Gold Spot Price Open: $1,195
Gold Spot Price Close: $1,215
Change in Gold Spot Price: +$20
Silver Spot Price Open: $16.63
Silver Spot Price Close: $17.19
Change in Silver Spot Price: +$0.56
Gold and silver posted multi-week highs by the end of the day on Wednesday thanks to some less than stellar economic data from the United States. When all was said and done, gold managed to gain about twenty dollars while silver picked up more than 50 cents. Platinum and palladium both added some value on the day, but platinum was the biggest gainer of the two.
US Economic Data Comes Back Weaker Than Expected
The first few days of the week did not bring about much in the way of economic data, but that much changed on Wednesday. Earlier this morning, it was reported that US retail sales for April remained mostly unchanged from March. Preliminary expectations were for an increase in retail sales of about .2%, so you can see why this data was disappointing. As you could have probably guessed, today’s batch of retail sales data only works to convince investors that interest rate hikes might not be coming in June or July.
Also being affected by the US economic data released today was the USD Index, which slumped to a 4-month low. US stocks also had a difficult time making gains in the wake of the retail sales report. Though it is still a few weeks away, the next focus for investors will be the latest FOMC meeting where investors will hope to hear some more information regarding interest rate hikes.
Gold and silver improved dramatically today and were helped further by the fact that crude oil continued along its uptrend. Crude oil has been performing extremely well in recent weeks which is good for gold and silver, but not so great for people at the pump.
Chinese Economic Continues to Lag
Before US economic data was made public this morning, the global marketplace was dealt some poor Chinese economic data. First, there was a retail sales report that came back far weaker than expectations. This has been a recurring theme from the Chinese economy in recent months as the general outlook on Chinese economic growth only continues to diminish. In addition to the poor retail sales data, today’s economic data from China continued with a weaker reading on bank loans and infrastructure spending that slowed to its most sluggish pace in 15 years.
China’s central bank just recently cut interest rates on Sunday for the third time in 6 months. With so much effort being made to bring about some faster economic growth, it is truly interesting to see the Chinese economy continue to spin its wheels. For precious metals, a struggling Chinese economy is not good at all seeing as spot values tend to thrive when the Chinese economy is also thriving.
Wrap-Up
All in all, today proved to be the most exciting day of trading we have witnessed thus far this week. We were dealt a good bit of economic data, though the most important data came from the United States. As we head into Thursday, it will be interesting to see if gold and silver will be able to hand on to today’s gains or if profit-taking and other factors will drive spot values back downward. I expect more economic data to be dealt before Friday, but tomorrow will see the focus of investors directed to the most recent batch of weekly unemployment claims. Being that the last two weeks’ worth of claims came back at a 15-year low, investors are wanting to see if tomorrow’s report will yield the same results.
