Gold Spot Price Open: $1,304
Gold Spot Price Close: $1,293
Change in Gold Spot Price: -$11
Silver Spot Price Open: $21.00
Silver Spot Price Close: $20.48
Change in Silver Spot Price: -$0.52
Precious metals were seen conceding value for a majority of the day today, and ended far lower than where they opened. When all was said and done, gold lost more than ten dollars while silver lost a little over 50 cents. Palladium remained steady for a majority of the day, but platinum moved downward by a considerable margin.
USD Jumps On Upbeat Weekly Jobless Claims Report
The USD has been steadily improving since the early parts of this month. Today saw the greenback be given yet another boost on the back of an uncommonly upbeat weekly jobless claims report. In fact, jobless claims from last week were down by more than 18,000 from the week before and at their lowest point in 8 years. Officially, the week ending July 19th’s jobless claims came in at 284,000, compared to 303,000 the week before.
While the upbeat US employment sector did well to give the Dollar a boost, the euro currency was able to regain some of the ground it lost earlier this week. Still, with the EU boasting extremely loose monetary data, it is unlikely that the euro will be able to sustain today’s gains over any sort of extended period of time.
Stocks React Well to US Corporate Earnings
Generally speaking, today was a positive day for most equity markets from around the world. Asian stocks were given a boost before US markets opened as a result of a much better than expected Chinese HSBC preliminary PMI for July. As of late, Chinese economic data seems to be improving, something that is being welcomed with open arms by Asian investors who have seen equity markets in that part of the world under-performing for a majority of this year.
On the back of upbeat Facebook corporate earnings released after markets had closed yesterday, US stock indexes opened today in impressive fashion. Shortly thereafter, US equities were given a further boost by the unexpectedly low weekly jobless claims report. Unfortunately, however, a report citing a noticeable decline in single-family home sales in the United States delivered equity markets a blow shortly before the end of the day. Still, the day was not completely lost as the S&P 500 improved slightly while the Dow and Nasdaq were seen losing only minimal value by the time all was said and done today.
More Geopolitics to Distract Investors
As if there weren’t already a boatload of geopolitical happenings for investors to talk about, today brought about yet another story of a passenger flight being brought to the ground. This time the incident happened over the skies of West Africa and involved an Air Algerie flight heading North from Burkina Faso to Algeria. Not too long into the flight, and somewhere over Mali, it was reported that the plane carrying 100+ people disappeared from radar. Now, it is believed that the plane has crashed in a remote desert area of war-torn Mali. As of now, there is no definitive answer with regard to what brought the plane down, though it must be said that foul play is being touted as unlikely. We will find out more about this story in the coming days as emergency crews and investigators descend upon the supposedly remote area of the crash.
This news did not do much in the way of moving precious metals spot values in one direction or another, but it did definitely catch the attention of investors from around the world. With this, the Russia-Ukraine situation, and the ongoing violence in Gaza to pay attention to, investors will have a lot on their plate heading into this weekend.
Wrap-Up
As we look forward to the last day of this week, there really isn’t much economic data on the slate. It will be interesting to see if US equity markets can bounce back from a rough end of the day today, though most signs are pointing to yes. Investor risk-appetite has picked up considerably lately, and is a major contributor to precious metals’ stagnation through the first 4 days of this trading week. Finally, investors will also be paying attention to any further developments stemming from the Air Algerie crash. With such little information at our disposal, no one at this point can say with any certainty what caused the plane to come crashing to earth somewhere over Mali.
