Gold and silver prices moved in an unclear trend throughout the week: Despite the high volatility of precious metals and unclear trend, both gold and silver rose by the end of the week by 0.73% and 0.99%, respectively. The main event of last week was the FOMC and ECB rate decisions. The ECB decided to lower its interest rate by 0.25pp to an all time low of 0.5%. The FOMC left its policy unchanged and maintained its $85 billion a month asset purchase program. Nonetheless, the speculation around the next move of the Fed may have pulled precious metals into different directions. The recent non-farm payroll report didn’t seem to affect much bullion rates. Despite the tumble in precious metals during the first three weeks of April, they have slowly rallied in recent weeks. Precious metals prices weren’t the only commodities that rallied, the price of oil also rose last week. Following the CME’s decision to raise its margins on gold and silver contracts two weeks ago, the volatility of precious metals might start to dwindle. In the currencies markets, during last week, the Euro and Aussie dollar rallied against the USD by 0.64% and 0.42%, respectively. Their recovery might have partly helped pull up precious metals.
Here is a short recap of the developments in precious metals prices between April 29th and May 3rd:
Precious Metals Recap:
Gold price slightly rose during last week by 0.73%; moreover, during the week, the average weekly price reached $1,463.52 /t. oz which was 2.08% above last week’s average rate of $1,433.72 /t. oz. Gold ended the week at $1,464 /t. oz.
Silver, much like gold, increased during last week by 0.99%; further, the average weekly rate increased by 2.16% to reach $23.88/t oz compared to last week’s average $23.37/t oz.
During last week, the average daily percent changes of gold reached 0.152%; silver had an average daily change of 0.217%.
The chart below shows the changes of precious metals, as their rates are normalized to 100 as of April 26th. Gold and silver prices zigzagged during the week.
The second chart presents the daily percent changes of bullion rates (or in other words the changes around the trend). Silver and gold rose mainly at the beginning and the end of the week. Precious metals prices daily percent changes ranged between 2.1% gain and 3.4% drop.
For further reading: