Gold Spot Price Open: $1,228
Gold Spot Price Close: $1,235
Change in Gold Spot Price: +$7
Silver Spot Price Open: $16.23
Silver Spot Price Close: $16.30
Change in Silver Spot Price: +$0.07
Precious metals ended the week on a positive note by posting gains on Friday. When all was said and done, gold managed to add about 7 dollars while silver made gains of nearly 10 cents. Platinum and palladium finished the day and week mixed, with platinum losing about 5 dollars while palladium gained roughly the same amount.
Weaker Factory Output, Bargain-Hunting Have Mixed Impact On Precious Metals
For a second consecutive month, the output of US factories declined. Among the culprits for March’s factory output decline were fewer cars being made as well as a lighter production of metal machinery and equipment. After February’s annualized .1% dip in factory output, the Fed says that March recorded a .3% drop.
Experts are claiming that a triple-punch of sorts is helping to keep factories churning at increasingly slower paces. Thanks to weak growth in overseas markets, spending here in the US that does not seem to be picking up, and a Dollar that remains strong, factories are taking a hit. Despite a record-breaking year in 2015, automakers are already seeing a slowdown in sales that they were not expecting. Though it has been proven that US households have more money to spend, it seems as though many of them are choosing to hang on to this additional money to safeguard against what looks an increasingly uncertain future.
Finally, the stronger US Dollar generally makes US products more expensive, and with global economies struggling on many fronts, these expensive products cannot be afforded in quantities that would help factory outputs grow by any significant margin; or at all.
Weekly Jobless Claims Fall
We did not discuss this on Thursday, but it was reported that first-time claims for unemployment benefits fell last week by about 13,000. This brings the seasonally-adjusted average number of claims to 253,000 despite most experts predicting that that number would touch or eclipse the 270,000 mark yet again. Something else that this does is bring us just one week closer to reaching 60 consecutive weeks where jobless claims in the US have remained under the 300,000 mark. In many ways, this lends credence to the belief that interest rates can and should be raised again in one of the next three months, however we will have to wait for April’s FOMC meeting to determine whether that may be the case or not.
Despite bargain-hunting help push gold and silver higher to close out the week, it is looking like both metals are going to post slight weekly losses. The reason for this is largely due to resilient equities as well as a stronger US Dollar that just will not seem to go away. So long as members of the Fed are going to continuously and publicly voice their demand for interest rates to be raised sooner rather than later, the Dollar is likely going to remain in a strong position. This is almost always something that will prevent gold and silver from moving too much higher.
Wrap-Up
There wasn’t much in the way of big news dealt on Friday, but over the weekend investors will be interested in an OPEC meeting that is, once again, aimed at determining what oil-producing nations can do to prop up the falling price of crude oil. So far, each and every one of these meetings has come and gone without a deal being reached and it is difficult to believe that this week will be any different. All in all, the energy sector has been rocked recently and with the biggest coal energy-producing company in the United States filing for bankruptcy protection this week, it is not looking like things are going to improve anytime in the near future.
