Gold Spot Price Open: $1,294
Gold Spot Price Close: $1,288
Change in Gold Spot Price: -$6
Silver Spot Price Open: $17.59
Silver Spot Price Close: $17.47
Change in Silver Spot Price: -$0.12
Precious metals moved back downward on Tuesday and is clearly struggling to begin this 5-day trading session. When all was said and done, gold lost a little more than 5 dollars while silver fell by a little more than ten cents. Platinum and palladium, both lost on the day, with platinum losing nearly fifteen dollars while palladium lost more than twenty.
Gold Falls After Profit-Taking
After hitting a more than 15-month high for a brief period on Monday, gold fell back down on Tuesday mostly thanks to profit-taking. Not helping precious metals at all was the fact that the US Dollar Index bounced back after hitting an 8 month low overnight.
As far as economic data and fresh happenings are concerned, Tuesday did not bring about many fresh developments. Instead, the main theme was investors looking forward and speculating with regard to what this week’s economic data will show. First up is tomorrow’s ADP private-sector jobs report. Though this piece of data does not necessarily mean anything for Friday’s non-farms report, it gives investors something to look forward to and at least gives people some type of idea as to what they can expect from on Friday.
Despite gold and silver moving downward a bit on Tuesday, the fact of the matter is that precious metals are holding firm. Risk aversion is still running rampant as investors gear up for economic data this week that is not widely expected to be upbeat. If this week’s data points do miss the mark, gold and silver will likely continue to benefit.
Crude Oil Continues to Fall
Today, the price of crude oil was driven even further downward as investors are gearing up for some data that is widely expected to miss the mark. Tomorrow and through the rest of the week the market will have to contend with some pieces of data relating to crude oil stockpiles across the world. As it stands, stockpile figures are expected to exceed expectations and this will only reinforce the fear that there is too much oil across the global supply.
Thanks to fears that these figures will be bigger than expected, investors are running away from crude oil. As a response, gold and silver spot values may have received some upside support. If it weren’t for crude oil, a stronger US Dollar today very well might have driven gold and silver spot values downward even further.
Fawad Razaqzada, analyst at Forex, commented on crude oil’s progress, or lack thereof, by saying, ” Oil prices have also been absorbing a lot of negative news lately and completely ignoring the fact the markets remain oversupplied with US crude oil inventories being at and record-high levels. So, the pressure for a squeeze was building anyway. Iran is continuing to increase oil output following an end to its sanctions in January; Saudi Arabia, unwilling to lose market share to Iran, produces near record levels and Iraqi oil production is at 30-year highs.”
Basically, unless there is a fundamental shift in the quantity of oil on the market or the quantity of oil being produced on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis, the price of the commodity will have a tough time moving upward by any large margins.
Wrap-Up
All in all, Tuesday was more uneventful than anything else. There were very few pieces of fresh economic data and, instead, investors spent the day analyzing what the rest of the week will hold as far as economic data is concerned. Looking ahead to tomorrow, we are very likely going to begin being dealt a slew of economic data from the US and elsewhere around the world.
