During last week many headlines were published and could have had a strong effect on the direction of gold and silver. In particular, the latest FOMC decision in which the Fed decided to start tapering QE3 from January by $10 billion to $75 billion of LT assets and MBS. This move crowded out the other headlines from the FOMC statement and press conference including the talks about keeping the interest rates low until the end of 2015. This news may have also crowded out other news items such as the recent positive report on the U.S GDP for the third quarter, which was revised up to 4.1%; housing starts sharply grew by over 22% during last month. Philly fed remained stable during December. Jobless claims increased by 10k to 379k. These last two items weren’t too positive but didn’t seem to have much of an effect on the forex, stocks or commodities markets. By the end of the week, gold price fell by 2.52% and silver by 0.76%.
Here is a short overview of the latest developments in precious metals prices between December 16th and December 20th:
Precious Metals Overview:
The price of gold fell by 2.52% last week; moreover, during last week, the average price reached $1,222.06 /t. oz which was 1.7% higher than last week’s average rate of $1,243.14 /t. oz. Gold ended the week at $1,204.30 /t. oz.
The price of silver, less than gold, slipped by 0.76%; further, the average weekly rate was $19.69/t oz, which was 0.79% below last week’s rate $19.84/t oz.
During last week, the average daily percent changes of gold were 0.496%; silver had an average daily change of 0.121%.
The chart below presents the shifts in bullion prices, in which they are normalized to 100 as of December 13th. Gold and silver have tumbled down mainly by the end of the week following the FOMC decision.
The second chart shows the daily percent shifts of precious metals prices (or in other words the changes around the trend). Silver and gold sharply rose at the beginning of the week only to plunge on Thursday. By Friday they have rallied, alas this rally didn’t offset the sharp fall in prices a day earlier. The daily percent shifts ranged between 2.5% gain and 4.3% drop.
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