Gold Spot Price Open: $1,155
Gold Spot Price Close: $1,159
Change in Gold Spot Price: +$4
Silver Spot Price Open: $15.62
Silver Spot Price Close: $15.70
Change in Silver Spot Price: +$0.08
Gold and silver spot values extended losses early on Friday before turning things around and posting small daily gains. When all was said and done, gold picked up about 4 dollars while silver added close to ten cents. Platinum and palladium lost on the day, but only by a few dollars apiece.
Russia Slashes Interest Rates…Again
For the second time in as many months, Russia’s central bank decided to slash interest rates. This time it was a 1% reduction, bringing the country’s main interest rate down to 14%. As if moving their main interest rate twice in two months wasn’t enough, Russia’s central bank went on to say that further rate cuts are in the works and will be announced before long.
In all, Russia’s main interest rate has moved around quite a bit in recent months. If you can remember back to the last month of 2014, Russia boosted rates significantly in an effort to help save the Ruble from a free-fall. Today’s move, however, was not seen as being nearly as desperate and is actually being looked at as a sign that Russian finance authorities think that the worst of Western Sanctions has already passed. Still, there are quite a few market experts who seriously question whether Russia’s economic system is healthy enough to withstand this much interest rate movement. With Russia and the Russian government making a headline or two every week, I am sure we will hear of more interest rate moves within the next few months.
US Economic Data Takes Center Stage
The final day of this admittedly quiet trading week brought about some US economic data. Though officially released on Thursday, the United States’ weekly jobless claims report showed that, for the first time in three weeks, fewer than 300,000 individuals filed for unemployment benefits. According to the US Labor Department, jobless claims fell by more than 35,000 during the week ending March 7th for a total number of claims somewhere just under the 290,000 mark.
Despite the last month or so regularly seeing jobless claims in the 300,000’s, market experts are attributing this to poor weather and a host of other factors, and not a sign of weakness on the part of the US labor market.
In other news, today saw the latest Producer Price Index released. Compared to expectations of a .5% PPI increase, the actual figures showed that February’s PPI fell by .2%. Though significant, this report did not have all that much of an impact on the global marketplace.
Finally, rounding out the most recent batch of US economic data was a retail sales report from February that was far worse than expected. For a second consecutive month, retail sales in the US fell by more than a half percent. This statistic, though somewhat unnerving, can be explained by the horrible winter most of the United States had to endure over the course of the past three months. Now that Spring is just around the corner, most are expecting that this month’s retail sales report will be far superior to that of February and January. Of course, only time will tell if this month’s retail sales will be anything worth talking about or not.
Wrap-Up
For the week, both gold and silver have yet again recorded losses. While silver is well up from weekly lows, gold ended the week not too far from its low position of the week. Looking ahead to next week, there really isn’t much economic data to look forward to. Instead, the market will focus on equity and currency markets from around the world as they have been the big movers as of late.
