Gold Spot Price Open: $1,088
Gold Spot Price Close: $1,092
Change in Gold Spot Price: +$4
Silver Spot Price Open: $14.66
Silver Spot Price Close: $14.73
Change in Silver Spot Price: +$0.07
Precious metals managed to gain a bit on Thursday during a choppy day of trading amid a turbulent week overall. When all was said and done, gold managed to gain a bit more than 3 dollars while silver managed pick up close to ten cents. Platinum and palladium also gained on the day, but neither metal picked up more than ten dollars.
Dollar Edges Downward Against Rival Currencies
For no particular reason, the US Dollar edged downward against a basket of currencies on Thursday. Apart from today, the greenback has performed well this week thanks to the US economic data that was released up to this point. Despite today’s losses, the USD Index is still on course for a gain this week, and on course for a two-week gain of .7%. Helping the greenback this week was a mixed batch of US economic data that is being perceived as mostly positive.
The most unnerving piece of economic data this week has been the ADP jobs report, which indicated that fewer than 200,000 private-sector jobs were created during July. This number fell far short of expectations, which is worrisome, but it is also important to keep in mind that the ADP report really has no bearing on the Labor Department’s non-farms payrolls report. This data from the month of July is expected to be released tomorrow, and as of now investors are anticipating a rise in non-farm jobs of no less than 220,000.
If this data, like the ADP report, falls short of expectations, the Dollar may be dealt a blow. Beyond that, should the data come up short, it may even have an impact on what the market thinks about interest rate hikes. As it stands, most people are expecting to hear of interest rate hikes at September’s FOMC meeting.
Weekly Jobless Claims In Line With Expectations
The theme across the global marketplace this week has been one of US economic data at seemingly every turn. Today brought about the most recent reading on weekly jobless claims and this batch of data was about in line with expectations. Officially, first-time claims for unemployment benefits ticked upwards last week by about 3,000, bringing the seasonally-adjusted figures up to 270,000.
This data fell in line with expectations and did not cause too much of a stir across the global marketplace. In fact, this data falling in line with expectations only serves to strengthen the belief that interest rates are going to be hiked in September. Like we have been saying all along, so long as the labor sector of the US economy is on the up and up, interest rate hikes are likely to take place before the end of the year. This is something that has been talked about for a while, but we are just starting to see some consistent signs of growth on the part of labor.
Wrap-Up
All in all, today was one of the slower days of this week. We received some additional US economic data, but it was for the most part ignored as investors opted to wait until tomorrow’s non-farm jobs data as opposed to making any big moves today. Tomorrow and Monday are shaping up to be eventful days, but so long as the non-farm figures are upbeat, this will not mean anything positive for precious metals. Though gains were realized today, this week has thus far been a wash for metals and is looking like the downward trend is only going to continue.
