Gold Spot Price Open: $1,290
Gold Spot Price Close: $1,289
Change in Gold Spot Price: -$1
Silver Spot Price Open: $18.62
Silver Spot Price Close: $18.52
Change in Silver Spot Price: -$0.10
Precious metals ended up losing on Friday, but the week as a whole was overly upbeat for both gold and silver. When all was said and done, gold lost about a dollar while silver conceded 10 cents. Platinum and palladium yet again finished the day mixed, but neither metal ended up moving all that much.
Retail Sales Fall in March
Despite Friday being a holiday for most people, the US Commerce Department did release a few key statistics. For one, they released the retail sales data for the month of March, and the numbers were anything but impressive. Officially, consumers were out buying fewer goods last month than the month before. In total, retail sales were down by .2% month over month.
After a .1% rise in retail sales was reported in February, economists were expecting to see the same for March. With all of that being said, it is not likely that this piece of data will have any major impact on markets. What’s more, it is not likely to have any significant impact on interest rate talks either. For people to be convinced that further rate hikes are not coming this year, it is going to take much more than one, single piece of poor US data.
Still, because most trading markets were closed in observance of the beginning of the Easter weekend, we will not really be able to see investor reaction until things get back underway early next week. For precious metals, though this data did not necessarily help, it definitely did not hurt.
Metals Have Successful Holiday Trading Week
Most of the time, when we talk about a holiday week of trading, this tends to mean that precious metals spot values are either going to hang steady or fall slightly. This week, however, the large number of geopolitical events we have had our attention on worked wonders for precious metals. Investors are exhibiting a very clear risk-off sentiment as global tensions rise.
This shouldn’t be too much of a surprise seeing as we are looking at potentially unfolding conflicts involving the US in Asia as well as the Middle East. Though the Syrian situation has mostly faded to the back-burner, tensions around the Korean Peninsula have never been higher. Unless this also changes in the very near-term, gold and silver will lay claim to consistent underlying support.
Wrap-Up
Being that today was Good Friday, US markets (and most markets in other parts of the world) were closed. Like much of this week, this resulted in a marketplace that was much quieter than normal. For the week as a whole, both gold and silver were able to make nice strides forward. Gold saw its spot value approach the $1,300/ounce threshold while silver moved back up above $18/ounce. This is extremely encouraging for investors in precious metals. Next week, we are expecting to see a good bit of economic data dealt from the US and elsewhere around the world. If the data released in the coming days proves to miss the mark consistently, metals may be able to see even more of a boost.
