Gold and silver are and have been trading moderately lower on Friday, pressured by a strong US employment report for May. This week, generally speaking, has been a busy one from an economic standpoint. There was an all-important European Central Bank meeting which took place a day ago, and the outcome of said meeting was exactly what most investors thought it would be.

For a second consecutive week, the market has more or less totally ignored the crisis in Ukraine due to a lack of anything noteworthy stemming from it. In fact, it is looking now like even the pro-Russian rebels may be on the verge of laying down their arms and agreeing to a ceasefire. As always, we will continue to keep a close eye on everything happening in Ukraine, though it is looking like it will continue to have no impact on the precious metals market.

ECB Meeting, US Jobs Data Rounds Out The Week

As was stated earlier, this week was without a doubt one of the busiest in recent history. Of all the highly anticipated pieces of economic data due out during this 5-day trading session, few were more highly anticipated than yesterday’s European Central Bank meeting. With deflationary pressures only growing worse, the collective investing world was in general agreement that the ECB had to do something in order to avoid rapid deflation from becoming an issue in Europe. In the meeting’s lead-up, most investors were convinced that they would see some sort of monetary stimulus enacted by the continent’s central bank, and that is exactly what happened.

Not only did the ECB announce that it is planning on reducing the refinancing rate by 10 basis points, they also introduced a -.1% deposit rate. This news initially pushed the euro currency downward while simultaneously giving the USD room to make gains, but most of these price movements were counteracted by the time yesterday was through. Surprising to most was the fact that gold and silver spot values were able to turn what was looking like a day of losses into substantial gains. Most people are saying that gold and silver’s gains can be directly attributed to the market having already factored in yesterday’s decision beforehand.

Today, however, was not as favorable for precious metals due to the release of the latest non-farm payrolls data for May. After the midweek dealt us a less than stellar ADP employment report, most people were not expecting big things from today’s report. Surprisingly enough, the non-farms data showed that roughly 217,000 jobs were added to the economy last month, good enough to drop the unemployment rate down to 6.3%. As expected, today’s stronger employment report put a good amount of downward pressure on metals, effectively preventing them from salvaging this week.