Can someone say one more time tapering or Fed? The anticlimax from the FOMC’s meeting two weeks ago rendered the precious metals market moving in an unclear direction. The high expectations from the Fed to announce a shift in policy weren’t met and resulted in high volatility with no clear direction. Based on this background story, the prices of gold and silver didn’t do much last week as gold slightly rose while silver slipped. Moreover, in the U.S several reports came out and didn’t offer a clear picture regarding the progress of this economy: U.S jobless claims slightly decreased by 5k to reach 310k; final estimate of the GDP growth rate for the second quarter came out and showed no change in growth rate (2.5%); in the housing market, pending home sales index declined during August, while new home sales rose, as expected, by 7.9%; finally, new orders of durable goods inched up by 0.1% to reach $224.9 billion. These news items didn’t seem to affect the direction of gold and silver prices.
Here is a short review of the latest developments in precious metals prices between September 23rd and September 27th:
Precious Metals Recap:
The price of gold slightly increased by 0.44% last week; further, during the past week, the average price reached $1,328.18 /t. oz which was 0.06% above last week’s average rate of $1,327.40 /t. oz. Gold ended the week at $1,332.60 /t. oz.
The price of silver, unlike gold, decreased by 0.46%; moreover, the average weekly rate was $21.74/t oz, which was 1.52% below last week’s rate $22.08/t oz.
During last week, the average daily percent shifts of gold were 0.092%; silver had an average daily change of -0.089%.
The chart below shows the changes in bullion rates, in which they are normalized to 100 as of September 20th. Gold and silver prices moved in an unclear trend during the week.
The second chart presents the daily percent shifts of precious metals prices (or in other words the changes around the trend). Silver and gold changed direction almost on a daily basis during the week. Gold and silver prices daily percent shifts ranged between 1.5% gain and 1.25% decline.