Precious metals spot values are trading down for yet another day this week amid a quieter market atmosphere. After a busy week last week, many investors are coming to terms with the fact that the dog days of summer might finally be upon us.

In case you missed it, there was a good bit of economic data due out last week. Among that data was a report with regard to the United States’ second-quarter GDP growth. Annualized economic growth for the US was reported as being up by more than 4% for this year’s second quarter, good enough to beat expectations. After the GDP report was made public, investors began focusing more readily on Friday’s release of the latest US employment report from July. Unfortunately, July’s employment report showed job growth that fell short of the 230,000 job addition expectation. Officially, it was reported that only 209,000 new jobs were created in July. This data immediately boosted precious metals, but things have since corrected themselves.

Gold Falling Victim to Bearish Market At Present

To put it simply, the current market atmosphere is one that is extremely bearish for precious metals. Despite there being a good bit of uncertainty surrounding ongoing geopolitical events in Ukraine and Gaza, US equity markets and the US Dollar are performing at extremely high levels. On top of it all, precious metals are also being pressured by the growing belief that interest rates in the US will be raised sooner rather than later.

Today, however, US equities were seen giving back the gains they made yesterday on the back end of some downbeat US economic data. Leading the poor economic data was profits from Target Corp. which fell far short of expectations. The US Dollar, on the other hand, has been trending upwards since the beginning of the day and is looking like it will finish the trading session topping 10.5 month highs. Due to the Fed increasingly tightening US monetary policy, and the European Central Bank loosening EU monetary policy, the Dollar is likely to continue gaining value over the next few months.

As we head into the latter half of this week, it is becoming clear that things are going to be fairly quiet. As most European investors and business people use the month of August to take vacations, it is looking like a majority of this month will end up being just as slow as this week is shaping up to be.