Gold Spot Price Open: $1,355
Gold Spot Price Close: $1,325
Change in Gold Spot Price: -$30
Silver Spot Price Open: $23.13
Silver Spot Price Close: $21.95
Change in Silver Spot Price: -$1.18
Gold and silver suffered modest losses on Thursday as the marketplace has digested yesterday’s FOMC statement and deemed it bearish for precious metals. When all was said and done, gold lost roughly 30 dollars while silver was down almost a dollar and twenty cents.
Yesterday’s post-meeting statement released by the FOMC was not expected to emit any major news, though its contents were surprising to say the least. The Fed’s statement indicated that while the US economy is much stronger now than it was only a few months ago, it is not strong enough to merit an end or tapering of QE quite yet. With that being said, investors interpreted the Fed’s assessment of the US economy as an indication that they may taper QE sooner than mid-2014, which was the prevailing belief prior to yesterday.
Now, with the meeting behind us, investors and market watchers are going to analyze all US economic data with increased scrutiny. Some of that data was released today in the form of this week’s jobless claims report, which showed that unemployment claims fell by 10,000 this week.
Europe’s latest inflation reading showed the world that inflation in Europe is the lowest it has been in over 4 years. The annual inflation rate for this October was down near .7%, which is far below the target inflation rate of around 2%. This low inflation gives the European Central Bank room to continue with their loose monetary policies.
Another report today indicated that even though we are in the midst of India’s holiday season, demand for gold is not as high as market experts anticipated. The blame for decreased Indian demand for gold has been directly attributed to the Indian government’s recently raised taxes on imported gold.
