Gold Spot Price Open: $1,414
Gold Spot Price Close: $1,390
Change in Gold Spot Price:-$24
Silver Spot Price Open: $22.86
Silver Spot Price Close: $22.28
Change in Silver Spot Price:-$0.58
Gold and silver’s healthy gains on Thursday were cancelled out almost as soon as Friday trading got underway in the US mostly thanks to a stronger US dollar. When all was said and done gold lost about 24 dollars while silver’s losses were over 50 cents.
A week that, as of yesterday, was looking like it was going to be a positive one saw precious metals slip on the last day to points lower than where they started on Tuesday. Disappointing US economic news on Thursday was enough to bring gold above the $1,400 mark, though these gains were short-lived.
European economic reports came in negatively on Friday which did well to bring the value of the euro down while at the same time boosting the USD index. Earlier in the week we heard about increasing jobless claims in Germany, and on Friday these claims were echoed in a report which stated that the eurozone economy’s unemployment rate was up to about 12.2%; a record high for the region.
Europe was not done with the disappointing economic news either, as Germany announced a decline in retail sales for the third straight month. Despite all of these negative stories, European stocks did not fare too terribly on the week.
The Japanese Nikkei Index was doing better on Friday after it had posted dismal results for the whole of the rest of the week. Losing 5% on Thursday made weekly losses for Japanese stocks eclipse 15% and caused the Index to post negative gains. China is set to release manufacturing data on Saturday, and this news will once more give us insight into how the largest economy in Asia is doing. Lately we have heard nothing but downtrodden economic reports out of China, but those interested in the country will hope that tomorrow’s data will be positive for the first time in a while.
Though this week ended up with precious metals investors seeing both gold and silver post weekly net losses, there is always next week.