Gold Spot Price Open: $1,316
Gold Spot Price Close: $1,312
Change in Gold Spot Price: -$4
Silver Spot Price Open: $18.66
Silver Spot Price Close: $18.65
Change in Silver Spot Price: -$0.01
Gold and silver extended losses on Wednesday as the investing world gears up for the plethora of employment data being dealt over the coming days. When all was said and done, gold lost about 4 dollars while silver treaded water and finished the day in more or less the same position it was in when the day began. Platinum and palladium both fell on the day, with both metals losing about 8 dollars apiece.
Pending Home Sales Fall
During May and June, sales of previously-owned homes were on steady declines and came back worse than expected on both occasions. Despite other housing market data points coming back positive month after month, this was one that seemed to be heading in the wrong direction. Luckily, pending sales of previously-owned homes jumped significantly further forward in July; further than anyone was expecting.
Released by the National Association of Realtors, the pending home sales index jumped upward by more than 1 point. This brings the overall reading to a healthy 111.3, which is one of the best readings we have seen in the past ten years. On an annualized basis, pending home sales moved forward by almost 1.5%.
Driving the better home sales figures is an employment situation that seems to be getting better and better with each passing month. In addition to more jobs being available, the wages being paid to employees are slowly but surely increasing. This increasing disposable income is leading to better home sales figures. For gold and silver, this is not the best news as it lends itself to monetary policy hawks.
ADP Private-sector Jobs Data Dealt
Today marked the beginning of a bunch of employment data that will take center stage until Friday. As is typical, today brought about the ADP private-sector job growth report from the month of August. Officially, the payrolls processor said that about 177,000 private-sector jobs were added last month. That figure is a bit better than expectations, which called for between 170,000 and 1750,000 new jobs to be created.
While today’s data from August is a great start to this week’s employment data, the big news came in the form of July’s private-sector jobs data being revised upward. Officially, July’s private-sector growth was increased from 179,000 jobs added to nearly 195,000. This would normally not be that big of a deal, but with more than 15,000 more jobs added it definitely caught the attention of investors.
Breaking down today’s ADP data, we can clearly see that the services sector—of which the US economy is primarily comprised—added more than 180,000 jobs. The employment sector involved with the production of physical goods (ie. Factory jobs) ended up losing some ground. As we always say, today’s ADP data does not necessarily mean anything for Friday’s non-farms data. With that being said, expectations are high and most people are anticipating that Friday’s data will be positive. We have seen a bunch of weekly jobless claims reports that support this notion, so it will be truly interesting to see what kind of report Friday brings.
Wrap-Up
All in all, Wednesday saw the activity level of the global marketplace pick up a bit thanks to some US economic data. That much will continue to be the case to close out this week and upon opening of markets in the US next Tuesday, the general activity level is expected to remain elevated.
What does all this mean for gold and silver? That much is tough to say. What we do know, however, is that an overly upbeat employment report on Friday is something that will, in all likelihood, put even more pressure on spot values.
