Gold Spot Price Open: $1,064
Gold Spot Price Close: $1,086
Change in Gold Spot Price: +$22
Silver Spot Price Open: $14.16
Silver Spot Price Close: $14.61
Change in Silver Spot Price: +$0.45
Precious metals managed to post solid gains on the last day of the first full week of December trading despite a jobs report that fell in line with expectations. When all was said and done, gold managed to pick up about twenty dollars while silver’s gains edged over 40 cents. Platinum and palladium also made gains on the day, both picking up more than 30 dollars.
Jobs Data Falls In Line With Expectations
One of, if not the biggest data point of the week came Friday morning in the form of November’s report on employment growth in the United States. Recent employment data has been upbeat and has been lending increasing credence to the belief that interest rates will be raised for the first time in roughly 8 years.
Officially, the Labor Department held that about 211,000 new jobs were created during November. Seeing as expectations were for 200,000 jobs to have been created during November, today’s data makes it seem as though the Fed has no choice but to raise interest rates at their meeting which will take place over the course of December 15th and 16th. The unemployment rate did not move during November and is still sitting at a 7.5 year low of an even 5%.
As far as the Fed is concerned, the current level of unemployment is right in line with what the Fed was calling for in order to raise interest rates. Adding to the speculation that interest rates are soon to be on the rise is the fact that Janet Yellen, on Thursday, made a prepared speech basically saying that, barring any extremely poor economic data, it is highly probably that interest rates will be raised before the New Year. Now the market will have to wait about a week and a half to see if that ends up being the case or not.
Euro Backs Down Day After Gains
On Thursday, the European Central Bank held their monthly policy meeting and, contrary to expectations, decided against expanding their current easy money economic policies and instead simply extended their current policies further than originally planned almost a year ago. This did not really fall in line with expectations and, as a result, ended up giving the Euro a bit of a boost to close out the day on Thursday.
Today, however, the Euro was right back to moving downward thanks to the upbeat employment report from the US driving the greenback’s value upward. As we look forward to the next week or so, the undivided attention of the global marketplace will be firmly fixated on anything having to do with US economic data and any commentary from the Fed.
There is sure to be some more European data dealt in the coming days, but almost all of it is sure to take a backseat to data from the United States.
Wrap-Up
All in all, this week saw precious metals mostly bounce around between small losses and small gains. Thanks to today’s gains, both metals will end this 5-day trading session on the positive side of things, though it will be interesting to see how long these gains can be sustained. Naturally, next week is going to bring with it speculation regarding if interest rates will be hiked, though at this point hikes seem to be all but guaranteed. Undoubtedly, the next week and a half or so are going to be some of the more exciting weeks of trading for 2015, or at least that is what so many market experts are beginning to believe.
