Gold and silver spot values are trading higher during the early morning hours of Friday thanks to a weaker than expected non-farm payrolls report from March. Gold is on the verge of crossing over the key $1,300 threshold once more while silver is doing its best to stay above the $20/ounce mark. Though this week was full of relevant economic data, none of it even came close to having the impact that today’s non-farms data had.

As we look ahead to next week it will be interesting to see just how the market ends up digesting today’s news and what it means for spot gold and silver going forward.

Non-Farms Data Disappoints, ECB Holds Rates Steady

This week was home to a flurry of economic activity with new reports stemming from the United States and elsewhere around the world. Having said that, however, no two days were more important to investors than Thursday and Friday.

Yesterday, investors fixated their attention to Europe as the European Central Bank was set to convene for their latest policy meeting. Due to recently budding concerns over deflation hitting the EU, a plethora of market experts began to speculate with regard to whether or not deflation concerns would prompt the ECB to institute some sort of new monetary stimulus measures. When the meeting wrapped up it was reported that the ECB didn’t change interest rates nor did they employ any new stimulus measures. In his address to media in the wake of the meeting, ECB president Mario Draghi made it clear that even though no decisions with regard to stimulus were made at this meeting, those type of measures are far from being out of the question. Now European investors will simply have to play the waiting game over the course of the next few weeks in order to determine just how severe of a problem deflation is really becoming.

Finally, the most important piece of economic data was due out today in the form of March’s non-farm payrolls data. In light of recently positive remarks with regard to the US economy and job growth by the newly appointed Federal Reserve chairperson, the market had been expecting March’s non-farms data to be somewhere in the neighborhood of 200,000+. When the data was made public, however, investors were somewhat surprised to see payroll additions of only 192,000 in March. Though investors were expecting a rise in payrolls of about 200,000, the recent remarks made by Fed members only served to inflate expectations to the point where most were anticipating non-farm payroll additions well above the 200,000 mark. Now, in the wake of the data, spot gold and silver are climbing as US equities are feeling the pressure many expected to be weighing on precious metals.