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    JM Bullion Gold and Silver Market Update (11/4/16)

    Gold Spot Price Open: $1,303

    Gold Spot Price Close: $1,307

    Change in Gold Spot Price: +$4

    Silver Spot Price Open: $18.38

    Silver Spot Price Close: $18.38

    Change in Silver Spot Price: NO CHANGE

    Gold and silver picked up ground on Friday thanks to an employment report that slightly missed the mark. When all was said and done, gold ended up gaining about 4 dollars while silver moved sideways all day. Platinum and palladium gained on the day, but platinum was the bigger gainer of the two, having picked up more than 10 dollars.

    Non-Farms Data Takes Center Stage

    This whole week, all anyone really cared about was what the Labor Department and their non-farms payrolls growth figures had to say. During the middle of the week, the ADP employment report slightly missed the mark, showing weaker private-sector employment growth than was expected. Though this data very rarely has any sort of direct impact on what the actual Labor Department data will show, it did well to give investors an idea that October employment growth was not anything to write home about.

    Today, the Labor Department showed that just over 170,000 new, non-farm jobs were added to the US economy during October. This fell a few thousand short of the 175,000 new jobs that were expected to be added and, as such, lent a little support to precious metals as seen in marginal spot value gains. What was encouraging for investors, however, was the fact that the unemployment rate fell from 5% to 4.9%. If nothing else, this provided a big psychological boost for so many people.

    BNP Paribas, in a note released after the employment data, commented on what the jobs data meant for rate hikes by saying, “Today’s report is the first of two employment reports we will get ahead of the December FOMC meeting. If this labor market progress continues, we see a high likelihood of a 25bp hike at that meeting, barring other shocks. Following the November FOMC statement we bumped up our probability of a December hike to 75% and today’s NFP print nudges it higher to 80%.”

    Put simply, there are very few people around the global marketplace who see anything other than a rate hike happening come December. This is something that will continue to keep precious metals spot values in check.

    Another interesting takeaway from today’s data was the fact that, from October 2015 to October 2016, earnings rose by just shy of 3%. This is the largest such gain in more than 5 years and, once again, points towards the US economy being strong and only continuing to grow in strength.

    Stocks Gain to Close Out Week

    Stock indexes in the US were green across the board on Friday and this is something that did not help precious metals at all. Stocks are looking like they will continue to fluctuate between now and when the US presidential election comes to a conclusion. Beyond that, the trajectory of US equities will depend wholly on who assumes the Oval Office come January.

    Wrap-Up

    Precious metals have decent weekly gains to reflect on, but it will be very interesting to see what happens to these gains come the middle of next week. We are not going to really speculate who is going to win the election, but the fact of the matter is that the race is much closer than most thing. On top of all of that, it truly is an important election with a lot of implications not only for the precious metals market, but for the entire investing world as well.

    Disclaimer: All Market Updates are provided as a third party analysis and do not necessarily reflect the explicit views of JM Bullion Inc. and should not be construed as financial advice.

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