Gold and silver prices continued to sharply fluctuate during the week with no clear direction even though silver price ended the week slightly above its price level on Monday, October 3rd, while gold price finished slightly below. The main events that may have affected traders in the bullion markets and in turn contributed to the high volatility in the gold and silver markets include: the publication of U.S. PMI manufacturing report on Monday; the ongoing speculation around the European debt – this time there were some encouraging news that may have driven the financial markets up; the recent testimony of Ben Bernanke rekindled the rumors of additional future steps to be taken by the Fed; the ECB keeping the European Area interest rate unchanged at 1.5%; and the recent U.S. labor report, which was published on Friday, showed in increase in employment by 103k during September. These events may have shifted the direction of gold and silver prices throughout the week.
Here is a short review of the changes in gold and silver prices during the week of October 3rd to October 7th 2011:
Precious Metals Prices Weekly Summary:
Gold price slightly declined by 1.32% during the week; on the other hand, this week’s average gold price of $1,638 /t. oz was slightly higher by 1.06% than the previous week’s average price of $1,621 /t. oz. Gold price finished the week at $1,635 /t. oz.
Silver price, unlike gold price, moderately increased during the week by 0.64%, and this week’s average price was 30.75/t oz or 0.97% above the previous week’s average $30.45/t oz.
During the week, the average daily percent change of gold price increased by 0.18%; silver price inclined by a average daily rate of 0.66%.
In the chart below are the silver and gold prices that were normalized to 100 to the price at the beginning of the week – October 3rd. It demonstrates the weekly development of gold and silver prices.
In the chart above gold and silver prices started the week sharply falling, but soon after silver price started to sharply incline, while gold price only moderately increased; by the end of the week silver price finished above its starting point, but gold price finished below.
The last chart is of the daily percent changes of silver and gold prices (or in other words the price changes around the trend). It shows that silver price had two large daily gains: on Monday and Thursday. Gold price’s largest gain came only on Monday.
[ratings]
For further reading:
- Gold & Silver Prices – Daily Outlook October 7
- Gold and Silver Prices Monthly Outlook for October 2011
Previous issues of weekly report: