The gold and silver market remained relatively numb during the penultimate week of the year. The low volume of trade kept the prices of gold and silver with little movement. On a weekly scale, however, both precious metals have rallied. The price of silver has erased its decline from previous weeks. Gold price is still down for the month. The aftermath of the FOMC decision, in which the Fed tapered QE3 by $10 billion to $75 billion, seem to have had short term effect on the prices of gold and silver. During last week, jobless claims sharply decreased by 42k to 338k. This news may have contributed to the slight recovery of the USD against the Aussie, CAD and Yen during last week. By the end of the week, gold price rose by 0.81% and silver by 3.07%.
Here is a short overview of the latest developments in precious metals prices between December 23rd and December 27th:
Precious Metals Overview:
The price of gold increased by 0.81% last week; on the other hand, during last week, the average price reached $1,206.18 /t. oz which was 1.3% lower than last week’s average rate of $1,222.06 /t. oz. Gold ended the week at $1,214.10 /t. oz.
The price of silver, more than gold, rallied by 3.07%; conversely, the average weekly rate was $19.64/t oz, which was 0.26% below last week’s rate $19.69/t oz.
During the previous week, the average daily percent changes of gold were 0.163%; silver had an average daily change of 0.611%.
The chart below presents the developments in precious metals prices, in which they are normalized to 100 as of December 20th. Gold and silver have rallied mainly by the end of the week.
The second chart shows the daily percent changes of bullion prices (or in other words the changes around the trend). Silver and gold increased on Thursday and remained nearly flat during the rest of the days. The daily percent changes ranged between 2.2% gain and 0.6% drop.