Gold and Silver Trade With No Direction

                    Gold is trading at 1573.85 this morning at the end of the Asian session. Gold closed on Monday at $1576 making very little headway since the end of the week. Gold declined on a weekly basis by 1.21% and the average rate reached $1,571.3 which was 1.88% below last week’s average rate. Gold ended the week at $1,575.5. Silverprices also fell during the previous week by 3.79%, furthermore, the average rate fell by 4.9% to reach $27.20 compared to last week’s average. This morning silver is trading at $27.273 following in gold’s shadow. The metals markets have been very quiet this so far this week following jobs data last Friday.

Last week, the U.S. Labor Department’s monthly report showed that the economy added only 88,000 jobs in March, the lowest monthly gain since last June and far below expectations. Economists surveyed by CNN Money had expected a gain of 190,000 jobs. The unemployment rate slipped to 7.6%, but that was also bad news because nearly 500,000 people dropped out of the labor market. This kind of gloomy snapshot sent investors rushing toward U.S. Treasuries, but the 10-year yield dropped to 1.7%, its lowest level since December 2012. Gold, which is also perceived to be a traditional safe haven, gained 1.5% at the end of the week, ending the COMEX session at the high for the day

Thursday night, the Japanese government halted trading in the Japanese 10 yr. bond which saw its yield first drop to .32%, then in a few hours it doubled to .65%. This set off circuit breakers and caused the authorities to halt trading. By closing time New York, the USD/yen currency cross bolted past the 97.00 price 97.51. The 10 year Japanese bond finished Friday night at .53% yield. This morning the JPY continued its climbed to break the 99 price level.

Billionaire investor George Soros and Bill Gross, who runs the world’s biggest bond fund, said the Bank of Japan’s currency debasement risks weakening the yen. Indeed, Soros has warned of a currency “avalanche”.

On Monday, the Bank of Japan began buying 1.2trillion yen of JGB which through the markets into turmoil and the Tokyo exchange was closed for a short period of time.  Later in the day on Monday Fed Chairman Bernanke had little to say that interested traders, although an ex-Fed member said that this year the Fed are prepared for the spring slow down and have held their monetary easing in place and will mostly likely continue their 85billion in monthly purchases through the summer at least. This possibility continues to keep gold and the US dollar trading fairly evenly.

Holdings in the SPDR Gold Trust gold-backed exchange traded fund, stood at 1205.31 tons by Apr 07, remains unchanged from the previous business day while silver backed exchange-traded fund iShares Silver Trust stood at 10497.59 tons by Apr 07, remains unchanged also. It seems precious metal traders are waiting for direction from the markets.

Courtesy : FxEmpire