Gold Spot Price Open: $1,076

Gold Spot Price Close: $1,072

Change in Gold Spot Price: -$4

Silver Spot Price Open: $14.36

Silver Spot Price Close: $14.38

Change in Silver Spot Price: +$0.02

Precious metals mostly moved sideways on Wednesday as investors mulled over the economic data that was released this week. When all was said and done, gold lost about four dollars while silver actually gained about two pennies. Platinum and palladium, on the other hand, moved downward by about 5 dollars apiece.

November Durable Goods Orders Flat

Early during the day on Wednesday it was reported that orders for durable goods during the month of November did not improve much at all from the month prior. Durable goods are things like automobiles, airplanes, and other big-ticket items. The unchanged nature of durable goods orders in the US is particularly disappointing after October saw such orders improve by nearly 3% from the month before.

In its report, the Commerce Department remarked that orders for electronics and automobiles picked up during the month of November, but orders for non-military affiliated airplanes and machinery equipment took a dip that offset other durable goods gains.

Jim O’Sullivan, chief economist at High Frequency Economics, commented on the report by saying, “The manufacturing sector still looks fairly weak—weaker than non-manufacturing, reflecting more exposure to declining exports, a plunge in oil-related investment and an inventory cycle.” The manufacturing sector’s weakness is due, in large part, to a massive decline in orders for commercial aircraft, to the tune of almost 37%. Those declines and declines on the part of orders for machinery are hurting factory employment and, in the end, putting a damper on exports across the board.

New Homes Sales Rise in November

A day after existing home sales were reported as being dismal in November, it was reported that new home sales were on the rise last month. Though new home sales improved, the pace at which they grew fell short of most people’s expectations. According to the Commerce Department, single-family homes moved up by more than 4% to bring the year on year pace of new home sales to nearly 500,000.

Forecasts expected sales to eclipse the 500,000 mark, so that is why this report is being viewed as not the best news. Once again, however, the slower pace of growth on the part of home sales is being blamed on a new real estate buying rule that was recently implemented. The National Association of Realtors claims that as people adjust to the new rule, things will normalize and growth will improve once more. It will be interesting to see if this happens in the coming months or if the US will soon be facing a streak of poor housing data. After all, the strength of the housing market was a pivotal factor in the Fed’s decision to raise interest rates barely a week ago.

Wrap-Up

Once again, Wednesday was a mostly slow day across the global marketplace. Though there was yet another nice batch of economic data dealt to investors, it is difficult to gauge exactly how the investing world feels about this data as there are not many people around to react to the news. As we look forward to Thursday, I expect that this will be the slowest day of the week thus far as Christmas Eve will keep most people away from business and instead focus on their families.