Gold Spot Price Open: $1,337
Gold Spot Price Close: $1,343
Change in Gold Spot Price: +$6
Silver Spot Price Open: $19.81
Silver Spot Price Close: $19.79
Change in Silver Spot Price: -$0.02
Metals have done some moving through the early parts of this week, but if we are being honest the movement has been less than significant. When all was said and done on Tuesday, gold managed to gain about 6 dollars while silver ended up losing another few pennies. Platinum and palladium also gained on the day, but neither metal moved forward by more than 5 dollars.
US Data Mostly Disappoints
After last Friday’s insanely upbeat batch of employment data, there were many who though that gold and silver might be doomed in the near-future. While the immediate wake of the jobs data has not been so kind to metals, it has definitely not resulted in overly significant losses. Today, metals were given somewhat of a boost thanks to a batch of mid-summer data that did interest rate hike hopes little favors.
Released today was the productivity report from the US from the 2nd quarter of this year. As you could have probably guessed, this report did not impress anyone and ended up pushing the USD Index lower, which in turn helped metals relieve a bit of pressure. Officially, 2nd quarter productivity declined by a half percent. This is not the most significant margin, but it does hurt the future outlook for the US economy seeing as this is the 3rd consecutive quarter where productivity took a step backwards. This is the worst such run for this report since the late 1970s.
Even though the greenback took a step back on Tuesday, global stock markets were mostly higher on rumors that OPEC is going to be holding a meeting at the end of September, albeit a reportedly “informal” one. At this meeting, expectations are that OPEC nations will discuss possibly reducing daily outputs of crude oil. If this sounds familiar, that is because it is. We have heard this very same speculation time and time again over the last year or more, but so far it has resulted in no change whatsoever. While this is the likely outcome of this meeting, there is still going to be a contingent of investors who are confident that oil productions will be cut. I suppose only time will tell whether OPEC makes any legitimate changes are not, but not very many people are holding their breath.
Though there were not immediate reactions on the part of crude oil’s spot value today, the commodity has been on a downtrend for well over a month now and perhaps this kind of talk is exactly the thing that will push crude’s value higher.
Risk-Appetite on the Rise
As evidenced by the previous section, risk-appetite is on the rise and global stock markets are showing it. This fact alone is not helping precious metals and is part of the reasons today’s marginal gains could not be anything more. There is not one, single thing pushing stocks higher, but as they do move higher and risk-appetite grows, safe-haven assets like gold and silver are likely to suffer losses.
Wrap-Up
We have been saying this frequently as of late, but it is worth repeating that today was yet another typical mid-summer day. Apart from the Q2 productivity report, there were few noteworthy pieces of data to report on. In the world of geopolitics, things have also been quiet ever since the hustle and bustle of central bank meetings last week. As we look forward to Wednesday and the rest of the week, there really isn’t much in the way of big economic reports to focus on. The US weekly jobless claims report will assuredly be watched over by investors everywhere, but it is still uncertain just how much of an impact it will have on spot values.
