Gold Spot Price Open: $1,226
Gold Spot Price Close: $1,224
Change in Gold Spot Price: -$2
Silver Spot Price Open: $19.48
Silver Spot Price Close: $19.18
Change in Silver Spot Price: -$0.30
Gold and silver both finished the day just down from their opening positions as gold hit yet another five-month low. When the day came to a close, gold lost about two dollars while silver’s losses came in around thirty cents.
A day before the Federal Reserve releases its beige book, investors are more or less holding steady with market bears still very much in control of the precious metals market. On Thursday, a US GDP report will be a great additional resource for investors to gauge the current strength and direction of the US economy. Finally, the week will be brought to a close with the latest US jobs data, another key point of interest for investors.
This plethora of economic data and reports is of the highest importance simply because investors have been obsessing over the possibility of the Fed tapering Quantitative Easing. With the FOMC’s December policy meeting looming, any and all economic data will be especially scrutinized by investors. The basic notion held by the investment community is that positive US economic data translates into a more immediate tapering of QE while inconsistent/poor data will mean the Fed will hold off on tapering.
Thursday also marks the monthly ECB policy meeting at which point president Mario Draghi will speak about the recent decision to cut the EU’s key lending rate. It is too early to tell whether the interest rate reduction has positively impacted the EU economy or not, but one positive that can be taken is that the extremely low inflation rate has risen in recent weeks. This means that the EU may end up avoiding the deflationary period many were fearing only a few weeks ago.
Losses by gold and silver were mitigated by a weaker US Dollar on Tuesday. Recently, the US Dollar has been performing extremely well, and in turn has put seemingly endless downward pressure on gold and silver.
