Gold Spot Price Open: $1,180
Gold Spot Price Close: $1,190
Change in Gold Spot Price: +$10
Silver Spot Price Open: $16.22
Silver Spot Price Close: $16.52
Change in Silver Spot Price: +$0.30
Precious metals bounced back a bit from last week’s losses to start this first full week of May trading off in great fashion. When all was said and done, gold managed to gain close to ten dollars while silver added more than 25 cents. Even platinum and palladium got in on the action as both metals cruised to gains of at least 10 dollars apiece.
Chinese Policymakers Eyed
Truth be told, the first day of trading this week did not offer much in the way of groundbreaking economic developments from anywhere. As a result of this, the market chose to focus on China and the lack of progress being made by one of the world’s leading economies. Just over the weekend, a report was published claiming that the HSBC PMI for April maintained a reading of sub-50. As you may or may not be aware, any reading below 50 suggests that the economy in question is contracting. This report did not have all that much of an impact on the precious metals market, but instead caused investors to speculate with regard to what they think China’s central bank will do to combat a continually stagnating economy.
For now, the widespread belief is that China’s central bank will make moves to further ease monetary policy in hopes that it will spur along economic growth. It is interesting that China’s central bank is continually easing policy, especially considering the fact that they have seldom given policies enough time to go into effect before they announce a new shift. Despite their poor economic performance through the first 4 months of 2015, China’s economy is still firing at a rate most other global economies can only dream of.
Big Week for US Economic Data
A few pieces of US economic data were dealt to begin the week, but none of them had that much of an impact on the global marketplace. Instead, investors both here and abroad chose to focus on what the next few days will bring from an economic data standpoint. A plethora of April reports are due out, but few are more vital to investors than the employment report for April. If you can recall, March’s employment report fell far short of expectations, which means that extra emphasis will be placed on this Friday’s data.
Currently, the market is preliminarily expecting to see around 220,000 new jobs created in April. With so many people expecting the Fed to pull the trigger on interest rate hikes sometime this summer, each and every piece of US employment data will be more important than the last to investors.
Some sub-par European economic data was published today and helped boost the USD Index, which has been struggling in recent weeks. Though the greenback finished the day far off its daily high, it was encouraging to see gains made after the brutal week experienced last week. The real test will come over the next few days and it will be quite intriguing to see if the Dollar can move forward along today’s uptrend.
Wrap-Up
As was stated above, the first day of this trading week has been more or less uneventful. More economic data is expected to be released through the next four days and it is sure to have some impact on the precious metals market, but today was mostly a miss. For gold and silver, today’s gains were attributed mostly to bargain-hunting after last week’s losses, so I remain unconvinced that today’s gains will carry over into Tuesday.
