Gold Spot Price Open: $1,268
Gold Spot Price Close: $1,294
Change in Gold Spot Price: +$26
Silver Spot Price Open: $17.63
Silver Spot Price Close: $17.78
Change in Silver Spot Price: +$0.15
Gold and silver finished the week in impressive fashion by posting gains to close out the week. When all was said and done, gold managed to gain more than 25 dollars while silver tacked on 15 cents. Platinum and palladium also gained to finish the week, but platinum was the real winner after it added more than 22 dollars on Friday alone.
USD Continues to Struggle
The US Dollar performed poorly throughout the whole of this week thanks to a slew of different factors. The USD Index, which measures the Dollar against a basket of rival currencies, began falling on Monday and really never looked back. Against the Japanese Yen in particular, these past 5 days were the worst since the thick of the 2008 global financial crisis. On Friday alone, the USD lost more than 1% against the Yen. For the week, however, the greenback is down more than 4% against Japan’s currency.
The biggest contributing factor to the Dollar’s weakness and Yen’s strength is the Bank of Japan’s decision to leave monetary policy in the country untouched. When the week first began, the prevailing belief was that the BoJ was going to move to expand their current monetary policy, which is a form of quantitative easing. Surprisingly, the BoJ does not feel the need to expand QE and it is uncertain when they might move to alter policy.
Safe-Haven Demand Picking Back Up
Gold and silver are both ending the week on a positive note thanks mostly to increased safe-haven demand and generally more upbeat sentiment on the part of investors. This is the perfect time for precious metals to be making gains being that we are not only at the end of the week, but the end of the month as well. In fact, there is a strong and growing contingent that feels as though gold may eclipse the $1,300/ounce in the near future. Ending the week above the $1,290 mark is a nice start, so it will be interesting to see how things open up on Monday.
Also helping gold and silver lay claim to some nice momentum is the fact that US economic data this week came back much weaker than expected. The specific report that caught so many people by surprise was the Q1 GDP report from the United States. During the first three months of this year the US economy grew at an incredibly slow pace and this forced investors to carefully consider what the future might hold. If slow growth was recorded during the first three months of the year, what is happening now across the global economy to convince investors that economic growth will improve anytime in the near future.
Next week we are going to be dealing with a major piece of economic data in the form of the monthly job growth report from the United States. If job growth in April misses the mark by anything that can be considered a large margin, gold and silver very well might make even larger leaps forward.
Wrap-Up
Looking ahead to next week, the biggest event will be the release of the jobs growth report from the United States. Being that we are nearing the end of the month we will also be dealt a slew of other economic reports from various other parts of the world, such as Europe and Asia. Regardless of what is or isn’t dealt as far as economic data is concerned next week, it will be very interesting to see what precious metals do throughout the first few days of the week.
