Gold Spot Price Open: $1,290
Gold Spot Price Close: $1,317
Change in Gold Spot Price: +$31
Silver Spot Price Open: $20.99
Silver Spot Price Close: $21.81
Change in Silver Spot Price:+$0.82
After some fairly large losses being posted yesterday, today saw both gold and silver make substantial gains. When all was said and done, gold gained about 31 dollars while silver picked up a little over 80 cents.
The ongoing US government shutdown is making for an uneasy economic atmosphere, exemplified by yesterday’s decline of precious metals spot values. Today saw spot values increase a bit mostly thanks to bargain hunting as precious metals prices were the lowest they have been in about 7 weeks.
There is still no indication just how long this shutdown will last, but the longer it persists the more uneasy the overall economic atmosphere will be. The shutdown is also affecting economic data which we expected to hear this week and the data will continued to be delayed until this shutdown is figured out. It must be mentioned that only government-sanctioned reports will be delayed, those from private companies will likely still be issued as expected. One of those reports was the ADP National Employment Report, which was released earlier today. The report indicated a 166,000 gain in jobs during September, and while this number seems like a positive one, it was below expectations by just a little bit.
There is no denying that the government shutdown is hurting the economy both on a micro and macro level, and if it persists for any extended period of time we could be looking at a real crisis. On top of it all, the US is set to hit their borrowing limit in a week or so, something that will require the government’s undivided attention. It will be interesting to see how these next few days play out in regards to the government shutdown, and will be even more interesting to see how gold and silver react.
