Gold and silver broke out of the midweek holiday with a strong showing on Thursday after a flurry of reports on building permits, housing starts, and unemployment muted hopes the economy was finally on the backside of its inflation fight.
Gold was up $33.13 at $2,362 per ounce and silver climbed $0.94 to break through the $30 ceiling at $30.71 in early morning trading.
Earlier Thursday, dual reports from the U.S. Census Bureau showed that privately-owned housing units authorized by building permits in May were at a seasonally-adjusted annual rate of 1,386,000 – 3.8% below April’s revised rate of 1.44 million and 9.5% below the May 2023 rate of 1.53 million.
Additionally, privately-owned housing starts last month were at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1,277,000 – 5.5% below the revised April estimate of 1.35 million and 19.3% below the May 2023 rate of 1.58 million, the bureau reported.
Both key economic indicators came in well short of Wall Street projections of 1.45 million permits and 1.38 million starts. Housing data is a critical tool economists use to gauge inflation’s toll.
Meanwhile, the number of workers applying for unemployment insurance for the week ending June 15 totaled 238,000, the Department of Labor reported. While the figure represented a decrease of 5,000 applications from the previous week’s revised level of 243,000, the total still fell short of the 235,000 insurance applications economists had estimated.
Thursday’s data strings followed a week of largely hawkish remarks by a raft of Federal Reserve officials, who indicated a desire to see more conclusive economic data showing progress on lowering inflation before deciding to trim 23-year-high interest rates, which many investors hoped would come by September. While most of the officials noted progress in a handful of recent economic reports, they were quick to express concern over how fast inflation was being tamed.