It was absolutely a risk-on day favoring stocks and taking the Dow Jones Industrial Average to a new all-time high as the index trades just shy of 30,000. The Dow gained approximately 1.60 %, a total of 470.63 points in trading today and closed at 29,950.44. Equities staged a dynamic upside move today partially based on news from Moderna Inc.

Gold has closed higher for three of the last four trading days. That being said, gold did sustain a sizable price decline this week. On Monday gold futures traded to a low of $1,848, and closed just slightly above that at $1,854.30. As of 3:45 PM EST, the most active December Comex contract is currently fixed at $1,886.20, after factoring in today’s gain of $12.90 (+ 0.69%).

Gold futures today gained $14.20 and is currently fixed at $1875.80. This is in response to a risk-off environment as US equities sold off today, diminish yields in US bonds and concern about the pandemic.

Gold futures continued to drift lower, continuing the sharp decline that traders witnessed on Monday of this week. Although yesterday gold was able to recover slightly gaining $18 off of Monday sharp selloff, today traders took gold pricing back to erase those advances made on Tuesday.

Yesterday’s announcement that two companies have developed a vaccine that has now completed the stage III trials, and is 90% effective in killing the coronavirus. This was truly welcome news and responsible for the large gains in US equities and concurrently the steep selloff in both gold and silver.

Gold suffered this deepest single-day decline in the last seven years. Not since June 2013 has gold suffered a decline of this magnitude. The decline is a direct result of announcements made by two pharmaceutical companies, Pfizer and BioNTech which wrapped up stage III trials. The results showed that this vaccine had a 90% efficacy rate.

Today the New York Times reported that new cases of the coronavirus have reached a record high. The United States set a record with 121,000 new confirmed infections on Thursday. This followed Wednesday’s record number of 100,000 new cases. Breaking the one hundred thousand mark for the first time.

It was more than a trifecta of events that sparked today’s sharp gains in both gold and silver. First and foremost is the global pandemic that has resulted in economies worldwide contracting. This led to central banks revising their monetary policies to be more accommodative as they attempt to diminish the contraction so that economies can start to stabilize and eventually begin to rebuild.

Okay, so it is not déjà vu. In fact, it’s only slightly reminiscent of the last presidential election held in 2016 in terms of how gold prices changed immediately following the release of the election results. In both cases the immediate reaction and move in gold was the polar opposite of what was expected.

This will truly be a historical week with two major events occurring. First and foremost is the presidential election which took place today.