Gold Spot Price Open: $1,325
Gold Spot Price Close: $1,323
Change in Gold Spot Price: -$2
Silver Spot Price Open: $19.18
Silver Spot Price Close: $19.19
Change in Silver Spot Price: -$0.09
After falling pretty far to begin the day, precious metals bounced back by day’s end thanks to a few different factors. When all was said and done, gold ended up losing only a few dollars while silver fell by almost 10 cents. Platinum and palladium, once again, finished the day mixed with platinum losing about 4 dollars while palladium gained roughly the same amount.
Deutsche Bank Concerns Send Stocks Spiraling
Deutsche Bank is at the center of a lot of trouble recently, and today saw their US shares sink, and sink, and sink. The falling began shortly after news broke that 10 or more hedge funds would be reducing their affiliation and dealings with the bank. Falling more than 6% on the day, and up to 9%+ during the afternoon hours, this was, by far, the worst single-day performance by Deutsche Bank.
A major part of the fall we witnessed today was a load of fines imposed against the bank by the US Justice Department over the past few weeks. The fines total in the billions of dollars, and perhaps making things worse is the fact that the German government has made it clear that they will not be providing Deutsche with any sort of financial assistance during this time. Despite Angela Merkel’s insistence that no financial assistance will be provided, there are stories that the opposite is true. All in all, the situation Deutsche Bank finds itself in is a confusing one that very few seem to understand entirely. For gold and silver, this is a great source of safe-haven demand, the likes of which we saw for most of the day. Despite this, gold and silver did not make the gains you might have expected to see given the situation surrounding one of Germany’s top banks.
Pending Home Sales Mostly Disappoint
Today the market was dealt some US housing data that suggests the housing market may feel some pressure over the coming months. The National Association of Realtors released their pending home sales index from the month of August. According to the NAR, the index fell 2.4% to bring the index reading to 108.5. After July’s reading was downwardly revised to 111.2, it is clear to see that things are not getting any better as far as the housing market is concerned.
The 2.4% decline was significantly larger than most forecasts, which called for a fall of a tenth of a percentage decline. Making sense of the declining data was the ever-helpful Lawrence Yun, of the NAR, when he said, “In most other areas, an increased number of prospective buyers appear to be either wavering at the steeper home prices pushed up by inventory shortages or disheartened by the competition for the miniscule number of affordable listings.”
Finally, the United States’ 2nd quarter GDP was reported as up 1.4% compared to expectations for a 1.2% rise. This came out early in the day and was part of the reason why gold and silver began things trending downward. Things corrected themselves, but by day’s end there was not much in the way of gains to talk about.
Wrap-Up
Thursday offered up a good bit of economic data for investors to mull over as well as some controversy surrounding a major German bank. In addition to all of this, it was reported that first-time claims for unemployment benefits rose last week by about 3,000. This brings the seasonally-adjusted average number of claims up to 254,000. Though the rise is not the best news, it is still encouraging to see the seasonally-adjusted average fall so well below the 300,000 threshold for yet another week. As we look forward to Friday, it will be interesting to see what is in store for gold and silver. As we find out more about the Deutsche Bank controversy, it is likely that metals may receive an addition safe-haven boost, but that much remains to be seen at this point.
