Gold Spot Price Open: $1,343
Gold Spot Price Close: $1,327
Change in Gold Spot Price: -$16
Silver Spot Price Open: $19.00
Silver Spot Price Close: $18.55
Change in Silver Spot Price: -$0.45
Gold and silver ended up moving lower again on Wednesday mostly thanks to a general lack of fresh news as well as bearish outside markets. When all was said and done, gold ended up losing more than 15 dollars while silver conceded close to another 45 cents. Other metals performed poorly as well, including platinum which lost almost 20 dollars and palladium which was down by nearly 10 dollars.
Bearish Outside Markets Push Metals Downward
Truth be told, there was not much, if anything, in the way of fresh news offered to the global marketplace on Wednesday. As such, gold and silver continued to spin their wheels and lose value. Immediately from the time markets opened in the US investors saw the USD Index shoot up while crude oil values continued to fall. Even though crude oil seemed to be on a rally of sorts last week, hope is fading with regard to whether OPEC, at their meeting next month, will be able to do anything to curb the daily output of crude oil across the Middle East.
What’s more, it seems as though the upbeat housing data released on Tuesday is having a positive impact on the USD Index, which hadn’t been performing too well as of late.
Being in the midst of the Summer Doldrums is doing nothing positive for precious metals, which have been on a losing streak for much of the past 2 or 3 weeks. You can anticipate that the trading atmosphere will be light and devoid of any major developments for the next week or more. After the US Labor Day holiday passes, market activity will slowly pick up. What this means for metals is tough to say, but many experts feel as though the upside potential is still there. Unfortunately, any bit of upbeat US economic data is more than likely going to make it difficult for spot values to make sustained gains. So long as interest rate hikes are on the table—and they are—metals are going to suffer as a consequence.
US Crude Stockpiles Surprise Again
Further pushing the value of oil and spot values downward on Wednesday was the fact that, once again, the United States reported holding larger stockpiles of crude oil than most had anticipated. This drove prices down a few weeks ago and will continue to do the same going forward.
In other crude oil-related news, Iran recently penned a letter to OPEC saying that it would like to participate in September’s meeting. The meeting, for those who may be unaware, is said to be solely based on what OPEC nations can do to stabilize and lift the price of crude oil. Naturally, one of the only ways to achieve this goal will be to cut daily production of barrels of crude oil. Though this has been discussed in the past, we have yet to see a single OPEC country set its foot down and act on cutting daily production.
In the past, Iran shied away from these meetings because, at the time, they were just released from Western-imposed sanctions and were selling oil to countries they had not been able to reach for decades. Now that the Iranians have more of a market-share, it seems as though a price hike may benefit them both in the long and short-terms. Still, cutting production is a big ask and is not as easy to implement as it sounds.
Wrap-Up
As you can clearly see, Wednesday did not differ much from previous days as there was little to no fresh data on the table. Investors are looking forward to Janet Yellen’s economic policy speech in Jackson Hole on Friday, but other than that there is not much new data for investors to discuss. So long as this remains the case, gold and silver spot values are likely to continue along their downward trajectory, at least for the time being.
