Gold Spot Price Open: $1,199
Gold Spot Price Close: $1,205
Change in Gold Spot Price: +$6
Silver Spot Price Open: $17.06
Silver Spot Price Close: $17.14
Change in Silver Spot Price: +$0.08
Precious metals managed to add a bit more value on Thursday and effectively continued their slow and steady trek upward. When all was said and done, gold managed to gain more than 5 dollars while silver finished the day about 8 cents better than where it started. Platinum and palladium also gained on the day, both by about 7 dollars or so.
Middle East Flare-Up Eyed
During the overnight and early morning hours on Thursday, it was reported by numerous sources that the Saudi Arabian military was performing air strikes against Yemeni rebels. While this sounds like a regional player’s attempt to bring some stability to a country that has been absent of it for some time, the story becomes a bit more complicated when you consider the fact that the rebels are currently being backed by Iran–the Middle East’s other major power. Though it is still early, the Saudi and Iranian governments are not on the same page and seem to be growing further apart with each passing day.
As a result of this most recent batch of violence from the world’s powder-keg region, commodities received a nice safe-haven boost. Crude oil in particular was able to add some decent value and even managed to eclipse the $52/barrel mark. As you might have expected, this provided gold and silver spot values with a healthy boost as well. Unfortunately, US stock indexes bounced back a bit today, and this effectively limited what might have been a massive upswing for metals. Still, gold is up above the $1,200 mark while silver is slowly climbing further above the $17 threshold. Should metals post solid gains tomorrow to close out the week, the investing world might just grow a little bit more bullish towards metals.
Weekly Jobless Claims Fall
Despite there not being much in the way of economic data due out this week, the market paid close attention to today’s release of the most recent jobless claims report from the United States. According to the US Labor Department, weekly jobless claims fell this week to an unadjusted 282,000; this is a week-by-week decline of 9,000. Due to the fact that most market experts were anticipating the jobless claims figures to be right around last week’s reading of 291,000 claims, today’s figures were a bit of a pleasant surprise.
As far as the four-week moving average of jobless claims is concerned, it was reported that claims fell by almost 8,000 claims. This report is a bit more valuable to investors simply because it observes jobless claims over a longer period of time and can give investors a better image of how the overall employment sector in the United States is doing. This data likely contributed to stocks gains today and might have taken away some potential gains from gold and silver spot values.
China Set to Import More Gold
According to numerous reports from China, the large Asian nation is set to allow more businesses to import gold into the mainland. This is good news for the average consumer because it means that the premium incurred by Chinese buyers of gold will be made just a bit more reasonable. Naturally, projections by the World Gold Council hold that China will import more gold as a result of this move. Officially, projections hold that China will bring in 11% more gold than it did a year ago; quite the significant increase.
Wrap-Up
Tomorrow is already shaping up to be a quiet day to close out the week. There is not much in the way of economic data expected to be made public, and what little data does hit the market will likely not be all that heavily weighted by investors. We will continue to keep an eye on what is happening in Yemen between Iran and Saudi Arabia, as that is the only real development to take place this week.
