Gold Spot Price Open: $1,330
Gold Spot Price Close: $1,321
Change in Gold Spot Price: -$9
Silver Spot Price Open: $21.30
Silver Spot Price Close: $21.20
Change in Silver Spot Price: -$0.10
Gold and silver spot values finished the short trading week down slightly due to some upbeat US economic data and profit-taking after recent gains. When all was said and done, gold lost about 9 dollars while silver fell by about ten cents.
Shortly after markets opened today, the US Labor Department published their latest non-farm payrolls data for June. Much to the surprise of almost everyone, the data showed that more than 285,000 jobs were added to the economy last month. Prior to today, most market experts were expecting job growth to be somewhere in the neighborhood of 212,000-215,000. The better than anticipated jobs figures were enough to push the unemployment rate down to 6.1%.
As you probably could have guessed, today’s upbeat economic data from the United States pushed the USD Index higher, above $80 for the first time this week.
All in all, today was looking like it would weigh on precious metals spot values shortly after US markets opened. Despite the fact that a majority of this week’s US economic data worked against gold and silver, Fed Chair Janet Yellen recently made it clear that she and the rest of the Federal Reserve intend on keeping interest rates at current levels for the foreseeable future. This fact alone is providing nice fundamental support for precious metals and is a large part of the reason why gold is currently sitting above $1,300/ounce and silver above $21/ounce.
The only other noteworthy economic event taking place today was the European Central Bank policy meeting, which yielded nothing in the way of major policy changes. Because a large portion of traders took today off in order to get an early start on the Independence Day holiday weekend, I expect more reaction to today’s events sometime early next week.
