Gold and silver are both receiving boosts in the early hours of Friday thanks to a much weaker than expected US jobs report for this past December. Arguably the most highly anticipated economic report of the week, the US jobs data for this past December is what investors have been waiting for for almost two weeks now.
Chinese trade reports did well to complement the disappointing US jobs data as they too came back weaker than the market had anticipated. After what has been a week of ups and downs for gold and silver investors will be happy to head into the weekend with gold on more of an upbeat run.
Disappointing Jobs Data Pushes Gold Forward
Early in the week the ADP employment report for this past December came back beating market expectations by a large margin. Taking that report into consideration the market was then convinced that today’s non-farm payrolls report would show that non-farm payrolls rose by around 200,000 this past December. When the report was released earlier this morning it came back much weaker than what the market had anticipated. Compared to the 200,000 increase in payrolls that was expected, the report showed that only about 75,000 payrolls were added in December. Even though some market experts are saying that this report was skewed due to the holidays and will be revised by the end of the month, this report has added fuel to the fire that is the debate about Quantitative Easing.
Presently, the weaker than expected employment report for December is putting downward pressure on the US Dollar while propelling gold and silver forward. With that being said, the pace at which precious metals have been climbing this morning is a bit disappointing considering how drastically different the payrolls data was than what was expected.
A report out of China showed that the nation’s trading surplus shrunk to $25.6 billion in December, much weaker than November’s surplus of nearly $34 billion. Market expectations for today’s trade surplus report was around $32 billion which means that this report was viewed as being a bit disappointing. Exports out of China increased by a little over 4% on an annual basis in December while imports improved by over 8%. In all, the reports out of China and the US were viewed as disappointing on the whole.