Gold Spot Price Open: $1,278
Gold Spot Price Close: $1,279
Change in Gold Spot Price: +$1
Silver Spot Price Open: $17.80
Silver Spot Price Close: $17.86
Change in Silver Spot Price: +$0.06
Precious metals got the week off to a slow start on Monday and did not do all that much moving by day’s end. When all was said and done, gold managed to add about a dollar while silver added a little more than 5 cents. Platinum and palladium both lost as well, with both metals losing about 5 dollars apiece.
Inflation, Consumer Spending Data Dealt
With the month of December inching ever-closer with each passing day, the discussion regarding what the future holds for US interest rates is only going to continue to heat up. Today, monetary policy hawks who would like to see rates raised before year’s end got some positive news in the form of inflation data and data on consumer spending. For those who may not know, consumer spending accounts for about 70% of US economic activity, so it is always something that will be closely watched by investors.
According to the Commerce Department, consumer spending during September rose by .5% after August’s figure was revised to show a drop of .1%. Being that September was great for consumer spending, this also gave investors confidence that the final quarter of the year is going to be a positive one. On an annualized rate for the 3rd quarter, consumer spending improved by more than 2%. Add this to the more than 4% annualized growth realized during Q2 and you have yourself a few consecutive quarters of decent growth.
All of this data is coming out a day ahead of the 2-day FOMC policy meeting. Of course, even with all of this talk of potential interest rate hikes this week’s meeting is not expected to bring about much of anything in the way of new, fresh information. With the US presidential election barely more than a week away, there were never very many people expecting to see US monetary policy changed this week.
Dollar bounces Back on Clinton Email Probe
Something preventing precious metals from moving forward much at all is a stronger US Dollar. After sliding to close out the week last week, the greenback rebounded upon news that the FBI was going to reopen the Hillary Clinton email probe in light of some new discoveries regarding her use of classified information on a private server.
Coming just days ahead of the election, there is no saying what this could mean for Hillary’s chances of taking over control of the White House. Right now we are seeing polls grow increasingly tight. As such, the outcome, if there is one, of this new probe might have a direct impact on the outcome of the presidential election as a whole. With that being said, people seem to generally not care all that much about Clinton’s use of her own private email server, so there is a good chance that this probe comes and goes with little to no impact on the election process as a whole.
Wrap-Up
As you could have probably guessed, one of the big events of the week will happen tomorrow and Wednesday in the form of the FOMC policy meeting. Though no one is anticipating that anything regarding monetary policy will be changed, it will still be interesting to see what the tone of the post-meeting statement will be.
Other than that, there is not a whole lot in the way of markets-moving data that investors are expecting to be released in the coming days. It will be intriguing to see what that means for precious metals, but it is difficult to envision spot values moving too far in any one direction this week.