Gold Spot Price Open: $1,203
Gold Spot Price Close: $1,199
Change in Gold Spot Price: -$4
Silver Spot Price Open: $17.12
Silver Spot Price Close: $17.03
Change in Silver Spot Price: -$0.09
Precious metals are conceding some value on the final day of this week after a good run of gains. When all was said and done on Friday, gold lost a few dollars while silver fell by nearly 10 cents. Platinum finished Friday down by nearly ten dollars while palladium dropped by 20 dollars.
USD Rebounds After Early Week Losses
Unless you have been living under a rock all week, you know that the greenback has been conceding some decent value against many of its rivals. While losses were beginning to mount, no one was overly concerned due to the fact that it looked more like the Dollar was suffering a corrective pullback after recent gains as opposed to declining due to any single factor.
Crude oil prices are not doing gold any favors by declining a bit today, but the fact of the matter is that the ongoing conflict in Yemen will do well to prevent losses from piling up. As it stands, the civil war in Yemen is being turned into a battle between Saudi Arabia backing the Yemeni military and Iran backing Yemeni rebels. When shown in this light, the otherwise non-factor Yemeni Civil War is turned into a major regional issue that is threatening to escalate into something much more.
Should fighting between Saudi forces and Yemeni military troops intensify through next week, it will likely catch the attention of the wider global marketplace.
Stocks Continue to Slide
There is not all that much to talk about as we bring this week to a close, though investors are still looking to US equity indexes for some clues as to whether stocks have put in near-term market tops or not. Though equities did a little bit better on Friday, this week was mostly disappointing from the standpoint of US stocks.
It will be interesting to see how US equities begin next week. Should they rebound and begin trading consistently higher, it will likely be believed that this week’s losses were nothing more than a temporary pullback as part of a longer bullish run. However, if stocks open up next week as disappointingly as they began this one, investors will likely be under the impression that near-term market tops were put in place and that stocks may trade within a well-defined range barring any unforeseen market or geopolitical development.
GDP Growth Forecast Bolstered
GDP growth expectations for the United States’ fourth quarter was upped today by the US Commerce Department. As opposed to previous expectations for 2.2% growth during the 4th quarter of this year, the US Commerce Department today announced that they expect fourth quarter GDP growth to be somewhere in the 2.5% range.
For some, this is confusing news considering the fact that, from the looks of it, 2015 has gotten off to a particularly slow start. Of course, the economy’s performance in the first quarter does not necessarily mean that the subsequent quarters will follow suit. As such, expectations are that the next three quarters of 2015 will emit particularly upbeat numbers. Should this happen, you can bet that investors will be under the impression that interest rate hikes are coming sooner rather than later.
Wrap-Up
As we look ahead to next week, the market will look forward to the plethora of economic data that will be made public. Of all this data, that which originates from the United States will be the most heavily weighted. The reason for this, as you can expect, is because investors are constantly trying to get a gauge on when interest rates will be raised as well as how much they will be raised by.
