Gold Spot Price Open: $1,269

Gold Spot Price Close: $1,269

Change in Gold Spot Price: NO CHANGE

Silver Spot Price Open: $17.58

Silver Spot Price Close: $17.50

Change in Silver Spot Price: -$0.08

Precious metals mostly treaded water on Friday and will end the week posting very marginal weekly gains. When all was said and done, gold ended down by almost a dollar while silver fell by about 8 cents. Platinum and palladium both lost on the day as well, but neither metal finished too far from where it began the day.

Dollar Set for Weekly Gain Thanks to ECB Commentary

The USD Index is set to make a weekly gain thanks to a massive decline on the part of the euro on Friday. The euro’s decline is directly influenced by the ECB’s leaving their asset-purchasing program untouched. This type of monetary stimulus actively works to devalue the euro, so any news that it will be continued is more than likely going to do exactly that. In fact, the euro was hurt even more by the fact that the ECB is considering an expansion to monetary stimulus measures come December.

The Dollar also reacted positively to New York Federal Reserve president William Dudley talking about the Fed being already prepared to raise interest rates. In addition, the fading hopes for Donald Trump to be elected president is something that definitely lends itself to interest rates being raised in December. As previously discussed, there is almost no hope for an interest rate hike in November primarily due to the FOMC meeting being held in such close proximity to the election itself.

Steven Englander, head of foreign exchange at Citigroup, talked about the election’s potential ramifications on US monetary policy by saying, “There have been some Fed comments where they sound like they are ready to move in December, but also partly related is the market view that a hike in December is much more likely if Clinton wins than if Trump wins.” So long as Hillary Clinton continues to gain momentum, the possibility of a December rate hike will increase along with the pressure facing gold and silver.

Gold, Silver Holding Steady—Waiting for Fresh Inputs

Though the rest of the week brought about a good bit of economic data, there was not much to be had on Friday. As such, precious metals more or less treaded water. At the present moment, just about everything relating to the US economy is driving the price of metals downward, but due to the comparatively low price of metals now relative to a few months ago, physical purchases of metals from Asia are on the up and up.

So, right now, we are seeing a bit of a tug-of-war between interest rate expectations and bargain-hunting buying. This is why you will see many days where spot values do not move very far at all. This is so because while rate hike expectations are pushing spot values downward, bargain-hunting buying is working to keep things afloat. As you can see, however, most days see interest rate hike expectations weigh on gold more than physical purchases can support it.
Barring any fresh, unforeseen data that is far away from expectations, this will likely remain the case for the foreseeable future.

Wrap-Up

Friday was, by all accounts, the quietest day of the week across the global marketplace. Just looking at the performances of the USD and US stock markets alone, it became pretty clear pretty quickly that metals were going to have a tough go of things, and that is exactly what took place. Still, when you consider the holistic global marketplace situation and all the factors that are adversarial to the appreciation of precious metals spot values, both gold and silver performed quite well this week.