Gold Spot Price Open: $1,222
Gold Spot Price Close: $1,242
Change in Gold Spot Price: +$20
Silver Spot Price Open: $15.27
Silver Spot Price Close: $15.23
Change in Silver Spot Price: -$0.04
Precious metals bounced back to some extent on Tuesday after performing quite poorly over the course of the past week or more. When all was said and done, gold made gains that exceeded twenty dollars while silver ended up losing a few pennies. Platinum and palladium also gained on the day, but platinum was the bigger winner of the two, having picked up more than twenty dollars.
Dollar Weakens After Yellen Comments
Over the past few weeks, a few different things have played out to give some investors renewed hope that perhaps interest rates will be hiked again sooner rather than later. In addition to St. Louis Federal Reserve president James Bullard making comments encouraging his peers to be more gung-ho about raising rates, a few pieces of key economic data came back far better than expected. All of this created a perfect storm of sorts that really altered the somewhat pessimistic view of the possibility of interest rate hikes happening in April or May.
Despite Bullard barely a week ago saying that he expects inflation to come close to or exceed the Fed’s 2% target by year’s end, Fed Chair Janet Yellen, in a speech today, said that she expects the opposite. As for her feelings regarding further rate hikes, Yellen simply said that the Fed needs to be patient and needs to be sure that the move they are making is the correct one. In so many words, investors interpreted this as Yellen saying that interest rate hikes are still a good ways away yet. These comments worked to push the Dollar down after gaining in recent days, and likely helped revive some interest in precious metals. These comments, along with spot values that have been beaten down over the last few weeks, have given precious metals a bit of a boost today. Now, it will be interesting to see what direction gold and silver head in to close out the week. After the past two weeks have yielded losses, metals have a lot of catching up to do.
Market Awaits Quarter-End Economic Data, Jobless Claims Report
Investors the world over are awaiting the end of this week and the beginning of next week seeing as we are fast-approaching the end of the month and the end of the quarter. Though there are many pieces of information that investors are looking forward to, the first and most important piece of data is the weekly jobless claims report. The employment sector of the US economy has been improving recently, and this week investors will be very much interested in the 4-week moving average of jobless claims as it is viewed as incredibly important for gauging the strength of the employment sector.
Looking forward to next week, there is a lot of data that investors will have to contend with. Early projections are that the US economy did not exactly perform well during this year’s first quarter, and it will be interesting to see if that was actually the case or not. Really, when it comes down to it, the tone of 1st quarter US economic data will likely influence how people think about the possibility of rates being raised in April, May, or June.
Wrap-Up
Tuesday was not the most eventful day of the week, but trading volumes were much heavier than they were on Monday. We did see some bargain-hunting bring spot values back up, but they are still reeling from losses incurred over the past two weeks. It will be interesting to see if precious metals can continue to make gains on Wednesday.
