The precious metals market hasn’t moved in a clear direction during the past week; it seems the speculations around the upcoming FOMC meeting is keeping gold and silver investors trying to read the tea leaves. Some analysts speculate a decision to taper QE3 in next week’s FOMC meeting is viable: The recent agreement between Ryan and Murray to avert a potential U.S government shutdown in January; the FOMC’s member Bullard remarks that tapering is a valid option may have contributed to the recovery of gold and silver; the U.S retail sales slightly increased by 0.7% in November, month over month, and by 4.7% from November 2012. Conversely, not all U.S reports were positive: Jobless claims spiked by 68k to 368k. These developments may have slightly tilted the odds in favor of tapering QE3 in the upcoming meeting. My bet is that the FOMC won’t start tapering this month. By the end of the week, gold price slightly rose by 0.47% and silver by 0.43%.
Here is a short overview of the recent developments in precious metals prices between December 9th and December 13th:
Precious Metals Overview:
The price of gold slightly rose by 0.47% last week; further, during last week, the average price reached $1,243.14 /t. oz which was 1.02% higher than last week’s average rate of $1,230.62 /t. oz. Gold ended the week at $1,229.60 /t. oz.
The price of silver, much like gold, rose by 0.43%; moreover, the average weekly rate was $19.84/t oz, which was 2.21% below last week’s rate $19.42/t oz.
During last week, the average daily percent shifts of gold were 0.106%; silver had an average daily change of 0.117%.
The chart below shows the changes in bullion prices, in which they are normalized to 100 as of December 6th. Gold and silver have moved in an unclear trend during the past week.
The second chart shows the daily percent changes of precious metals prices (or in other words the changes around the trend). Silver and gold moved sharply rose at the beginning of the week only to tumble down Thursday. By Friday they have bounced back to finish the week on a positive note. The daily percent shifts ranged between 3% gain and 4.4% drop.