Gold News

Gold & Silver Prices Erase 2015 Gains as Dollar Surges, Fed Rates 'Will Rise' on Strongest US Jobs Growth Since Tech-Stock Peak of March 2000

GOLD and SILVER prices sank lunchtime Friday in London after new US jobs data beat Wall Street forecasts with the strongest annual run of net hiring since the Tech Stock Bubble peaked in March 2000.
 
Commodities dropped, and US stock-market futures pointed lower as US bond prices fell, driving 10-year yields almost 0.1 percentage higher to a ten-week high of 2.21%.
 
Today's Non-Farm Payrolls report estimated net US hiring at 295,000 last month, beating analyst forecasts for the 9th time in 12 months.
 
Both gold and silver prices dropped back to the New Year's starting levels, erasing the last of 2015's earlier 10% and 17% gains.
 
"A quiet morning gave way to an aggressive sell-off in gold" on the NFP data, says one London trading desk, "with silver in a similar state of freefall."
 
"Robust [jobs] figures are likely to fuel expectations of interest rate hikes," says the commodities team at Commerzbank in Germany, "and put pressure on the gold price in USD."
 
"The US Dollar is in a multi-year ascent and US interest rates will move higher, not lower," says a note on precious metals prices from Dutch bank ABN Amro.
 
"[But] financial markets continue to underestimate Fed rates hikes this year and next... Combined with constructive investor sentiment [on stocks] this is a major negative for gold prices."
 
"The extent of Fed rate hikes over the next few years," agrees Standard Bank FX strategist Steven Barrow, "are more likely to mimic the Fed's own, higher forecasts than the lower rates priced into the futures strip right now."
 
"There is very little doubt among analysts and gold observers that the Dollar and gold tend to move inversely," said Dundee Wealth's Martin Murenbeeld, speaking in Toronto on Monday at the annual PDAC mining conference – an event marked this year by "far less prime rib, more chips and salsa" as executives slash corporate expense accounts according to one attendee.
 
"That weighs on gold."
 
Having dipped earlier below what analysts this week called 'key support' at $1195 per ounce, gold prices fell 1.1% inside 6 minutes on today's US jobs data.
 
Silver prices fell less steeply having already dropped below $16 per ounce, but extended their loss for the week to 4.7% in Dollar terms.
 
Dropping again to trade below $1183 – the crash low of 2013 – gold neared the close London business 2.9% down from last Friday.
 
Gold priced in Euros, in contrast, held flat for the week however at €1083 per ounce, as the single currency sank to new 11.5-year lows beneath $1.09 against the Dollar.
 
"Investors are transfixed by when the Fed will tighten rates," wrote French investment bank Societe Generale's strategist Albert Edwards last week, "and can’t see the wood for the trees.
 
"The Fed’s focus on payrolls, a lagging indicator, is most perplexing...The reality is that the vast bulk of economic, as well as earnings data (even outside the energy sector) has been simply dreadful."

Adrian Ash

Adrian Ash, BullionVault Gold News

Adrian Ash is director of research at BullionVault, the world-leading physical gold, silver and platinum market for private investors online. Formerly head of editorial at London's top publisher of private-investment advice, he was City correspondent for The Daily Reckoning from 2003 to 2008, and he has now been researching and writing daily analysis of precious metals and the wider financial markets for over 20 years. A frequent guest on BBC radio and television, Adrian is regularly quoted by the Financial Times, MarketWatch and many other respected news outlets, and his views from inside the bullion market have been sought by the Economist magazine, CNBC, Bloomberg, Germany's Handelsblatt and FAZ, plus Italy's Il Sole 24 Ore.

See the full archive of Adrian Ash articles on GoldNews.

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