Gold Spot Price Open: $1,185
Gold Spot Price Close: $1,204
Change in Gold Spot Price: +$19
Silver Spot Price Open: $16.64
Silver Spot Price Close: $16.99
Change in Silver Spot Price: +$0.35
Precious metals spot values made significant strides forward today, mostly thanks to bargain hunting after the last few days’ worth of losses. When all was said and done, gold picked up close to twenty dollars while silver gained somewhere in the neighborhood of 35 cents. For a second day in a row, platinum and palladium made solid gains of over 10 dollars apiece.
ADP Jobs Report Misses Mark By a Long Shot
Though Friday is going to bring about March’s employment data from the United States, today played host to the ADP employment report from March. This piece of data is not as heavily weighted as the US government’s report on jobs, but the ADP reading often gives investors a preliminary idea of what they can expect from the official jobs data.
This morning, upon the release of the ADP employment report, investors were disappointed to see that only 189,000 new jobs were added to the economy last month. Considering expectations were for job growth somewhere around 250,000, it goes without saying that today’s report was a huge miss. This prompted some bargain-hunting purchases by investors who believe that Friday’s Labor Department report will show similarly disappointing figures. As it stands, Friday’s report is arguably the most important data point of the week, and some are even saying it is the most important piece of data we will receive all month. Because many feel as though this next batch of employment data will determine when the Fed will raise interest rates, you can bet that its release will catch the undivided attention of the global marketplace.
Iran Nuclear Talks Continue
A day passed the pre-approved deadline, Iranian nuclear talks are continuing to move forward. Though the world is expecting a deal to be reached between Iran and Western nations, American officials were quoted as saying that they are not holding their breath on a deal being reached.
As it stands, the market believes that, if a deal is reached, it may result in Iranian oil hitting an already glutted supply of crude oil around the world. If this does happen, crude oil prices may be pushed downward even further, which would be bad for precious metals. Still, as the week moves forward, we will keep a close eye on anything and everything surrounding the nuclear talks.
Miscellaneous Global Economic News
During the overnight hours of Tuesday into Wednesday, it was reported that China’s Purchasing Manager’s Index for March came in above 50. This was deemed to be upbeat news, especially for an economy that has been, in many respects, under performing recently.
In Russia, the World Bank claimed, in a statement that the economic situation there is only continuing to deteriorate. According to conservative World Bank estimates, the Russian economy is expected to decline by more than 3% by year’s end. In fact, some estimates hold that the Russian GDP will decline by 4% this year. Regardless of these estimates, it is very clear that Russia is struggling with no end to those struggles in sight.
Finally, Markit PMI from the Eurozone came in at above 52, up from a reading of 51 in February. This just adds to the recently upbeat string of data that has been coming from the European Union.
Wrap-Up
Being that this was the first day of a new month, we have begun receiving a good bit of economic data from around the world. As we look forward to the last two days of the week, I imagine that we will continue receiving a large quantity of data. Of course, of all the reports, none is more important than Friday’s US employment report. At present, the marketplace is expecting somewhere in the neighborhood of 248,000 jobs to have been added in March. With that said, however, today’s weaker ADP report has a lot of people, including myself, thinking that Friday’s data will not live up to expectations.
