Friday was absolutely a risk-off day,with market sentiment favouring the safe-haven class of investments as they bidthe precious metals higher and moved equities lower.

Withthe exception of palladium, the other three precious metals all closed higheron the day with the greatest percentage gain coming from silver, which gained2.19% in trading today.

Marketparticipants reacted to a jobs report that came in extremely under marketforecasts, as well as real concerns of a global economic slowdown with China’sequities markets having the worst single day drawdown since October of lastyear. It is quite obvious that the current trade war has affected the globaleconomies with China being hit the hardest along with the United States.

Expectationsfor this month’s US Labor Department jobs report were set at 180,000. When thenumbers were released they came in at a meagre 20,000 new non-farm payrolljobs being added in February. The discrepancy between market expectationsand the actual numbers were huge. Considering that the United States has beenadding approximately 160,000 to 200,000 for the last year, 20,000 is theweakest new jobs report in quite some time.

Thisreport, along with lower equity pricing, and concerns over the Chinese economywill certainly influence the Federal Reserve regarding their current monetarypolicy. This almost guarantees that it will be months before the Fed raisesrates this year. As such it gave the precious metals the boost needed to endthe correction that began on February 21st. Gold hit its highest value thisyear on February 20th when market forces drove the precious yellow metal to$1350 per ounce.