This is a weekly recap for the week of January 3rd to 7th on spot gold price and silver prices:
After last week’s bullish behavior of precious metals prices, especially for silver prices, this week, started off with a sharp decline, practically erasing the gains, not only of the last week of 2010, but also for December 2010.
These recent declines reflect on the dramatic rises that occurred at the final week of the year, showing that those rises were more of a speculative maneuver than actual rises in demand or expectations for a rise in demand in the near future.
Prices Analysis:
The spot gold price has declined by 3.8% from beginning to end of the week; this week’s average price was 1,383 USD /t. oz – a 1.6% decrease compare to last week’s average weekly price of 1, 405 USD /t. oz.
Silver prices, much more than gold prices, have declined by 7.8% from beginning to end of the week, and also decreased by 2% from this week’s average weekly price of 29.53$/t oz., compare to 30.35$/t oz. for the previous week.
On average, gold spot price declined by 0.7% on a daily basis, while silver prices declined by 1.5%.
At the end of the week, gold spot price reached a price lower than the price level recorded all the month of December, while silver prices ended the week at a similar price level that was recorded back in December 3rd 2010.
It will remain to be seen if this sharp fall could be a shift in the upward trend of precious metals prices in recent years; however, it is still very premature to determine such a shift from a multi year trend.
In the following table I present a summary of last week’s descriptive stats of spot gold price and silver prices:
*This figure is calculated based on the percent change from the price at the beginning of the week compare to the price at the end of the week
The following chart of gold spot price and silver prices presents the following: the price of each commodity is normalized to 100 for the price as of 3rd of January – the beginning of the week.
The graph clearly shows a downward trend in these precious metals. This trend in silver and gold markets will remain to be seen if they will continue next week.
In the final graph are the daily percent changes of silver and gold from last week. According to the graph silver prices fluctuated throughout the week between 0.6% and -5.2%, while gold spot price changed between 0.1% and -3.1%, both showing higher volatility than last week.
For further reading:
- The tightening of Silver & Gold prices – short analysis (in this site)
- The Gold Rush – is there a bubble in the Gold Market? – A short analysis (in this site)
- Crude oil price and Natural gas spot price – Weekly recap Jan 3-7 (in this site)
- Monthly recap on Gold prices & Silver prices for December 2010 (in this site)