Gold Spot Price Open: $1,264

Gold Spot Price Close: $1,236

Change in Gold Spot Price: -$28

Silver Spot Price Open: $17.22

Silver Spot Price Close: $16.72

Change in Silver Spot Price: -$0.50

Precious metals had a pretty rough final day of the week after some better than expected employment data was made public. When all was said and done, gold lost close to 30 dollars while silver fell by about a half dollar. Platinum and palladium both also suffered some pretty hefty losses as a result of today’s data.

Employment Data Shocks Marketplace

This week has been slow for the better part of the last 5 days, but today brought about an economic report that was of extreme importance to investors. January’s employment data was released earlier this morning and came back beating the expectations of the market. Compared to expectations of more than 235,000 new jobs having been added to the economy in January, the actual figures showed that nearly 260,000 new jobs were created last month. Almost immediately after this data was made public stocks in the US rallied while precious metals very quickly saw losses mount.

While today’s data is positive, questions remain regarding wage growth in the United States. If wages are not growing along with jobs, then the number of jobs added to the economy is not all that important. As we head deeper into this year, you can bet that the market will be preoccupied with the degree of wage growth we see in the United States. With the USD having such a good day today, it should not come as much of a surprise that US equities had a rather poor finish to the week.

Greece’s Debt Issues Resurface

Stocks across Europe had a poor day on Friday mostly due to reports surrounding Greece’s inability to pay back sovereign debts and Germany’s reluctance to forgive Greek debt. As is stands, Germany are holding Greece to the agreement reached a while ago and are saying that they will not offer the Mediterranean an extension. In addition to this, the European Central Bank announced a few days ago that they would not accept Greek government bonds as collateral for Greek debt.

Greek stock markets sold off at a rapid pace upon hearing this news, as did bonds. Currently, Greek bond yields are anywhere between 10%-15%. As we move forward, it is highly likely that we will continue to pay attention to Greece and all the economic and financial problems surrounding the nation.

Wrap-Up

In other news from around the world, it is being reported that the presidents of France and Germany will be meeting with Russian president Vladimir Putin this week in order to try and resolve the ongoing crisis in Ukraine. Finally, the market will continue paying close attention to the price action of crude oil as we head through the weekend and into a new week. If oil can sustain somewhat higher spot values through the weekend, most experts agree that the black gold will have achieved at least a near-term bottom. There are a number of factors we will be paying attention to upon the start of next week, but few will be more important than the slew of January economic reports from around the world.