it that member countries do not exceed their daily oil production quota.
Regardless of what the outcome of tomorrow’s meeting is, you can bet that it will have some impact on raw commodities, and thus precious metals as well. In recent weeks, the unprecedented decline of the value of crude oil has acted as a weight, dragging down all commodities, including precious metals. If this OPEC meeting successfully lifts or, if nothing else, stabilizes the price of crude oil, gold and silver may be able to derive a bit of bullish support.
Wrap-Up
For all intents and purposes, this is the last day of the trading week. Though US investors will be back in action on Friday, it is widely expected that the overall nature of the marketplace on Friday will be far more quiet and subdued than usual. Whether this is beneficial for gold and silver remains to be seen, but it would be unusual for spot values to move dramatically without any unforeseen factors influencing the market.
