The gold market is doing really well because recent data shows that manufacturing in the U.S. isn’t doing so great.
A group called the Institute for Supply Management (ISM) said on Wednesday that their index, which measures how well the manufacturing sector is doing, dropped to 49.2 in April. That’s lower than the number they had for March, which was 50.3. People were expecting it to only drop a little to 50.0, so this news is worse than expected.
One person from ISM said that manufacturing in the U.S. went back into a bad place after getting better in March. This is the first time since September 2022 that manufacturing has shown growth. Even though there’s still some good stuff happening, like companies making things and buying materials, overall, it’s not looking great.
Because of this news, the price of gold went up a lot. Right after the report came out, gold was selling for $2,306.91 per ounce, which is 0.91% higher than before.
The report also talked about different parts of manufacturing that aren’t doing well. For example, the part about new orders went down from 51.4 to 49.1, and the part about production went down from 54.6 to 51.3.
But there was some good news about jobs, even though manufacturing overall is still struggling. The number of people with jobs in manufacturing went up a bit, from 47.4 to 48.6.
However, the report also mentioned that prices for things went up a lot. This means that inflation, which is when prices for everything keep going up, is getting worse.
