Gold Spot Price Open: $1,213
Gold Spot Price Close: $1,233
Change in Gold Spot Price: +$20
Silver Spot Price Open: $15.26
Silver Spot Price Close: $15.23
Change in Silver Spot Price: -$0.03
Precious metals climbed on Tuesday after losing value to begin the week. When all was said and done, gold managed to gain about twenty dollars while silver ended up losing a few pennies. Platinum and palladium gained on the day as well, but platinum was easily the better performer of the two.
US Existing Home Sales Rise in January
Unless you were living under a rock it was pretty clear that the global economy did not have the best of months during January. While everyone was already well-aware of struggling economies around the world, January is the month where those same struggles began poking up at home. Despite January’s most poor economic data record in the United States, it was reported today that sales of existing homes unexpectedly moved upward during the month.
According to the National Association of Realtors (NAR), existing home sales in the US improved by .4% last month, bringing the seasonally adjusted average number of units sold to a tally just shy of 5.5 million. January’s 5.47 annualized number of units sold bested the 5.45 figure recorded a month ago. According to the NAR, sales rates are stronger now than at any other point over the past half year.
In a statement tied to the data, the NAR said, “The housing market has shown promising resilience in recent months, but home prices are still rising too fast because of ongoing supply constraints. Despite the global economic slowdown, the housing sector continues to recover and will likely help the U.S. economy avoid a recession.” It will be interesting to see if the NAR’s expectations are at all lived up to as they relate to helping the US economy survive what has turned into a noticeable global economic downturn.
Investors Cash In On Oil Gains
For precious metals, Monday was a rather rough start to the week as crude oil recovered alongside global equity markets. A day later, however, the story seems to have changed quite a bit due to the fact that investors are cashing in on crude oil gains from Monday. More recently, metals and crude oil have exhibited a bit of an inverse relationship—something that is contrary to how precious metals typically react to crude oil’s movements.
Helping gold and silver is not so much the fact that crude oil is moving downward again, but more because crude oil’s downward movement is bringing equity markets from around the world down with it. Metals and equities tend to react opposite of one another, so when equities dip it is common to see precious metals have some room to advance. Now, as we head deeper into this week, it will be interesting to see if crude oil continues to correct itself downward, or if the recent production alteration made by major crude oil-producing nations will help spot values rebound for an extended period of time.
Wrap-Up
Tuesday was a rather uneventful day as far as geopolitical happenings are concerned, but the market was dealt a bit of eye-raising data from the United States. With that, we are now in a strange situation where every new piece of US economic data contradicts what was released earlier. Come Thursday, it will be interesting to see what happens to the US Labor Department weekly jobless claims report. Other than that, all eyes will be focused on global equity markets as well as the price action of crude oil.
