Gold Spot Price Open: $1,129
Gold Spot Price Close: $1,128
Change in Gold Spot Price: -$1
Silver Spot Price Open: $14.37
Silver Spot Price Close: $14.34
Change in Silver Spot Price: -$0.03
Precious metals opened up Tuesday immediately posting losses mostly due to the fact that investors were interested in capitalizing on the gains made over last week and Monday. When all was said and done, gold stepped back by $3 while silver lost about three pennies. Platinum and palladium also lost on the day, with both metals moving backwards by a little less than 10 dollars.
Finally, Some Upbeat European News
According to Eurostat, a renowned statistics organization, the EU’s rate of unemployment is at lows we have not seen in more than 4 years. Falling from 10.5% in November to 10.4% in December, it appears Europeans are finding it easier to find work. Despite this report, there is not any sort of noticeable confidence boost being seen from the region. Most investors and market experts alike know that it is going to take a bit more than a downtick on the part of the unemployment rate for people to be convinced that the European economy is on the path to solidified recovery.
An interesting statistic that can be gained when looking a bit closer at the unemployment rate is the fact that December of 2015 saw 1.5 million fewer jobless people than that same time a year ago.
The typical culprits Spain and Greece were seen boasting the highest individual jobless rates, at over 20% and over 24% respectively. Germany, on the other hand, carried the pack with an impressive 4.5% jobless rate. I think we will see investors react a bit more positively to data points such as this one once we see those economies at the bottom begin to make marked signs of improvement.
Crude Oil Back in the Spotlight
The price of crude oil once again moved backwards on Tuesday as investors the world over begin to lose hope regarding the possibility of massive production cuts. Since first breaking towards the end of last week, rumors that OPEC nations would be meeting to discuss production cuts have since more or less fizzled out. It is widely believed that if some organized step is not taken sometime soon, not only will oil production proceed at its current pace, but the supply-glut we have witnessed for almost a year now will only intensify upon the introduction of Iranian oil to Western markets.
This, combined with the unpredictable nature of global equity markets is helping keep gold and silver afloat. It’s part of the reason why, on days when you see profit-taking, the losses incurred by precious metals are not very large at all. It will be interesting to see how this current level of uncertainty will play out over the next few weeks. With very few major happenings on the near-term calendar, things look fairly upbeat for gold and silver. There is no way to be sure of this, but until economies like those of Europe and Asia show clear signs of significant improvement it is difficult to envision gold and silver not benefitting from investors who are looking to play it safe, so to speak.
Wrap-Up
Tuesday was a rather uneventful day across the global marketplace and especially the United States. Apart from EU employment data investors did not have much to talk about. Equity markets were somewhat quieter than has been typical over the last few weeks, and that may be part of the reason gold and silver failed to perform. Looking ahead to Wednesday, it will be interesting to see if precious metals can bounce back from today’s profit-taking losses, or if a new downtrend is just beginning to develop.
