Happy Friday, traders. Welcome to our weekly market wrap, where we take a look back at these last five trading days with a focus on the market news, economic data and headlines that had the most impact on gold prices and other key correlated assets—and may continue to into the future.
Gold prices have dropped precipitously in Friday's trading, erasing potential gains for the week and sending the yellow metal's spot price to a 1-month low.
So, what kind of week has it been?
Gold looked resilient for much of this week, holding on to at least a modest gain in spot price despite being buffeted by macro-data headwinds. After a strong performance and some consolidation over the first four days of trading, however, the yellow metal had its floor pulled out from under it by two surprises that amounted to a lot of negative input.
Well, one truly surprising piece of news, followed by an upside "surprise" in US labor data that has become part of the course since early 2023.
Traders' and investors' key focus for this week was always going to be the May Jobs Report delivered on Friday morning, but there were some meaningful data sets released earlier in the week. Monday's Manufacturing Sector PM survey delivered another consecutive disappointment for the US economy's engine room, not only coming in below the contraction/expansion breakeven of 50.0 but also missing the consensus projection. Presented as both a signal of economic risk and possible pressure of the FOMC to get to cutting interest rates for relief, gold spot prices, which had started the week around $2330/oz, pushed higher to $2340. Metals held serve at this level for most of the US session but were unable to consolidate before the next Asia session brought in sellers that pushed gold back to $2330.
From there, gold went on to perform well across the middle of the week, especially relative to its trading environment. On Wednesday, we saw the Service-sector variant of the ISM's Purchasing Manager Index, and here, the numbers outperformed expectations while rising notably above the 50.0 mark. Although this might typically have been considered a risk-on signal for investors and the opposite of the Manufacturing PMI's rationale for boosting gold prices, the yellow metal continued to strengthen in Wednesday and Thursday's global trading. Spot reached a weekly high of $2380/oz on Thursday evening and looked in a good position to potentially close the week in the green even if it had to endure some pressure from the May Jobs Report.
Gold Price Chart
More articles from Matthew Bolden
