Gold Spot Price Open: $1,235

Gold Spot Price Close: $1,210

Change in Gold Spot Price: -$25

Silver Spot Price Open: $15.76

Silver Spot Price Close: $15.39

Change in Silver Spot Price: -$0.37

Precious metals began this week in poor fashion as both gold and silver lost a good bit of the ground gained throughout last week’s 5-day trading session. When all was said and done, gold moved downward by more than 25 dollars while silver backed down to the tune of 35 cents or so. Platinum and palladium fell on the day with platinum losing close to twenty dollars while palladium’s losses came back at a little more than 5 dollars.

Safe-Haven Demand Erodes as Equities Bounce Back

Straight from the offing on Monday stocks from around the world were bouncing back after suffering fairly large losses last week. Depending on which market you are looking at, gold lost at least 2% of its value on Monday alone, marking the largest single-day loss we have seen in about 7 months.
In addition to Asian stocks’ posture improving, European shares ticked upward thanks to China’s central bank’s president commenting on his faith in the economy. It has been no secret that China’s economy is in a rut at the present moment in time, but investors may be sensing that this will change in the near future.

Gold and silver are still holding on to some nice momentum at the present moment in time, but with stocks improving to begin the week that momentum is definitely being threatened. US markets are closed today due to the celebration of the Presidents’ Day holiday, but trading will be back in full-swing tomorrow. As for what we can expect from precious metals through the rest of the week, that much is difficult to say. A large contingent of market experts are anticipating that spot values will trade within a well-defined range, but after last week’s gains I would not be very surprised to see spot values back off a bit more before they stabilize. At this point just about anything is a realistic possibility.

Japanese 2015 Q4 Data Disappoints

On an annualized basis, Japanese GDP shrank by nearly 1.5% during the period ranging from October through December 2015. Most expectations were calling for an annualized retreat of little more than 1%, but it turns out that the actual figures painted a bleaker picture of how the Japanese economy has been performing as of late.

Looking ahead, the near-term outlook for the Japanese economy does not look promising at all. Not only are emerging market exports beginning to lag behind, but demand for Japanese goods from countries like the US and China are falling too. It is clear to see that Japan’s government, in conjunction with the Bank of Japan, need to take action in order to prevent this economic downturn from becoming something much more serious. If economic conditions persist as they have for the past few months, any easy money policies that have been instituted will likely have a tough time achieving their goal(s).

Wrap-Up

Despite gold and silver’s fairly large losses today, the overall global marketplace was somewhat quiet and free of much noteworthy activity. When US investors return tomorrow it will be interesting to see how precious metals spot values react. There is a contingent who think that profit-taking will reappear upon the opening of markets tomorrow, but there are also some who think that today’s losses are more isolated than anything else. To be frank, market conditions are such that safe-haven demand may stick around for quite some time. In the same breath, however, equities continuing to improve may threaten any momentum precious metals are still hanging on to.