Precious metals are trading downwards on a day where many people had expected nothing but the opposite to happen. The biggest piece of news on the slate today has to do with the downing of a Malaysian Airlines flight over Ukraine on Thursday. The situation is still unfolding and investigations into what exactly happened prior to the plane’s crashing have just begun.
There was very little in the way of economic news this week, though it must be said that corporate earnings reports were mostly upbeat and, as a result, have given US equities a bit of a push to close out the trading session.
Another Malaysia Airlines Flight Goes Down
Only a few months after a Malaysia Airlines flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing mysteriously disappeared into the ocean, another incident has occurred. Yesterday, a flight from Amsterdam headed for Kuala Lumpur vanished off radar somewhere over the eastern half of Ukraine. Shortly thereafter, reports began streaming in, claiming that the passenger airliner was shot out of the sky by a surface-to-air missile. By yesterday evening, US intelligence officials had confirmed that the plane was, in fact, shot out of the sky by a missile.
Now, barely a day after the tragic crash, investigations are underway to determine who set off the rocket, and where exactly they set it off from. Due to the area of the plane’s crashing, many people are quickly jumping to the conclusion that the rocket was shot off by pro-Russian separatists who are scattered across the eastern part of Ukraine. Whether these separatists shot the plane down as an act of terrorism or because they thought it was a Ukrainian military plane is not known yet, but world leaders are demanding consequences. What’s more, many high-ranking pro-Russian separatists have already come forward and claimed that they are not the ones responsible for this seemingly senseless killing.
Shortly after news of this tragic event surfaced, equity markets from around the world began tanking. With such a violent act of terrorism in a part of the world where tensions are already high, investors sought to rid themselves of risk-laden assets as quickly as possible. As a result, gold, silver, platinum, and palladium all saw healthy gains made yesterday. Unfortunately, profit-taking and a corrective pullback have meant that most of yesterday’s gains have been conceded today. Now, with the weekend just around the corner, it will be interesting to see if metals can bounce back once again, or if this corrective pullback will see them trade within a defined range for the foreseeable future. That, along with the finer details with regard to this Malaysia Airlines incident, will be a bit clearer come Monday morning.