Gold Spot Price Open: $1,201
Gold Spot Price Close: $1,194
Change in Gold Spot Price: -$7
Silver Spot Price Open: $16.39
Silver Spot Price Close: $16.21
Change in Silver Spot Price: -$0.18
Precious metals spent most of Tuesday conceding value as the technical posture of both gold and silver continues to diminish at a fairly rapid tick. When all was said and done, gold lost 7 dollars while silver lost a little more than fifteen cents. Platinum and palladium spent most of Tuesday declining as well, but losses were no more than a few dollars apiece.
Dollar Steadies as Crude Oil Ticks Higher
Despite performing extremely well in recent days, the Dollar Index cooled off a bit today. Still in a great position, the US Dollar is expected to move even higher should this week’s US economic data not fall too short of expectations. In fact, if this week’s US data exceeds expectations I would not be at all surprised to see the spot values of both gold and silver take even further hits. For today, however, the technical posture of metals only worsened as gold moved under the $1,200 threshold and silver moved a bit closer to an even $16/ounce. As it stands, the Dollar is just a few days’ worth of gains away from hitting a fresh 12-month high.
For today, crude oil moved upward, but we have recently seen that the commodity has more or less evened out and traded sideways. For gold and silver, the fact that crude oil has more or less plateaued in recent weeks is none too favorable because so long as crude oil isn’t appreciating, it will be inherently difficult for metals to record solid gains.
Upbeat European Economic Reports Made Public
During the early morning hours of Tuesday, the latest industrial production figures from the European Union were made public. Officially, February’s industrial production improved by more than 1% from January and was up by more than 1.5% on an annualized basis. This only adds to the long list of positive economic data from the European Union we have witnessed over the course of the first quarter of 2015. In other upbeat European news, a report published today indicated that European banks are set to do more lending to businesses through the latter half of the year. This is yet another clear sign that the Eurozone economy is showing some early signs of improvement.
Finally, Moody’s rating agency today said that the European Central Bank will run out of EU sovereign bonds before the end of this year. It will be interesting to see how the last few months of this year turn out for Europe, because contrary to early expectations the first four and a half months of 2015 have been surprisingly upbeat.
US Economic Data Mostly Disappoints
Thankfully for precious metals, their somewhat large losses dissipated during the afternoon thanks to some weaker than expected economic data from the US. First was a retail sales report from March that mostly missed the mark. This report prompted the USD Index to tick down a bit and added to the growing negative sentiment facing the US economy.
Luckily, US economic data was not all bad on Tuesday as March was reported as seeing a .2% Producer Price Index increase.
Wrap-Up
Today, compared to last week, was a fairly active trading session. A good bit of economic data was offered and, though metals still finished the day having posted losses, things could have been a lot worse. Looking ahead to tomorrow and the rest of the week, there will be a good bit of economic data made public from Europe and the United States.
