Gold Spot Price Open: $1,249
Gold Spot Price Close: $1,254
Change in Gold Spot Price: +$5
Silver Spot Price Open: $19.28
Silver Spot Price Close: $19.26
Change in Silver Spot Price:-$0.02
Gold and silver improved slightly on Wednesday thanks to the release of the latest Federal Open Market Committee meeting minutes as well as a few other pieces of data. Gold was up by about 5 dollars at the end of the day while silver remained more or less stagnant having lost only 2 pennies.
Most market watchers were not expecting to hear any earth-shattering news from the latest notes from the Federal Open Market Committee meeting. Despite nothing groundbreaking being reported in the notes, gold received a boost once investors found out that many of the FOMC’s members would like to see more economic data before they decide to wind down Quantitative Easing and government monthly bond-buying. At this point about half of the FOMC’s 19 members are in favor of winding down QE, though the other half is still up in the air. Should the next few months continue to yield positive economic data from the US, the tide may be turned and QE could be on its way out by the end of 2013.
Most of the FOMC notes actually discussed how Ben Bernanke should address the public regarding monetary policies in the US. Because everyone puts so much weight on Bernanke’s words and opinions, how he handles the monetary policy situation in the coming days, weeks, and months could mean the difference between higher precious metals spot prices or even lower ones.
China’s latest manufacturing report was the other main bit of news to talk about today, and this report yielded weaker than expected data. When comparing exports for this June to exports from last June, Chinese exports have fallen by over 3%. This 3% loss was very much contrary to the expected 3% gain. For the year as a whole, Chinese exports are down almost 1% when they were expected to rise by over 5%. This much weaker than expected manufacturing data out of China helped gold and silver a little bit.
Finally, the US Dollar Index finished lower on Wednesday as the last few days have been up and down for the greenback.
