Gold Spot Price Open: $1,177
Gold Spot Price Close: $1,175
Change in Gold Spot Price: -$2
Silver Spot Price Open: $16.04
Silver Spot Price Close: $15.90
Change in Silver Spot Price: -$0.14
Precious metals backed down today after impressing throughout most of last week. When all was said and done, gold posted losses of about 2 dollars while silver declined to the tune of roughly 14 cents. Platinum and palladium also fell today, but neither metals’ losses exceeded ten dollars.
Gold Declines on Lackluster Monday
After hitting three and a half week highs last week, the spot prices of gold and silver declined on Monday thanks to profit-taking and some chart consolidation. Key outside markets were overly bearish for gold and silver today as the USD Index ticked higher while crude oil prices moved a bit lower. Crude oil prices are a major factor that affect the spot value movement of gold and silver and any time crude oil moves downward gold and silver almost always follow suit; today was no exception to that.
Slowly making its way to the front-burner of the marketplace’s attention is the possibility of a government shutdown come early November. If the US debt limit is not raised, the US government will shut down and markets will undoubtedly be affected in one way or another. As of now, there is a strong feeling that a shutdown will be avoided, but lawmakers are still in a bit of a stalemate and are making no progress quickly. A government shutdown, and even the possibility of one, is something that tends to cause anxiety across both the US and global marketplaces. This could benefit spot values, but that much remains to be seen at the present moment in time.
More Lackluster Chinese Economic Data
For the past few weeks, there have been murmurings across the global marketplace that the Chinese Central Bank is going to need to do something in order to combat the very real economic slowdown the country is facing. Today brought with it even more evidence that the Chinese economy is struggling seen in a third-quarter GDP report that was the worst we have seen in more than many years. Officially, 3rd-quarter GDP in China rose by just 6.9% on an annualized basis. For China, any GDP growth reading under 7% is viewed as extremely disappointing and this particular report only serves to highlight how poorly the region is doing.
Reports on Chinese industrial output were equally disappointing and it seems as though we are receiving 10 poor economic reports from China for every single upbeat one. Being that the Chinese economy is so closely tied to major economies such as the US and those in Europe, any poor data from China will likely reflect poorly on the aforementioned economies as well. In fact, China’s poor performance is just one of many reasons behind why the US Federal Reserve may not be able to hike interest rates before the end of the year. With the October FOMC meeting scheduled to kick off and wrap up midweek next week, you can bet that the focus of the investing world will turn to the US Fed and any commentary from voting FOMC members.
Wrap-Up
As was mentioned previously, today was mostly a lackluster day across the global marketplace. This week will likely bring about much of the same, but the speculation is already picking up with regard to what China’s central bank is going to do about monetary policy and whether or not the Fed will offer additional insight into the potential hiking of interest rates. When it comes down to it though, the overall outlook now is that interest rates will likely remain untouched until the early parts of 2016.
