After hitting a new all-time low last month, the monthly Global Precious Metals MMI® bounced back up a bit to catch its breath, and registered a value of 76 in September, an increase of 2.7% from 74 in August.
So What’s At Play? Gold Prices and Fed Hikes?
Yesterday, Reuters reported that spot gold prices lost more ground, after drifting downward the past several days.
The precious metal was “hurt by a stronger dollar and as investors awaited a key US jobs report to gauge the timing of a Federal Reserve rate hike” – however, the global stock market [expletive]-show that has been rocking investor confidence lately may just be the only thing the Fed needs to go through with the hike.
(Besides, ADP‘s private-sector jobs report, released this past Wednesday, betrays severe underperformance – fewer than 200,000 jobs have been added in 6 of the last 8 months.)
Gold Drivers
The gold price points from each of the 4 global markets we track (the US, China, Japan and India) all rose over the past month, and along with platinum increases in Japan, China and the US, were the main drivers of the wholesale increase in the Global Precious Metals MMI®. That’s likely due to the fact that equities markets have been doing so poorly – no, heinously – from China to the Dow.
So, on the face of it, gold was a factor in the global precious index’s rise…but let’s turn attention to the historical lows of palladium.
“No. 2″ PGM More of a Concern
Palladium, platinum’s cheaper and less scarce cousin, hit another bottom. The US price of palladium bars tracked on the MetalMiner IndX℠ clocked in at $600 per ounce (log in or join as a MetalMiner member at the bottom of this article to get full pricing to all the precious metals we track) – the lowest since November 2012.
As my colleague Jeff Yoders wrote recently, although US auto markets appear robust at the moment, there is uncertainty in China and correspondingly lower auto sales there. Chinese auto sales fell by 7.10% in July 2015 compared to July 2014, the largest fall since February 2013.
by Taras Berezowsky