Gold Spot Price Open: $1,252
Gold Spot Price Close: $1,259
Change in Gold Spot Price: +$7
Silver Spot Price Open: $19.48
Silver Spot Price Close: $19.98
Change in Silver Spot Price: +$0.50
Gold and silver posted solid gains for a second consecutive day on Wednesday. When all was said and done, gold picked up about 7 dollars while silver gained an impressive half dollar, ending the day only a few pennies under $20.
Spot gold ended the day in a better position than where it started but was still down from daily highs. Helping boost precious metals even further was a weaker than anticipated ADP employment report in conjunction with continued investor uneasiness with regard to US stocks. The ADP employment report showed a rise in jobs in January of about 175,000. Compared to market expectations of a near 190,000 rise in jobs this past January, the employment report did little else besides add to a run of recently poor US economic data. The weak ADP report boosted spot gold during the early stages of Wednesday, but throughout the rest of the day the yellow metal gave back most of its early gains.
Emerging market currencies continued to stabilize today, though investors are still keeping their distance. The Japanese Nikkei Index also improved a bit on Wednesday, marking the only notable action out of a quieter Asian region.
The European Central Bank is meeting for their monthly policy meeting and will have some recently upbeat economic data to reflect on. Most recently, the EU’s PMI came in at 52.9 for January, up .8 from December’s reading. Despite a somewhat disappointing retail sales report, the majority of recent EU economic data has been upbeat. As it stands, no one is expecting any major shifts in policy to come as a result of tomorrow’s meeting, though some are suggesting that the ECB may ease its monetary policy.
The last few days of the week will emit some important pieces of US employment data, including the weekly jobless claims report tomorrow and the employment report for January on Friday. Investors will be be greeting this data with heavy scrutiny as the strength of the US economy has recently been called into question thanks to a poor run of economic data form.