Happy Friday, traders. Welcome to our weekly market wrap, where we take a look back at these last five trading days with a focus on the market news, economic data, and headlines that had the most impact on gold prices and other key correlated assets—and may continue to in the future.
Here’s what you need to know:
Gold prices surged past $3,900/oz this week as the U.S. government shutdown fueled market uncertainty.
Key federal data releases, including the September Jobs Report, were delayed, leaving traders reliant on private surveys.
Private payroll and service-sector data showed unexpected weakness, adding to recessionary concerns.
Strong risk-off flows supported gold, with futures contracts climbing and holding near record highs.
Gold has again exploded higher this week as the stark uncertainty of the US government shutdown—which went into effect on Tuesday night—has unsettled markets both in terms of investors’ and traders’ sentiment, but also the actual mechanisms through which often vital macroeconomic data metrics are communicated.
On Monday alone, as the reality of the October shutdown became more keenly felt, gold spot prices began accelerating higher, and what was an already aggressive pickup of $50/oz became a $100 rally by midnight. From there, the yellow metal’s price chart became choppy over the course of the week but rarely looked seriously liable to fall back below $3825 or even $3850/oz.
The most aggressive swing came on Tuesday, as a rush to lock in profits for September’s book of business on the final day saw sell orders flood into the market and briefly push gold down to support at $3800 in the very early morning hours. By the time US cash markets closed on the same day, gold spot had already regained a perch above $3855/oz.
The shutdown of government offices meant radio silence from federal institutions that provide key macroeconomic surveys and data sets, most notably the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which on Friday missed the scheduled release of the September Jobs Report.
Markets were not left with a total vacuum, though, as a number of higher-profile reports are published by private enterprises like S&P and the ISM. The latter’s US Manufacturing PMI report, a survey of the industrial sector at the heart of the US economy, may have been the only relatively bright spot, and only just. The headline PMI number for September came in marginally higher than expected, still nearly a full point below the 50.0 breakeven between expansion and contraction of the sector, but moving in the right direction.
Story Continues
It has likely contributed to gold’s still strong rallies this week, owing to the yellow metal’s traditional role as a risk-off protection against economic uncertainty, that the rest of the privately-published data from this week took a more concerning tone.
The service-sector variant of the ISM survey weakened by more than anticipated for September and landed right at 50.0, suggesting that US consumer spending is slowing as consumers become more weary of either recessionary risks stemming from the lack (until just recently) of any monetary easing in 2025, or of more direct risks to the US economy as a result of nascent, still undefined federal government shutdown.
Private payroll numbers presented a negative shock to the system and its projections as well, as the ADP report not only printed a September number well below expectations—a loss of -32K private sector jobs as compared to a projected pickup of +50K—but also revised the previous month’s gain starkly lower to effectively 0.
It’s important to highlight that, historically, there is not a very strong directional correlation between the private-payroll ADP numbers and the same month’s critical Non Farm Payrolls data normally published by the BLS. But with no BLS reporting at the moment, markets are left to trade solely on their idea of how to extrapolate the one from the other.
And in this week’s market, the result is a great deal of concern and movement to reduce risk. Although US stock markets, week-over-week, don’t seem too rattled by this, it’s unclear how long that confidence to look past the government shutdown might hold.
Because in gold and foreign exchange trading, we have observed a great deal more activity, including the strong support for the yellow metal above $3860/oz and the most actively traded futures contract for gold pushing above $3900 on Friday.
What actionable news or announcements the market might see next week is itself uncertain, making even estimations of how major assets will trade over the next week a lot more guesswork than usual.
In the meantime, traders, I hope you can get out and safely enjoy your weekend for the next couple of days. After that, I’ll see you back here next week for another market recap.