Gold Spot Price Open: $1,132
Gold Spot Price Close: $1,136
Change in Gold Spot Price: +$4
Silver Spot Price Open: $15.89
Silver Spot Price Close: $15.73
Change in Silver Spot Price: -$0.16
Precious metals are, if you can believe, going to finish this quiet week of trading showing some signs of strength. When all was said and done on Friday, gold managed to add about 4 dollars while silver actually fell by 16 cents. Platinum and palladium finished the day mixed, with platinum losing more than 10 dollars while palladium added about 4.
Precious Metals Ignore Home Data
At this point in time, we have come to expect that, when we see a solid piece of US economic data, precious metals’ spot values will feel pressure. Despite the final day of the week bringing with it some stronger housing data from the US, precious metals—particularly gold—managed to hold their own.
On Friday, the Commerce Department explained that November saw a 5.2% uptick in the number of new houses sold. This brought the seasonally-adjusted number of new homes sold up to 592,000; almost 20,000 better than what experts were anticipating. Moving up by more than 5% from one month to the next is impressive, but perhaps even more impressive is that November 2016’s new home sales figures were more than 15% better than what they were a year earlier. For many people, the continuation of positive US economic data in the wake of the Fed’s decision to hike rates is something that does nothing more than prove the validity of the FOMC’s decision.
Metals Look to Benefit from Potential Pullback
More or less since it became confirmed that Donald Trump would become the next President of the United States, equity markets in the US and around the world began performing superbly. Chief amongst these top performers were US markets, which hit multi-month and multi-year highs at points. Thanks to all of the attention being placed on equities, metals have found it significantly more difficult than normal to move forward. As we look ahead to yet another holiday week of trading and beyond, there is some hope that a corrective pullback on the part of stock markets is something that will help precious metals immensely. Though this is pure speculation, there are many people who are buying into this belief.
The start of a new year is always interesting, and it would not come as too big of a surprise to see stocks back down from the extremely elevated positions in which they currently find themselves.
With how poorly the last few months of 2016 have gone for gold and silver, you would think something has to give. As for the year as a whole, both gold and silver are hanging on to somewhat small gains. Assuming the next week does not go horribly wrong, the year will, technically, have been a positive one.
Wrap-Up
As we wrap up this slow holiday week of trading, the fact is that we are looking ahead to a forthcoming week that will be about the same. There will be some economic data for investors to look into, but due to the generally subdued nature of market activity any reaction to any data will assuredly be muted. For this reason, we do not expect next week to be all that exciting.