Gold Spot Price Open: $1,417
Gold Spot Price Close: $1,383
Change in Gold Spot Price:-$34
Silver Spot Price Open: $22.78
Silver Spot Price Close: $21.68
Change in Silver Spot Price:-$1.10
Gold and silver both took nosedives as soon as markets opened on Friday, primarily because of the US employment report we have been anticipating this whole week. When all was said and done gold lost about 34 dollars while silver’s losses edged ten cents over a dollar.
The employment report out of the United States, which was released this morning, indicated that 175,000 non-farm jobs were added this past May. While this is only 5,000 more than what was anticipated, it was enough to put heavy downward pressure on gold and silver. Once the losses started piling up, there was really no looking back for either metal.
The reason this month’s employment report is being viewed as so important by investors is due to the fact that monetary policy in the United States is still up in the air. The more often we see positive economic news out of the US, the more likely it is that Quantitative Easing is going to be brought to an end sometime this summer. Next week is not expected to bring with it many major economic stories out of the US, but investors will still keep their eyes on both the US Dollar and US stock markets as those are the most immediate sources for gauging the US economy’s strength; especially in relation to other economies around the world.
Asian markets rounded out the week in disappointing fashion as the Japanese Nikkei Index continued its decline while Chinese stocks are still struggling to gain some solid footholds. Over the course of the past two weeks or so, the Nikkei Index in Japan has now lost about 20% of its value, never a good sign.
European data on Friday was not terrible, but was not too great either. While European stocks saw mixed results on Friday, German industrial output for April was recorded as up by almost 2% from April, when the market had expected it to remain unchanged. This is good news but does little to solve any of the huge economic and debt problems facing a majority of Europe.