Gold and silver are recording slight losses for a third straight day as most of the few fundamental inputs are working against precious metals. Prior to this week’s beginning, most precious metals investors were hoping that the tide might finally be shifting and that gold and silver would finally record solid gains. While Monday saw gold and silver gain value, the subsequent days have not been so favorable as most economic data from the US and around the world have been more beneficial for equity markets than they have been for raw commodities, especially precious metals.
To put things in perspective, the global economy is making gains at such a rate that even a disappointing banking report out of China was not enough to prevent worldwide and Chinese equities from having impressive days today.
Non-Farms Data Only A False Alarm
Last Friday was perhaps the most important day of the week to investors who were hoping to receive some fresh insight into how the US economy was performing after an extended holiday break. On the slate was the non-farm payrolls data from this past December. Despite the market expecting to see 200,000 payrolls added during the last month of 2013, investors were surprised to see that only about 74,000 payrolls were added. This news was a shock not only because it was far below market expectations, but also because it was the first sub-par economic report out of the United States in a relatively long period of time. The report also put a sizable dent in overall investor confidence in the US economy and thus propelled gold and silver spot values to make some decent gains.
Most precious metals investors were hoping to see gold and silver’s small bullish run towards the end of last week carry on through this week but were quickly disappointed. Despite gold and silver managing to post small gains on Monday, the next three days (including today) have worked out a bit differently for metals. With stock markets around the world performing extremely well it is going to take a large amount of fresh, bullish fundamental inputs to allow gold and silver any room to make solid, lasting gains.