Gold Spot Price Open: $1,368
Gold Spot Price Close: $1,357
Change in Gold Spot Price: -$11
Silver Spot Price Open: $20.53
Silver Spot Price Close: $20.22
Change in Silver Spot Price: -$0.31
Metals pulled back for most of the day on Monday and ended up losing some value by the time everything settled. When all was said and done, gold ended up losing roughly 11 dollars while silver lost a little more than 30 cents. Platinum and palladium began the week by moving a bit during the day but ending near even.
Stocks Rally, Keep Metals Subdued
To begin this week, precious metals were mostly steady but not looking like moving higher thanks to stronger stock indexes the world over. Following the lead of the Japanese Nikkei Index, which made its largest single-day gains since March, stocks in the US and Europe were mostly higher. Naturally, this is something that put pressure on gold and silver and contributed to today’s less than stellar performance.
Helping push along this stock market rally was Friday’s US non-farm payrolls report, which was far better than expectations. Being that people were expecting barely 200,000 new jobs to have been added to the US economy, it was a big shock that just shy of 290,000 new jobs were created. If you compare June’s nearly 300,000 new jobs to May’s sub-40,000 tally, it is easy to see why June’s report was viewed with a lot of positivity. Still, with domestic bond yields remaining pinned down, there is a feeling that choppier waters lie ahead in the near future. This is also something that helps explain why, despite the upbeat stock indexes today, gold and silver are still able to mostly hold their positions.
Easy Money Going to Continue
For economies like those in Europe and Asia, the general consensus is that the easy monetary policies that have dominated the landscape for the past year or more are, in all likelihood, going to remain in place for the time being. In fact, thanks to the recent BRExit decision, most are convinced that easy money may make its way back into the US as well. While this belief does not have much support behind it, it is gaining a bit of momentum amongst global investors.
For now, the fact that the Dollar will continue to gain in the face of countries whose currencies are actively being weakened means that gold will become a bit more expensive. This is perhaps part of the reason why we have seen the all-out sprint to safe-haven metals calm down in recent days. Now, if the US, and more specifically the Federal Reserve, even so much as alludes that monetary policy will be loosened in the near future, you can expect that gold will receive a lot of support. So far, however, the has not happened.
While there still remains a lot of unknowns with regard to economies in Europe and elsewhere around the world, investors are going to be hanging on every word emanating from the Fed at their upcoming July meeting. Even though no one is expecting to hear that rate hikes are coming anytime soon, investors will be concerned with regard to what the Fed thinks BRExit will mean for the immediate future of the US economy. It is in moments like these that everyone is hoping the Fed remains clear and transparent rather than vague.
Wrap-Up
Monday did not offer anything in the way of fresh fundamental news for investors to consider and look over, but it did see global stock markets emit a performance that was more unexpected than anything else. This put precious metals under some pressure and is likely to blame for the losses incurred today—albeit small ones. As we look forward to the rest of the week there is not all that much on the table as far as fresh data is concerned, so you can expect investors to be harping on many of the same issues that have dominated headlines for the past 2 weeks or more.
