The gold and silver market has cooled down again during the past week as both precious metals prices took a nosedive. The highly anticipated publication of the minutes of the September FOMC meeting came out. The minutes revealed that most members think tapering QE3 last month wasn’t prudent and if the U.S data support the notion that the U.S economy is progressing, this could lead the FOMC to taper QE3 program. Nonetheless, the members were spilt about when to taper QE3 some thought it’s better to do so sooner, i.e. this year, rather than later. In any case, this new didn’t seem to help pull up the prices of gold and silver. On the other hand, the recent speculations of a potential agreement or even headway in the negotiations to end the current government shutdown was enough to drag down gold and silver and pull up U.S stock markets. In other news, jobless claims increased by 66k to reach 374k. In the forex market, the USD mostly appreciated against several currencies such as Japanese yen and Canadian dollar. The developments in the forex market didn’t seem to have much of an effect on the bullion market.
Here is a short review of the latest developments in precious metals prices between October 7th and October 11th:
Precious Metals Recap:
The price of gold plummeted by 3.18% last week; further, during the past week; the average price reached $1,304.2 /t. oz which was 0.60% below last week’s average rate of $1,312.06 /t. oz. Gold ended the week at $1,268.06 /t. oz – the lowest price since the beginning of July.
The price of silver, much like gold, declined by 2.28%; on the other hand, the average weekly rate was $21.95/t oz, which was 1.45% above last week’s rate $21.63/t oz.
During last week, the average daily percent changes of gold were -0.637%; silver had an average daily change of -0.439%.
The chart below shows the changes in precious metals prices, in which they are normalized to 100 as of October 4th. Gold and silver prices mostly had a downward trend during the past week.
The second chart shows the daily percent changes of precious metals prices (or in other words the changes around the trend). Silver and gold mostly declined during last week. Gold and silver prices daily percent changes ranged between 3% gain and 3% drop.
For further reading: