Gold Spot Price Open: $1,200
Gold Spot Price Close: $1,210
Change in Gold Spot Price: +$10
Silver Spot Price Open: $16.50
Silver Spot Price Close: $16.45
Change in Silver Spot Price: -$0.05
Gold and silver spot values began the day mixed, and ended the day the exact same way on Wednesday. When all was said and done, gold was able to gain about ten dollars while silver actually lost bout 5 cents. Platinum and palladium also finished the day mixed, with platinum having gained near 10 dollars while palladium lost about the same amount.
Bargain-Hunting Buying and Poor US Data Helps Metals
After precious metals parred some of Monday’s gains on Tuesday, investors around the world were out purchasing physical gold and silver at what are currently perceived as being bargain prices. The increased physical demand for gold and silver this week is helping keep spot values afloat, but will likely only have a temporary impact on price movement.
What really did help metals today was a US ADP employment report that fell short of expectations. Over the course of the last few weeks, much of the employment data we are receiving from the United States has been downbeat in nature. According to today’s ADP report, only about 208,000 new jobs were added to the US economy during November. While this level of job growth is nothing to scoff at, the 208,000 increase in jobs fell decently short of the 230,000 job increase expectation held by polled experts. While, on any other day, today’s poor employment data from the US would see gold and silver make massive gains, pressure from the greenback limited the upside for metals.
Dollar Hits Fresh Multi-Year High
The USD Index, which measures the greenback’s performance against the performance of a group of rival currencies, hit another 4-year high today. Unsurprisingly, it was also reported that the Euro currency had fallen to a two-year low against the greenback. With so many investors expecting to hear of additional ECB monetary stimulus measures sometime tomorrow, there weren’t too many people who expected this week to be a good one for the Euro.
Apart from speculation regarding tomorrow’s European Central Bank meeting, a PMI reading from Europe also took its toll on the bloc’s currency. According to Markit, the EU’s composite PMI reading for November came in at 51.1 as opposed to a reading of 52.1 that was recorded in October. Despite the fact that any reading above 50 indicates that the economy in question is growing, it is none too encouraging to see month-by-month PMI readings come back worse than the one before it.
Latest on the ECB Meeting
According to a number of different sources, most investors are actually not anticipating that the European Central Bank will make a change to monetary policy tomorrow. While almost everyone thinks that, like US interest rate hikes, QE measures in Europe are an inevitability, most do not think the ECB will make any changes to monetary policy until sometime in 2015.
Still, there will be a large quantity of investors who will be anxiously awaiting the ECB meeting press conference, headed by president Mario Draghi. Even if monetary policy changes are not enacted tomorrow, the hope is that the investing world will be let in on more concrete clues with regard to when a policy change may actually occur.
Wrap-Up
Looking ahead to Thursday, it goes without saying that the ECB meeting will be of the utmost concern for investors everywhere. In addition to this, however, the market will also continue to pay close attention to the price action of crude oil. Finally, on top of it all, investors will assuredly be dealt an increasing amount of US economic data from the month of November. This, of course, is very important for investors who are attempting to gauge when interest rate hikes in the United States may take place.
