Gold Spot Price Open: $1,277
Gold Spot Price Close: $1,266
Change in Gold Spot Price: -$11
Silver Spot Price Open: $17.38
Silver Spot Price Close: $17.08
Change in Silver Spot Price: -$0.30
Precious metals originally began moving upward on Thursday, but by midday that quickly changed. When all was said and done, gold ended up losing about 11 dollars while silver forfeited roughly 30 cents. Platinum and palladium fell on the day, both by about $10-$15.
Weekly Jobless Claims Jump Upward for Yet Another Week
Last week brought with it an unexpected jump on the part of jobless claims. This was not the most perfect complement to April’s non-farms payrolls growth report, which showed much smaller growth on the part of non-farm payrolls than what was expected. This week did not see the tone of employment data change much as weekly jobless claims last week once again jumped up by roughly 20,000. Now, the seasonally-adjusted average number of claims has exceeded 290,000 and is very rapidly closing in on an even 300,000.
While these figures may suggest that investors now have the US employment sector to be worried about, analysts say that such is not really the case. You see, the massive jumps recorded over the past two weeks can be explained once you understand how the unemployment filing process works in the United States.
The biggest factor affecting these higher than usual jumps in claims for unemployment benefits make much more sense once you understand that school employees who are not teachers (ie. Cafeteria workers, bus drivers, etc.) are able to file for unemployment benefits when schools are closed for a week or more—whether it be due to a holiday/seasonal break, or other circumstances. In this particular case, the attention is focused on public schools in New York City and the spring breaks that were recently observed. Of the more than 18,000 new claims for unemployment benefits, it is estimated that more than 15,000 of them originated from New York. In addition to this, there are Verizon employees who have been on strike for the past two weeks and this too is something that will inflate the most recent jobless claims figures.
All things considered, this week is not such an anomaly seeing as much of the unexpected rise in claims can be explained away. The real test will be 7 days from now and whether or not the number of claims will move back to a range viewed as “normal” by market experts and analysts.
Gold, Silver Still Struggling
At first glance, today’s downbeat employment report might be enough for one to think that gold and silver spot values should be rising dramatically. While that may be the case, a bit of digging quickly uncovered that the past two weeks’ worth of claims were more than likely a fluke more than any signal that the employment scene in the US is weakening.
Still, with the US Dollar down for most of the day on Thursday it was a bit surprising that metals were not able to hang on to gains made earlier in the day. This is especially true when you consider that there weren’t many other pieces of news capable of drastically altering the precious metals market.
Wrap-Up
All in all, Thursday, like Wednesday, proved to be a rather slow day across the global marketplace. As it stands now, precious metals are set up to post another weekly loss unless we witness a massive turnaround on the final day of the week. With all this being said, the overall condition of the global marketplace is such that gold and silver will more than likely remain bullish for the foreseeable future. With that said, however, this is liable to change at any point in time should the right news story break.
