Gold Spot Price Open: $1,169
Gold Spot Price Close: $1,168
Change in Gold Spot Price: -$1
Silver Spot Price Open: $15.80
Silver Spot Price Close: $15.92
Change in Silver Spot Price: +$0.12
Precious metals managed to more or less hold their position on Thursday despite outside market forces suggesting that losses may pile up. When all was said and done, gold lost about a single dollar while silver actually managed to gain over ten cents. Platinum and palladium were both up, with palladium the bigger gainer of the two–adding 10 dollars.
Dollar Rallies, Gold Holds Steady
After performing poorly over the last week or so, the USD Index shot up sharply on Tuesday. Luckily, gold and silver were able to more or less hold their ground and not let the day turn into the day of losses so many people expected. This week’s European Central Bank meeting was followed up by a dovish post-meeting statement by ECB president Mario Draghi. Despite not changing anything with regard to European monetary policy at this week’s meeting, Draghi did hint that such changes and further stimulus may be on their way come December. A move like this, he alluded to, would be in order to boost overall EU economic growth and fight off the constant threat of deflation.
Because more monetary stimulus is expected in the not too distant future, Draghi’s comments today were seen as beneficial to the US Dollar and detrimental to the Euro currency. The Dollar has spent much of this year gaining against the Euro, and with money across Europe on the verge of becoming even easier, the greenback may move noticeably higher quickly should a policy change be enacted.
Light Day of US Economic Data
Today offered up a bit of light US economic data which first came in the form of the weekly jobless claims report. Despite investors being very heavily focuses on this such report, the figures came back about in line with expectations and did not emit too many surprises. US employment figures have been under heavy scrutiny as they seem to be considered the main factor the Fed is considering when it comes to the prospect of raising interest rates or not.
As for sales of previously owned homes in September are concerned, that figure rose by nearly 5% on an annualized basis. This brings the annualized pave of sales to 5.55 million, which handily beats expectations of less than 5.4 million. For the past 12 months now, year on year existing home sales have gone up and have beaten expectations along the way. This is a positive sign that the overall US economy is doing ok seeing as the average American is more willing to make big-ticket purchases of homes and automobiles. Should the data stream from the US remain positive over the course of the next few weeks, I would not be surprised at all to see the sentiment regarding when interest rate hikes might come change for yet another time. That much, of course, remains to be seen at the present moment.
Wrap-Up
With gold and silver not having done too much upward moving this week, tomorrow will likely be a very crucial day. Speculation regarding next week’s FOMC meeting has already picked up, though investors know no more about interest rates now than they did last week or the week before that. The hope, however, is that next week’s meeting and accompanying statement will bring a bit more clarity to the situation.
