Gold Spot Price Open: $1,244

Gold Spot Price Close: $1,258

Change in Gold Spot Price: +$14

Silver Spot Price Open: $19.20

Silver Spot Price Close: $19.39

Change in Silver Spot Price: +$0.19

Gold and silver traded higher all day today as stocks sold off at a considerable rate. When all was said and done, gold gained about 14 dollars while silver picked up closer to 20 cents.

Investors are continuing to exhibit risk-averse attitudes as US equities got hit pretty hard on the first trading day of February. Not helping US stocks at all was a lower ISM Purchasing Manager’s Index reading for January, coming in at 51.3. Today’s reading was significantly weaker than the 56.0 reading that was expected. This follows a poor PMI reading from China that the market was greeted with last Friday.

Some market analysts are attributing January’s unusually weak PMI reading to rough winter weather across much of the United States. Regardless, the recent run of sub-par economic form in the United States will cause investors to begin to wonder whether or not the Fed should consider slowing its tapering of QE. Other reports that will be released this week include the private-sector employment report as well as the ISM non-manufacturing data.

The weekly jobless claims report is due out on Thursday and will be followed on Friday by the ever-important monthly employment report for January. Because it was reported that the US added only about 74,000 jobs in December, this week’s employment report will be of the utmost importance. As it stands, the market is expecting roughly 180,000 jobs to be added this past January.

At this point it is difficult to tell if the sell-off of stocks is a small lull in what has been a good run of form recently or if it is indicative of a more lasting trend. If the abandonment of equities continues as this week moves forward, gold and silver will likely continue to build upon today’s gains.