Gold Spot Price Open: $1,196

Gold Spot Price Close: $1,197

Change in Gold Spot Price: +$1

Silver Spot Price Open: $15.97

Silver Spot Price Close: $16.13

Change in Silver Spot Price: +$0.16

Precious metals began the last day of the week moving upwards, but only slightly. When all was said and done, gold picked up about 3 dollars while silver managed to gain around a few pennies. Platinum finished the day down a few dollars, but palladium surged and added ten dollars before the day was through.

Equities End the Week On a High

Over the last few days, equity markets from around the world have been rebounding after suffering some hefty losses a week ago. In addition to equities doing better, the spot value of crude oil has bounced back a bit and is now off weekly lows.
On Wall Street, the S&P 500 partook in its best two-day rally in more than two years and brought the index just shy of an all-time record high. In truth, the rally we have witnessed through the latter part of this week is coming as a direct result of the more dovish comments made by the Federal Reserve on Wednesday.

The chain reaction only seems to continue as Wall Street’s momentum, in combination with a slightly stronger Russian economy and a recommitment by the Bank of Japan to their stimulus policy, pushed Japanese equity markets to their highest points in about 15 years. According to Peter Jankovskis, co-chief investment officer at Oakbrook Investments, “We have digested the drop in oil, we have gotten past the Fed, and now we will see what we will do for the rest of the year.” With no more full weeks of trading left in 2014, I expect that things will remain generally quiet as we advance through the Christmas holiday and into the new year.

Dollar Shoots Higher to Close Out the Week

The USD Index shot higher shortly after markets opened today and is performing well for a third consecutive day this week. Against a number of rival currencies, the greenback has made gains all week long and is really benefiting from the fact that US monetary policy is readily diverging from that of other countries from around the world.

Of all monetary policies that are diverging from that of the United States’, none is diverging faster than that of the European Union’s. As this continues, the Euro, which is now at a 28-month low against the USD, will continue to lose value. With that said, however, we did receive some upbeat news from the EU as today brought about an upbeat German consumer sentiment report. This report was surprising simply because most every consumer sentiment report from across Europe in recent months has been wholly negative. Of course, as we head into next week and into the new year, investors the world over will continue to keep a close eye on the greenback and its movement.

Wrap-Up

There really wasn’t too much to talk about today simply because there wasn’t all that much economic data for investors to discuss. This was the last full week of trading in 2014 and investors are slowly but surely looking forward to the year-end holiday season and focusing far less on the markets. For this reason, I expect that next week will be fairly quiet from an economic activity perspective.