Gold Spot Price Open: $1,262
Gold Spot Price Close: $1,243
Change in Gold Spot Price: -$19
Silver Spot Price Open: $19.63
Silver Spot Price Close: $19.23
Change in Silver Spot Price: -$0.40
Gold and silver returned all of yesterday’s gains today as losses were being posted from the second markets opened. When all was said and done, gold lost nearly 20 dollars while silver lost just about 40 cents.
A combination of calming world stock markets and a rising US Dollar piled the downward pressure on precious metals today. As investors had more time to digest the Fed’s decision to further taper Quantitative Easing, it was clear that the US Dollar was the biggest winner. In case you missed it, the FOMC announced yesterday that they would taper Quantitative Easing by another $10 billion per month. Now, the Fed is only purchasing $65 billion worth of bonds per month, down from $85 billion worth of bonds they were purchasing barely over a month ago. The decreased amount of easy money being circulated throughout the world marketplace is causing investors to abandon their equity holdings, something that greatly helped gold and silver make gains on Wednesday.
Also working against the prospects of gold and silver today was yet another batch of poor economic data out of China. January’s final manufacturing PMI reading came back at 49.5, down from 50.5 this past December. The Chinese economy has been emitting a lot of downbeat data lately, something that hurts gold and silver because the Chinese are the largest consumers of raw commodities annually. Today’s final PMI reading for January is the last economic report we will see out of China for about a week as the nation, and most of Asia, is gearing up to celebrate the Lunar New Year tomorrow and the following few days.
Though gold and silver traded down today, decreasing interest in world equities may still be enough to propel the metals forward over the next few weeks. As we head into the last day of the week it will be interesting to see if the US Dollar continues to gain value or whether it will level out and relieve gold and silver from the pressure both metals were feeling today.
