Gold Spot Price Open: $1,211
Gold Spot Price Close: $1,208
Change in Gold Spot Price: -$3
Silver Spot Price Open: $17.22
Silver Spot Price Close: $17.24
Change in Silver Spot Price: +$0.02
Precious metals traded mostly sideways during the day on Thursday and finished not too far from where they began the day. When all was said and done, gold lost about three dollars while silver managed to gain a few pennies. Platinum and palladium finished mixed, but not too far from where they opened the day today.
Existing Home Sales Decline by 3%+ In April
Adding to recently poor economic data from the US was a report on existing home sales today that indicated such sales were down by 3.3% during April. According to the National Association of Realtors, seasonally adjusted annualized home sales during April came in at a rate of 5.04 million units compared to a reading of more than 5.2 million units the month before. Seeing as market experts were preparing for a rise in the figures from April to March, today’s report on housing is being viewed as wholly negative.
The US Dollar suffered a bit of a hit thanks to this data, and while it may seem like all this would be good for gold and silver, precious metals were not really able to take advantage of this data setback. Most market analysts are saying that April’s poor home sales are more due to the fact that so many houses are available to satisfy a demand that really hasn’t grown as much as was expected. There are definitely more people out there looking to buy homes, but that number has not grown at the rate expected by so many people prior to this year kicking off.
While the Dollar didn’t have such a great day thanks to this data, US Treasuries saw gains in the wake of the NAR’s report.
Stocks Attempt Gains On Slow Day
US stock markets have been performing extremely well lately, and even on a day where not too much was happening the S&P 500 was able to close out at another record high. With that said, however, it isn’t only the S&P that is doing well, as the Nasdaq has been adding some pretty nice value of late as well. From a precious metals perspective, it is likely all this attention to equity markets that is killing any gains metals might be able to make on days like today.
Going forward, it will be interesting to see if equity markets in the US can keep up their torrid pace, or if something unforeseen will drive markets back downward. Of course, that much seems very unlikely when you take into consideration how well equity indexes in the United States have performed for most of this year so far.
Wrap-Up
In truth, today was not such an eventful day on the global marketplace apart from the release of the aforementioned data from the United States. Looking ahead to tomorrow and the final day of the week, investors the world over will be focusing on how the US Dollar closes things out. This has been a pretty back-and-forth week for the greenback, and with the Dollar dictating what direction metals head in, investors will read very heavily into where the USD finished out the week tomorrow.
