Gold Spot Price Open: $1,175
Gold Spot Price Close: $1,172
Change in Gold Spot Price: -$3
Silver Spot Price Open: $15.74
Silver Spot Price Close: $15.80
Change in Silver Spot Price: +$0.06
Precious metals moved between small gains and small losses on Monday as investors struggle to assess the situation in Greece. When all was said and done, gold moved downward by a few dollars while silver managed to add about 6 cents. Platinum and palladium, on the other hand, finished the day downward significantly, with platinum losing more than $20/ounce while palladium was down to the tune of more than 30 dollars.
Greek Banks on Verge of Collapse
When we were heading into this past weekend, the eyes of the investing world descended upon Greece as Greek citizens were called to vote on whether or not they wanted to pursue austerity measures in exchange for more EU-backed bailout funds. Through a somewhat tight vote, it was finally established that the Greek citizenry was opposed to increased austerity measures. Though many saw Sunday’s vote as a victory, Greek lawmakers are struggling to find out where economy-sustaining bailout funds are going to come from. Several reports claim that most major Greek banks are just days from collapse should things stay the course.
A big story emerging from this whole situation is that Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis announced his resignation today. Varoufakis, who continually butted heads with creditors during negotiations, announced his resignation and claimed that his not being there might help a deal go through.
Now, Greek officials and creditors will meet again on Tuesday in order to see if there is any way Greece can be kept on the Euro and if banks can be propped up and prevented from collapsing. As has been the case all along, few people are expecting a deal to go through simply because of how apart Greece and creditors are with regard to a few different issues; the biggest of which is the structuring of debt repayments. Banks in Greece remain closed and ATMs are only allowing a limited number of withdrawals, so it is clear to see that the overall situation in Greece is deteriorating by the day. What this means for precious metals, however, is not so easy to determine. For now, technical selling and a general lack of fundamental, markets-moving data is preventing spot values from moving forward.
US Service Sector Receives Boost in June
There is no denying that recent economic data from the United States has been generally upbeat in nature. Today brought about more good news, this time for the service sector of the economy. According to the Institute for Supply Management’s national non-manufacturing index, June’s reading rose to a solid 56%, indicating growth in the service sector.
The most heavily analyzed aspect of the report, the employment index, actually fell over the course of May to June, but only by small margins. Despite this decline, experts are not worried seeing as overall non-farm employment numbers from June were decent and economic data is only expected to get better as the summer moves forward.
This is a light piece of data, but is just the beginning of this week’s data stream from the United States, which is expected to be fairly large.
Wrap-Up
We cannot seem to get away from Greece, and it seems like this week will offer up much of the same as the newest round of debt negotiations are expected to take place on Tuesday. All eyes will be on Europe in order to see if Greece will remain on the Euro, but as has been the case recently, I would not be at all surprised to see these negotiations extend beyond this week. Despite today’s somewhat slow start, I envision that the next four days will be filled with key information and economic data.
