Gold Spot Price Open: $1,241

Gold Spot Price Close: $1,231

Change in Gold Spot Price: -$10

Silver Spot Price Open: $17.80

Silver Spot Price Close: $17.61

Change in Silver Spot Price: -$0.19

Precious metals did not exactly impress on Thursday thanks, in part, to profit-taking after recent gains. When all was said and done, gold lost about 10 dollars while silver fell by almost 20 cents. Platinum and palladium didn’t do well either, as platinum lost a few dollars and palladium finished in roughly the same position it was in when the day began.

Quiet Data Day Sees Little Shift in Focus

A theme this week has been the general absence of fresh economic data points for investors to mull over and discuss. As a result, we are seeing a lot of investor attention be directed towards the seemingly daily headlines made by President Donald Trump. Most recently, Trump tweeted his disgust with the department store Nordstroms and their decision to not carry his daughter’s clothing brand. This was just the latest in what seems to be a never-ending story of Trump commentary and tweets.

Since he took office on January 20th, Donald Trump has done a lot of good for precious metals spot values. Through his actions and rhetoric he has managed to unnerve a majority of the investing world, but especially those in the United States. Feeling uncertain with regard to what the future holds for the US and global economies, investors are grabbing onto safe-haven precious metals. So long as President Trump continues to make headlines as he has been, spot values will look like benefitting.

President Trump will round out the week by meeting with Japanese PM Shinzo Abe, and everyone is anxiously awaiting what headlines will stem from this meeting. The President is a supporter of Japan, but is not going to overlook or neglect to comment on what he sees as currency manipulation. As such, people are expecting that he might call the Japanese out, thus creating even more tension across Asia.

Jobless Claims Fall to Lowest Levels in Almost 43 Years

You did read that subheading correctly; jobless claims in the United States have come incredibly close to an all-time record low. According to the US Department of Labor, first-time claims for unemployment benefits last week came back 12,000 fewer than the week before. This brought the seasonally-adjusted average number of claims down to 234,000, which is just 1,000 shy from a 43-year low.

Perhaps even more impressive is the fact that the seasonally-adjusted average number of claims has remained below 300,000 for 101 consecutive weeks. This is an all-time record that is being broken and reset each and every week. With the labor market close to what the government considers to be full-employment, it seems as though the Fed has a lot of reason to raise interest rates even higher.

Bullard Talks Rate Hikes

James Bullard, president of the St. Louis Federal Reserve, has long been an outspoken individual when it comes to hiking interest rates. On Thursday, he was quoted as saying that he would not be at all surprised to see interest rates kept at their current range of .5%-.75%. In essence, Bullard does not think the US economy is performing at a high enough rate and is also worried, to some extent, about what the new President will mean for the economy. Being that there is still a lot to uncover and assess, Bullard feels confident saying that rates might remain right where they are now through the whole of 2017. This is something that flies in the face of widespread belief that rates will be raised at least two more times.

Wrap-Up

All told, Thursday was a mostly negligible day. Apart from the jobless claims data there wasn’t much in the way of fresh info for investors to discuss. Though James Bullard’s comments are definitely something we should take note of, they haven’t been bought into all that much. As we head into the final day of the week it will be interesting to see if safe-haven demand or profit-taking determine metals’ fate.