Gold and silver spot values ended the day conceding much of the value that they had gained towards the end of last week. The beginning of today saw spot values moving mostly sideways, but by mid-afternoon, that had all changed.

In case you missed it, the latter part of last week brought about a boatload of information for investors to mull over. First, on Wednesday, the market was mulling over the results of Tuesday’s midterm elections in the United States. To the surprise of very few, Republicans had seized control of both the House and the Senate. This was viewed as bad for gold and silver simply because Republicans are viewed as being good for economic growth and good for business.

Then, on Thursday, the European Central Bank met for their most recent policy meeting. Unfortunately, and to the dismay of many, the ECB meeting did not bring about any new policy shifts. What it did bring about, however, was a more dovish post-meeting statement from ECB president Mario Draghi.

Finally, Friday brought about the most recent employment data from the United States from October. Fortunately for gold and silver, the data came back far weaker than expected and provided a much-needed boost. Despite expectations for more than 230,000 new jobs created in October, the actual data showed that only about 213,000 new jobs were created a month ago. These figures, though decent in the grand scheme of things, were far weaker than expected and ended up having adverse affects on both US equities as well as the US Dollar.

Uneventful Monday Hurts Metals

Despite all of last week’s action, today did not bring about much action at all. While the day started out with metals moving mostly sideways, by mid-afternoon that had changed. Past noon, crude oil prices began to dip again while the value of the US Dollar rose. This always works against gold and silver, and today was no different. When all was said and done, gold lost about half the value it had gained on Friday, as did silver.

As we look ahead to the rest of the week, it is likely that investors the world over will continue to closely analyze both currency and equity markets. As of now, the short to long-term outlook on equities is upbeat simply because of the likelihood that interest rates in the US will be raised in conjunction with the fact that most people are expecting the US economy to continue improving. All of this remains to be seen, but if things do go as expected, gold and silver spot values may fall even further.