Gold Spot Price Open: $1,384
Gold Spot Price Close: $1,368
Change in Gold Spot Price: -$16
Silver Spot Price Open: $21.56
Silver Spot Price Close: $21.23
Change in Silver Spot Price: -$0.33
Gold and silver opened this week in dismal fashion as both metals’ spot values plunged from the second markets opened. When all was said and done, gold lost about 16 dollars while silver lost a little more than 30 cents.
Despite the weekend’s referendum in Crimea going the exact way in which we thought it would, the marketplace did not react as most expected. Even though more than 90% of voting Crimeans deciding that they would rather rejoin Russia as opposed to continuing to remain part of Ukraine, safe-haven demand for gold and silver did not receive the boost most would have anticipated. Instead, it seemed that a majority of the marketplace was ignoring Crimea, most likely because no violence came as a result of this weekend’s referendum and, if anything, tensions in the region are deescalating, not increasing.
The US has already placed sanctions on Russia and the EU made the announcement that they will too. Not only that, but both the US and the EU have announced that they refuse to recognize the referendum in Crimea as being legitimate. While this situation is heading towards the back-burner, it is clear that it is far from over.
Instead of safe-haven demand driving metals forward, Monday was marred with profit-taking and chart consolidation after last week’s impressive gains. Though it was not expected that spot gold and silver would hang on to all of last week’s gains permanently, they may be conceding them much faster than anyone would have thought. With Ukrainian tensions on the back-burner and the potential for some bearish news from the Fed and US economic data this week, there is no saying how much of a beating gold and silver will take. With that being said, the economic news scheduled for this week may just as well be sub-par and end up driving spot gold and silver up once again.
The FOMC’s policy meeting is scheduled to begin sometime tomorrow morning and wrap up in the afternoon on Wednesday. As it stands, the market is expecting that Quantitative Easing will be dealt another $10 billion blow.