Gold and silver are both trading higher as of the early morning on Friday but will more than likely begin to feel pressure as a result of today’s better than expected employment report for April. There has been a boatload of economic data released this week, most of which has been adversarial to gold and silver spot values. As the US Dollar and US equity markets performed well through the middle parts of this week, spot values continuously declined.

The situation in Ukraine is still catching the attention of the marketplace though things have not really done much in the way escalating this week. With that in mind, it is also important to know and understand that things have not done much in the way of deescalating either. Pro-Russian rebels are still in control of a large majority of the eastern half of Ukraine and are more readily threatening the already threatened stability of Ukraine as a country. Russia is continuing to be defiant while the sanctions the United States are placing on Russian businesses and individuals have done little in the way of changing the opinion of the Kremlin with regard to their neighbor.

Interesting Week of US and World Economic Data

From an economic data standpoint, this week has been one of the busiest investors have experienced thus far this year. Earlier in the week the market was greeted with the 1st-quarter’s US GDP report. Compared to market expectations of more than a 1% annual increase in GDP growth, investors were sorry to hear that year on year GDP growth came in at only one tenth of one percent. While this news would normally put a lot of downward pressure on gold and silver, it didn’t have that effect as the market patiently awaited the conclusion of the latest FOMC meeting.

The FOMC meeting, which took place from Tuesday morning until Wednesday afternoon, did not end up making too much of an impact on the marketplace. The outcome of the meeting was yet another $10 billion reduction to QE, but this was a move that a majority of the market expected the Fed to make. What did hurt precious metals, however, was the fact that the Fed reiterated its positive outlook on the US economy. Despite the first four months of 2014 not being particularly favorable from an economic standpoint for the United States, most are now attributing that to a harsh winter that more or less skewed the countless pieces of economic data we have mulled over this year.

The last piece of US economic data released this week was today’s US Labor Department jobs data for April. During the middle of the week it was clear that the market was expecting non-farm payrolls to grow by anywhere from 200,000-215,000. For the first time in a long time, however, the market was shocked to see April non-farm payrolls grow by more than 280,000. While it is expected that this better than expected jobs report will eventually weigh on precious metals spot values, as of writing this the spot values of both gold and silver were both trading sharply higher.