Gold Spot Price Open: $1,219
Gold Spot Price Close: $1,226
Change in Gold Spot Price: +$7
Silver Spot Price Open: $17.23
Silver Spot Price Close: $17.52
Change in Silver Spot Price: +$0.29
Precious metals extended early week gains on Thursday thanks to a Dollar that is continuing to perform poorly. When all was said and done, gold added about 7 more dollars while silver improved by nearly 30 cents. Platinum and palladium finished the day mixed, with platinum moving up by more than ten dollars while palladium lost around 5.
Affordable Metals Spur Demand
Over the time period of March and April, extremely low spot values on the part of gold and silver have caused a spike in demand for the metals. In India especially, demand for gold has surged recently. The reasons for this are many, but one of the biggest reasons is due to the Indian government lowering tariffs associated with foreign precious metals. The recent spike in demand has helped spot values stabilize a bit and is likely contributing to this week’s gains.
While, on a global scale, demand for gold over the past few months was down by about 1 percent, demand from places like China and India is better than it has been in months. Experts expect that demand for gold and silver will only continue to tick upwards as we head further into the Spring and into the Summer. Of course, demand alone may not be enough to push prices upward, but it definitely will not hurt.
Mixed Bag of US Economic Data
We received a few pieces of economic data today, including the weekly jobless claims report and a report on US producer prices. According to a Labor Department report released earlier this morning, the Producer Price Index for final demand was down by .4% during the month of April. This is the third month out of 4 where the PPI declined, adding to a long list of poor economic data stemming from the United States as of late.
On the other side of the coin was an upbeat weekly jobless claims report that showed only 264,000 people filing for unemployment benefits last week. This is an extremely upbeat number and only works to confirm the belief that employment in the United States is improving. With that said, however, the fact of the matter is that economic data from the United States continues to come back extremely poor. With interest rate hikes a constant topic of discussion, you can bet that attention paid to US economic data will only increase as the months move forward. As it stands, I am of the personal belief that we will not see interest rate hikes until the New Year, but it is impossible to make such a statement with any amount of confidence. With the FOMC meeting just around the corner, investors the world over will continue picking apart every piece of economic data in hopes of piecing together the interest rate hike puzzle.
Wrap-Up
Apart from attention being paid to the batch of US economic data we received today, there wasn’t much activity happening across the global marketplace. The US Dollar did a lot of moving, but by the time things were all said and done ended up none too far from where it began the day. Tomorrow is expected to bring about some more economic data, so it will be interesting to see if gold and silver can hang on to recent gains or if profit-taking will force the last day of the week to be a sour one.
