Gold Spot Price Open: $1,056
Gold Spot Price Close: $1,057
Change in Gold Spot Price: +$11
Silver Spot Price Open: $14.08
Silver Spot Price Close: $14.21
Change in Silver Spot Price: +$0.13
Precious metals moved upward on Thursday, but to be fair, neither metal ended too dramatically far from where they began the day. When all was said and done, gold managed to gain about eleven dollars while silver managed to pick up roughly 13 cents. Platinum and palladium also finished the day positively, with both metals gaining roughly ten dollars apiece.
Yellen Signals Interest Rate Hike A Go
In a prepared speech delivered on Thursday, Janet Yellen did little to hide the fact that the Fed is planning on raising interest rates this month for the first time in nearly a decade. In her speech, which was made to the Economic Club of Washington, she said, “The economy has come a long way toward the FOMC’s objectives of maximum employment and price stability. When the committee begins to normalize the stance of policy, doing so will be a testament, also, to how far our economy has come in recovering from the effects of the financial crisis and the Great Recession. In that sense, it is a day that I expect we all are looking forward to.”
As for when a rate hike announcement might actually be made, investors are looking towards the FOMC policy meeting expected to be held over December 15th and 16th. As is typically the case, Yellen did not finish her prepared speech without saying that interest rate hikes are wholly dependent on US economic data remaining as upbeat as it has been in recent weeks. Though no one is expecting data to take a massive downturn, anything can happen in the next two or so weeks.
ECB Extends QE
The European Central Bank held their monthly policy meeting earlier today, and the world watched as they expected the region’s governing bank to decide what it was going to do with monetary policy. In case you were unaware, Europe, for much of the past year, has been pursuing easy money policies not too dissimilar to those pursued by the US shortly after the dawn of the 2008 financial crisis. These easy money policies are aimed at devaluing the Euro in an effort to spur economic growth across the board.
To be truthful, Quantitative Easing measures in Europe have thus far failed to impress, but are currently being credited with helping the region avoid long periods of time in recession. In his speech after the meeting, ECB president Mario Draghi said that he and his colleagues believe that current QE measures are enough to boost the strength of the European economy and push inflation back to the target level of 2%.
During the post-meeting Q&A session, Draghi commented by saying, “The committee believes that expanding the time horizon and more importantly reinvesting the principal payments would be the right thing to do at this time. We are confident we will be able to reach our objectives within our time horizon.”
Wrap-Up
By the time things wrapped up on Thursday, both gold and silver did finish higher, but these gains were not anything significant. As we look ahead to the last day of the week, investors will be gearing up for the release of the latest payrolls report from the United States from November. Barring an overly downbeat payrolls report, it is unlikely that the outlook on interest rate hikes will change much at all.
