Gold, silver and crude oil plummeted at the start of trading this morning.
As of 7am this morning, spot gold fell below $1700 an ounce, falling as low as $1680 an ounce for the first time since March 31st. Spot silver continued to fall, plunging 8% on the day.
The most active gold futures contract of COMEX traded 2612 lots in one minute at 06:48 on August 9, Beijing time, with a total value of US $455 million. The contract sold 3220 lots in one minute at 06:57 on Aug. 9 in Beijing, with a total value of $550 million.
Subsequently, spot silver rebounded in the short term to above $23 an ounce, narrowing its intraday decline to 5.35 per cent, while spot gold rebounded above $1700 an ounce, narrowing its intraday decline to 3.15 per cent. At the same time, the United States and cloth oil fell by more than 2%.
According to CCTV, on the 7th local time, according to Dawn News in Afghanistan, US President Joe Biden ordered US troops in Afghanistan to use Bmer52 bombers and ghost gunboat aircraft to attack Taliban positions that are attacking major cities in Afghanistan.
The report quoted Agence France-Presse as saying that the Taliban occupied the capital of Juzjan province earlier on the 7th. Afghan Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahed announced on social media on the same day that the organization captured the city of Hibiergan, the capital of northern Juzjan province on the same day. The report also said that the Afghan government has not yet confirmed this.
If the above news is true, the city of Hibiergan will be the second provincial capital city occupied by the Taliban since the withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan began on May 1.
Last week, the global novel coronavirus epidemic continued to worsen. According to the New York Times epidemic tracker, the number of new cases per day worldwide has increased by 14% in the past two weeks to 600000 per day, and the number of deaths has dropped by 4% to 9213. According to novel coronavirus's epidemic map, the United States continues to have the largest number of confirmed cases in a single day, with more than 100000 new cases in the most recent week, followed by India, Iran, Indonesia and Brazil.
Fauci, the chief medical adviser to US President Joe Biden, said earlier this week that it was clear that the situation had changed so badly that as long as the virus was allowed to spread at a rate of 100000 cases a day, the virus would have a sufficient probability of mutation. In addition to the United States, the Delta variant, the vast majority of the new confirmed cases in the United States, is also complicating outbreaks around the world.
In the UK, the number of hospitalized patients infected with Delta variants and who have been vaccinated is increasing, and officials have warned that the vaccine will not prevent patients from becoming severe. At present, the Delta variant accounts for more than 99% of the total new confirmed cases in the UK.
At the same time, the epidemic has spread more widely in the Asia-Pacific region. At present, the number of cases in Sydney and Melbourne is at a record high, the number of infections and deaths in Thailand is at a record level, and the number of new confirmed cases in the Philippines is also surging.
Domestically, the National Health Commission announced on the 8th that between 0: 00 and 24:00 on the 7th, 31 provinces (autonomous regions, municipalities directly under the Central Government) and Xinjiang production and Construction Corps reported 96 new confirmed cases, including 81 local cases (38 in Jiangsu, 24 in Henan, 7 in Yunnan, 6 in Hubei and 6 in Hunan), and 30 new asymptomatic infections, including 5 local cases (3 in Hubei and 2 in Henan).
Data released at a press conference on the prevention and control of the novel coronavirus epidemic in Zhengzhou last night showed that as of 18:00 on August 8, one new local confirmed case had been confirmed in Zhengzhou, 40 cases had been converted to confirmed asymptomatic cases, and 1 new case of asymptomatic infection had been added.
Beautiful non-farm data triggered the gold "big dive", the United States CPI data hit this week, gold prices have not yet bottomed out?
Non-farm payrolls rose by 943000 in July, exceeding market expectations of 870000, the Bureau of Labor Statistics announced on Friday. In addition, the June figure was revised up to 938000 from 850000, the unemployment rate fell from 5.9 per cent to 5.4 per cent, and annual wage increases rose from 3.7 per cent to 4 per cent. The jobs report confirmed the hawkish nature of the Fed's policy outlook and provided a strong boost to the dollar.
On Friday, precious metals closed with a "dive", and COMEX December gold futures closed down 2.5%, the lowest close for main contracts since April 14. Gold fell 2.97% in the last cycle, the biggest weekly decline since June 18. New York silver futures fell for three days in a row, while COMEX September silver futures closed down 3.8%, the lowest close for major contracts since March 30, and fell about 4.8% last week.
Wang Yanqing, a futures analyst at CITIC Construction Investment, believes that non-farm data are the trigger for the gold dive. The overall performance of US economic data in recent months is good, but only in terms of employment, the new non-farm payrolls in April and May are lower than expected, and the unemployment rate rose instead of falling in June, all of which give signals to the market that the employment situation is weak. However, in the July non-farm payrolls report, both new jobs and the unemployment rate were better than expected, in sharp contrast to the previous data, which largely means that the constraints on the economic recovery in the United States have weakened, and the Federal Reserve has reduced or accelerated its easing. This puts pressure on gold.
Referring to the current epidemic, Wang Yanqing said that the impact of the epidemic on the precious metals market can be divided into two aspects: from the perspective of the financial nature of precious metals, the aggravation of the epidemic will dampen expectations of economic recovery, resulting in a longer duration of monetary easing and support for precious metals. From the point of view of the nature of precious metal commodities, the aggravation of the epidemic will reduce the demand for commodities and bring pressure to precious metals. The difference between gold and silver mainly lies in the strength of commodity attributes. as silver is more widely used as a general commodity, silver will be weaker relative to gold when the epidemic spreads faster. recently, we can also see a rebound in the price of gold and silver.
Looking forward to the US CPI data this week, Wang Yanqing believes that the current impact of inflation on the dollar is relatively small, mainly because the Fed is selectively ignoring the factor of inflation. The Fed has previously adjusted its forward guidance to adopt average inflation targeting in order to increase its tolerance for inflation, and the Fed chairman has repeatedly mentioned the view that current inflation is temporary. It shows that the rise in short-term inflation will not affect the Fed's monetary policy. Therefore, as long as long-term inflation expectations do not rise, the Fed will not change its policy position because of short-term inflation data, and the higher-than-expected inflation data will provide relatively weak support for the dollar.
In fact, the Fed's current focus is still on employment. Recently, Federal Reserve Kashkari mentioned in his speech that if the job market is as strong as expected in the autumn, it will reach the threshold of "substantial progress", which means that Fed easing is approaching and gold is still under great pressure. " Wang Yanqing said.
