Gold and silver spot values have experienced a fairly rough week, most fueled by a slight uptick in investor risk-appetite. What is interesting, however, is that risk-appetite has slowly increased despite the market’s almost complete and total focus on geopolitical events unfolding in the Middle East, Europe, and Africa. However, today, the last day of the week, is showing clear signs of investors being a bit more cautious as we head into what is most definitely an uncertain weekend.

Geopolitics Dominate Investors’ Focus

The beginning of this week saw investors from around the world exhibiting a bit more risk-appetite, despite continued focus on violence in Israel and Ukraine. That said, some positive US corporate earnings boosted US equity markets while upbeat Chinese PMI data released later in the week gave Asian equity markets a boost.

Amid all this upbeat economic data, however, there have been a number of new developments surrounding the Malaysian Airlines MH-17 flight as well as the ongoing Israeli ground invasion of the Gaza Strip.

With regard to the debris field resulting from flight MH-17, there is still a lot of work to be done, and pro-Russian rebels are not going to be patient it seems. While rebels have thus far cooperated with the recovery of wreckage and victims, they are urging those who wish to come investigate the accident to expedite that process. To many, this urging only serve to make the rebels look even more guilty. After all, it is widely believed that these same rebels were behind the downing of MH-17 as well as four other Ukrainian military aircraft in recent weeks. Tensions are so high in recent weeks because Western leaders are seeing no effort on the part of Russia to deescalate tensions between Ukrainian government and the pro-Russian rebels which have taken up post in large portions of Eastern Ukraine. In fact, just today it was reported by the Pentagon that large surface-to-air missiles were reportedly crossing over the Russian border with Ukraine. As Russian-US relations deteriorate to near Cold War levels, investors from around the world are fearing the worst as we head into this weekend.

Making investors even more on-edge is the fact that Israel, just hours ago, rejected the latest ceasefire agreement. Now, there are many reports streaming in saying that Israeli forces might even step up their attacks in the coming days. With over 800 Palestinians already dead in the last 18 days, the world is putting more pressure on Israel to halt its offensive. As a result, it only makes sense that investors are giving the turmoil their undivided attention.