Gold Spot Price Open: $1,163
Gold Spot Price Close: $1,164
Change in Gold Spot Price: +$1
Silver Spot Price Open: $15.47
Silver Spot Price Close: $15.65
Change in Silver Spot Price: +0.18
Gold and silver will finish the week much lower than where they started thanks to a mostly lackluster day of trading on Friday. When all was said and done, gold added a dollar while silver managed to trek forward by 18 cents. Platinum and palladium were both modestly up from yesterday’s losses, though these gains are nothing special or noteworthy.
Weaker Dollar Prompts Demand for Metals
After Thursday brought about a less than impressive weekly jobless claims report from the United States, there was weaker demand for the greenback across most global markets. As is typically the case when the Dollar is having a down day, spot values of gold and silver were propped up a bit. As has been the case all week long, gold and silver’s initial gains were outdone by day’s end such that spot values finished none too far from where they began the day.
Perhaps hurting the progress made by gold and silver today was a rally on the part of Chinese equities. Since the Chinese government has stepped in and help prop up the stock market, things have bounced back noticeably. For investors, this recovery is calming and does well to kill any safe-haven demand that might have been created by Chinese equities’ free-fall.
Greece Submits Latest Plan to EU/IMF
Earlier this morning, it was announced that Greece had finally submitted yet another plan highlighting economic reforms that Athens is willing to make in order to unlock more bailout money. Though this is big news, sources close to the situation claim that this newest proposal is eerily similar to the one that Greek voters voted against in last Sunday’s referendum.
EU and IMF officials are going to review the proposal and the hope is that by Saturday we will have a surefire answer as to whether Greece will remain on the Euro or not. With that said, however, I would not be surprised to see this latest proposal thrown out and the whole scenario brought back to square one. As for now, investors the world over are not really reacting to what is going on in Greece because it is impossible to say what the outcome is going to be. The cold, hard reality of the matter is that Greek banks are running out of cash and are in need of help quickly, so if this proposal does not produce results it will be intriguing to see what options Athens is left with.
Wrap-Up
Now that we have reached week’s end, we have a lot to reflect on. Gold and silver have suffered for most of the week, but have found a bit of stabilization here in the last few days. As we look ahead to next week, you can bet that the scenarios unfolding in Greece and China will remain on the front-burner of the market’s attention. What this all means for gold and silver is impossible to say at this point, but current market conditions are such that metals are likely to keep conceding value. That is impossible to say for certain, however.
