Gold Spot Price Open: $1,258
Gold Spot Price Close: $1,260
Change in Gold Spot Price: +$2
Silver Spot Price Open: $16.00
Silver Spot Price Close: $16.22
Change in Silver Spot Price: +$0.22
Precious metals continued to make some marginal gains on Tuesday thanks to continued risk-aversion across the global marketplace. When all was said and done, gold gained only a few dollars while silver advanced by little more than 20 cents. Platinum and palladium finished the day mixed, but neither metal moved too far from where they started the day.
Dollar and Stocks Rebound
Precious metals gained on the day, but their gains were limited due to the fact that both the greenback as well as most major US equity markets rebounded after some tough days recently. The Dollar’s rebound was especially noteworthy after it moved upward from a more than 7.5 month low realized at the beginning of the week.
Risk-appetite today was a bit stronger than it had been towards the end of last week and even Monday, thanks, in part, to a weaker yen. Independently, the Dollar has not been faring too well thanks to expectations that interest rates will be kept put for a little while now. Against other currencies, however, the USD Index has been doing decently, and this is nothing more than a testament to how poorly other economies around the world are performing.
Just today, in fact, the IMF downgraded its global growth forecast for Japan for the year. Inflation targets, which were set at 2%, are going to be missed by a long shot according to the IMF. In fact, the Washington-based agency is warning that deflation may begin to affect Japan. Japan isn’t the only country that is at risk of facing deflationary pressures as many European countries are as well. It will be interesting to see, through the last three quarters of the year.
IMF Lowers Global Growth Forecast Again
The IMF stayed in the news today as they lowered their overall expectations for global growth this year. In January, the International Monetary Fund announced that they expect the global economy to expand by at least 3.4%. Now, after a particularly weak First Quarter, the IMF reduced its expectations by .2% and is now anticipating the global economy to expand by little more than 3%.
When you split expectations between emerging economies and developed economies, the official numbers are that the IMF expects emerging economies to grow by more than 4% while developed economies will grow by just shy of 2%.
Even with all of these poor growth forecasts, shares around the world were able to bounce back after a few days of poor performances. For gold and silver, today saw recently upward trajectories extended. It will be interesting to see if gold and silver can continue to make gains if both the greenback and equities perform well through the final three days of the week.
Wrap-Up
All in all, today was a fairly slow day across the global marketplace. Apart from the IMF reporting on downgraded growth forecasts, there were very few fresh developments. Gold and silver will continue to be eyed as now we have seen gains three consecutive days, extending all the way to last week. There isn’t much markets-moving economic data expected through the end of the week, but what will be eyed by investors is the weekly jobless claims data. Last week saw the seasonally-adjusted average number of claims fall below the 270,000 threshold, and investors will be interested to see if this figure can be maintained or built upon. Right now, we are edging in on 60 consecutive weeks where jobless claims are below the 300,000 threshold. We haven’t heard much news from Europe as of late and once again the Greek debt crisis is beginning to creep back into the headlines. Though it may not make much of a splash this week, that will be something to pay attention to going forward.
