Gold & Silver Gain as Wall Street, Dollar Slump on Falling US Jobs, Looming Euro Rate-Hike

From Chris Mullen at GoldSeek.com...

Gold and silver remained near unchanged in Asia on Wednesday before they dropped over 1% in London to drop as low as $931.45 and $17.86 just before the New York open.

Both metals then rallied back higher in New York and ended near their highs of $945.52 for Gold and $18.33 for silver, recording gains of 0.21% and 0.96% respectively for the day.

The Dow, Nasdaq, and S&P meantime fell throughout the day and ended about 2% lower on record high oil and concern about the economy.

The US Dollar fell and Treasuries rose as open-market interest rates dropped on worse-than-expected ADP Employment numbers. Down 79,000 for June against a loss of 20,000 forecast, it raised worries over Thursday's official government jobs report.

It comes shortly after an expected interest rate hike from the European Central Bank that should drive the gap between US and Eurozone rates to 2.25%.

The Gold Price in Euros meantime slipped Wednesday near €593, platinum lost $2.50 to $2071, and copper gained over 15 cents to about $4.08.

Gold and silver equities fell throughout the day along with the major indices and ended with about 3% losses.

Oil rose to a new record high of $143.91 after crude inventories fell a larger than expected 2 million barrels. Gasoline inventories grew 2.1 million barrels, distillates rose 1.3 million barrels, and refinery utilization rose 0.6% to 89.2%.

Oil then climbed above $144 in after-hours trade.

Ahead of the long weekend starting with Friday's holiday in the US, today brings US Initial Jobless Claims for last week (expected at 385,000) plus June’s job data, now expected to show Non-Farm Payrolls shrinking by 60,000.

The Unemployment Rate is expected at 5.4%, while Hourly Earnings are expected to rise just 0.3%, and the Average Workweek is expected at 33.7 hours.

The leading ISM Services report for June is then at 16:00 GMT, and is expected to show marginal growth.

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