Gold Spot Price Open: $1,097
Gold Spot Price Close: $1,090
Change in Gold Spot Price: -$7
Silver Spot Price Open: $14.87
Silver Spot Price Close: $14.79
Change in Silver Spot Price: -$0.08
Gold and silver continued their respective slides on Thursday as gold managed to end the day right back near a fresh 5.5 year low. When all was said and done, gold lost about 7 dollars while silver’s losses approached ten cents. Platinum and palladium bounced around a good bit today, but neither metal managed to move too far from where it began the day.
Gold Continues to Sport Weak Posture
As has been the case for the past few weeks now, Thursday proved to be another day where gold, silver, and all other precious metals simply did not appeal to many investors. The safe-haven qualities of gold and silver are being overlooked thanks to current market conditions that have driven investor risk-appetite quite far forward. A lack of any fresh, fundamentally bullish news is also having a sour impact on the spot prices of precious metals.
With investors more readily seeking out riskier investments, it should come as no surprise that metals are being overlooked. The fact that no major sources of geopolitical tensions exist are yet another reason gold and silver have been suffering. You see, whenever there is a major bit of unrest, the global marketplace becomes more bullish on gold, but that much has not been the case recently, and investors have very little to worry about per se.
Commerce Department Report Comes In Upbeat
One of the bigger news stories of the week played out earlier today when the Commerce Department released the GDP figures for the US over the period of April to June. Before those numbers could be made public, however, the Commerce Dept. first revised 1st quarter 2015 GDP from being up just over one half of one percent to up by more than 2 percent. This is a marked revision and one that satisfied most investors.
As for the 2nd quarter’s GDP data, it came back on the upbeat side of things and is most definitely indicative of an economy that is healthy and only continuing to get healthier. In fact, this past quarter’s GDP reading is the best the US has seen since early on during 2014. Being that consumer spending accounts for nearly 3/4’s of all US economic activity, the fact that it was up by nearly 3% on an annualized basis during the 2nd quarter was a major factor driving the upbeat data.
In the words of Markit Chief Economist Chris Williamson, “The latest GDP numbers deliver a double punch to US economy doom-mongers, painting a reassuringly bright picture of the health of the US economy so far this year and raising the odds of the Fed hiking interest rates in September.” Basically, at the end of the day all today’s GDP data does is further drive home the belief that interest rates will, in fact, be hiked sometime in the coming months.
Wrap-Up
Looking ahead to Friday, it is shaping up like we are in for a more somber close to the week. There isn’t much in the way of economic data expected to be made public, but that does not mean spot values will remain put. In fact, it is the slow days like tomorrow is expected to be that have recently been weighing quite heavily on spot values. Technical selling has been dominating the global metals market, and I would not be surprised to see more of it by day’s end on Friday.
