Gold Spot Price Open: $1,275
Gold Spot Price Close: $1,281
Change in Gold Spot Price: +$6
Silver Spot Price Open: $19.45
Silver Spot Price Close: $19.47
Change in Silver Spot Price: +$0.02
Precious metals added some marginal value on Friday to close out what has been a dismal week in somewhat decent fashion. When all was said and done, gold gained roughly 6 dollars while silver added just a few pennies. Platinum finished the week on Friday posting losses of a few dollars, but palladium was trading up by nearly $10 and is now just about $12 under the $900 threshold.
Stocks Pull Back Amid Increased Ukraine Tensions
It wouldn’t be a week this summer if we went 5 consecutive days without any mention of the Russia-Ukraine crisis. According to a NATO report, there is currently an “alarming build-up” of troops happening along the Russia-Ukraine border. What’s more, the controversial Russian humanitarian aid convoy crossed over the border today despite Ukraine not giving it permission to do so. For the last week or more, the convoy had been parked just a short while away from the border, awaiting further instructions.
For the past month or more, the attention of the marketplace has been on and off of the crisis in Ukraine. Whenever we see the possibility of violence the market perks up, but otherwise, there isn’t too much in the way of continued focus on the situation. Joe Bell, of Schaeffer’s Investment Research Inc., made sense of today’s price action by saying that “the news out of Ukraine took a little bit more of the headlines today. We see bad news ahead of the weekend after a week of gains, and we see that investors are reacting by taking profits off the table.”
If things calm down over the weekend, it is highly likely that US equities will bounce back to where they were at prior to today.
Yellen’s Jackson Hole Remarks In Line With Expectations
The better part of this week saw the investing world paying attention to a meeting that was yet to kick off. Today, however, the global central bankers meeting being held in Jackson Hole, Wyoming finally got underway and almost immediately drew the undivided attention of investors from around the globe.
Janet Yellen, in her prepared speech, said that “the economy has made considerable progress in recovering from the largest and most sustained loss of employment” since the Great Depression. Despite these remarks, she made it clear that “underutilization of labor resources still remains significant.” If you can recall, the Fed refuses to raise interest rates until it sees continued improvement of the US labor situation.
European Central Bank president Mario Draghi also spoke today and said that he and the ECB are ready to alter monetary policy at a moments notice if need be. As of the writing of this post the meeting has not yet concluded, so it will not surprise me if some delayed reactions occur shortly after markets begin the new week.
Wrap-Up
Despite this week being extremely slow from an economic data standpoint, there was a lot of price action upon which we can reflect. Precious metals other than palladium are and have been trending downwards, and as it stands next week is not looking like it will provide much of any respite. With that said, there is no way of knowing for sure what exactly next week has in store for equities, the USD, or precious metals.
