Gold and silver spot values are edging marginally higher today, but are being held back thanks to a bit of upbeat US economic data. Shortened due to the celebration of the Independence Day holiday in the United States on Friday, this trading week is still set to bring about a good bit of economic data. Despite this, it is clear to see the precious metals are retaining their near-term technical momentum and are being looked upon with favor by the investing world as of the last few weeks.
The civil war in Iraq is still very much a big deal and major concern of the marketplace, but it has faded from the forefront of investor attention this week. US military advisers are on the ground and more are on their way, but the ISIS rebels have shown few signs of letting up and are slowly but surely moving further southward towards the capital city of Baghdad. While the market is not paying as close attention to the civil war this week as they did a week ago, this situation is still far from resolved and will be a mainstay in the headlines for the foreseeable future.
Healthy Amounts of Economic Data To Close Out the Week
Through Monday and Tuesday, metals saw healthy gains posted as a result of an increasing number of investors taking interest in both physical gold and silver. Today, however, it’s a bit of a different story as some upbeat US economic news served to halt the progress of precious metals. Shortly after markets opened today, investors were greeted with an ADP employment report that handily beat market expectations. According to ADP, more than 280,000 jobs were added to the economy in June. Typically, the ADP employment report is overlooked by investors who instead tend to focus on the US employment report from the Department of Labor, but this report definitely helped increase expectations for this Friday’s jobs data. As it stands, the market is expecting to see roughly 215,000 non-farm payrolls added to the economy in June.
In addition to tomorrow playing host to the latest employment figures for the United States, it is also scheduled to bring about the European Central Bank’s policy meeting. There are no major decisions expected to be made by the ECB tomorrow, but investors will be interested to hear if president Mario Draghi has anything to say about recent reports which indicate deflation levels have not budged since the institution of fresh monetary stimulus. I highly doubt that the ECB will make any statements with regard to EU inflation/deflation levels, but the market will be paying close attention nonetheless.
