Gold Spot Price Open: $1,096
Gold Spot Price Close: $1,093
Change in Gold Spot Price: -$3
Silver Spot Price Open: $14.87
Silver Spot Price Close: $14.81
Change in Silver Spot Price: -$0.06
Precious metals tried their hardest to stop slides that have lasted well over a week at this point. When all was said and done, gold didn’t finish far from where it began the day, while silver lost just over five cents. Platinum and palladium did not fare so well, with both metals having lost a little more than five dollars.
Gold Halts Massive Slide, to Some Extent
After moving considerably downward for more than 9 trading session in a row, gold looked like it was finally able to halt its slide on Thursday. Small losses were incurred, but at the end of the day were mostly negligible. Despite this, no one can avoid facing the fact that current market conditions are wholly stacked up against the yellow metal. Patrick Kerr, owner of The Kerr Corporation, commented on the current state of things by saying, “Gold is being ‘stepped on’ by world events — rumors of massive Chinese margin calls have Chinese investors liquidating gold, elsewhere flight to safety capital currently prefers the Swiss Franc, U.S. dollars or U.S. Treasurys over gold.”
Looking ahead, there are not too many people who see the spot value of gold moving forward anytime soon. In fact, there are quite a few out there who think that metals may continue to slide until the Fed officially announces interest rate increases; something that is expected to happen come mid-September. In summation, there is a whole host of factors working against precious metals at the current moment in time, and unless a bombshell, bullish headline comes out of left field, it is looking like it will stay that way.
Jobless Claims Fall By More than 20k
One of the more important pieces of economic data being made public this week came earlier today in the form of the weekly jobless claims report from last week. According to the data, applications for first-time unemployment benefits fell by more than 25,000 to an unexpected 255,000. This is overly good news for the US economy as expectations were that weekly jobless claims would fall somewhere between 275,000 and 285,000.
This is yet another sign indicating that the employment sector of the US economy is growing and, to some degree, thriving. Of course, this news works against precious metals and is a major part of the reason we did not see any sort of rebound today. Even the four-week moving average of jobless claims fell, which is a great sign. As we move forward, upbeat economic data is only going to serve as reason for investors to believe that interest rate hikes will, in fact, be announced by September’s Fed meeting.
Wrap-Up
As has been the case for most of the week, Thursday was a fairly slow day. Earnings reports failed to move markets too drastically in any single direction, and the outlook on precious metals remained just about the same as it has been for the past few weeks–poor. There is not much in the way of markets-moving data expected to be made public tomorrow, so I am anticipating a somewhat slow conclusion to a somewhat slow week in general. At this point, investors both at home and abroad are sitting back and seeing just how far gold and silver spot values are going to fall. Upcoming holidays in India may spark some increased physical purchasing of gold, but it is tough to say if that will help spot values in the long run much at all.
