Gold Spot Price Open: $1,363
Gold Spot Price Close: $1,338
Change in Gold Spot Price: -$25
Silver Spot Price Open: $20.48
Silver Spot Price Close: $19.66
Change in Silver Spot Price: -$0.82
Gold and silver lost value to close out the week and it is looking like both gold and silver will finish the week having posted losses. When all was said and done on Friday, gold lost more than 20 dollars while silver conceded in upwards of 85 cents. Platinum and palladium also finished the day and week moving downward, with platinum losing about 20 dollars while palladium conceded 10.
Last Bit of Us Jobs Data Dealt
This week has brought with it a bunch of developments both from the United States and around the world, but perhaps more important than any of them was today’s non-farms payrolls report from the US Department of Labor. Before we delve into that, it’s only right that we recap what employment data has been dealt thus far this week.
First was the ADP private-sector jobs growth report which was made public on Wednesday. This report, though not weighted all that heavily by investors, came back wholly positive and showed growth that beat expectations. Next was Thursday’s release of the most recent weekly jobless claims report. This piece of data was not so upbeat as it showed that 3,000 more first-time unemployment claims were filed last week than the week before. Naturally, this increased the seasonally-adjusted average number of jobless claims, but that figure is still sitting at a level that is far from worrisome.
This morning, the Department of Labor showed that the employment sector is still performing well and that the US economy added more than 250,000 non-farm payrolls during July. This number was almost 50,000 more than was expected and does well to keep the opinions of the US labor situation positive. For gold and silver, the release of this data almost immediately pushed spot values downward—and considerably so. On the day, gold alone lost about 1% of its value while silver edged back down below the $20/ounce threshold. This constitutes a major blow to the psyche of precious metals investors and could not have come at a more inopportune time.
The real question on everyone’s mind in the wake of this data release is what the upbeat employment report means for the future of interest rates. Right now, the simple answer to that is that it does not mean anything at all. With that being said, however, a consistent stream of similar reports and weekly jobless claims data that remains respectable can very well reignite the interest rate debate.
Wrap-Up
Truth be told, there wasn’t much to discuss on Friday other than the jobs data that was released earlier this morning. As you might expect, investors everywhere are speculating what, if anything, this jobs data means for the outlook on the US economy going forward. You can expect that there will be some people calling for interest rates to be hiked as soon as next month, but all of the evidence we have gathered over the past few weeks suggests that it is going to take far more than a single upbeat piece of employment data for the Fed to become gung-ho about hiking rates.
What will be interesting to see, however, is whether metals will continue to fall as a result of the jobs data come markets’ open on Monday, or if they will be able to bounce back to some extent. In all, it is highly likely that next week will be significantly slower, as far as data is concerned, than this week has been. That would be typical for a week in August.
