Gold and silver market slowly rallied again as their prices slightly increased during the previous week. The recent reports regarding the progress of U.S and China may have contributed to the slow recovery of precious metals: housing starts and building permits declined by 16% and 5.4%, respectively; existing home sales slid to 4.62 million during January; Philly fed index decreased from 9.4 to -6.3 in February – this is the first time the index turned negative in the past several months. Finally, jobless clams slipped by 3k to reach 336k. The U.S CPI and core CPI slightly rose by 0.1% during January. The minutes of the last FOMC meeting didn’t reveal much more information regarding the future plans of the FOMC. In China, the flash PMI for February declined to 48.3 – the lowest level in months. In the forex market, the Canadian dollar, Aussie dollar and Japanese yen slipped against the USD, while the Euro moderately appreciated. This mixed trend may have contributed to the little rise in the prices of gold and silver. By the end of the week, gold price slightly rose by 0.4% and silver by 1.7%.
Here is a short overview of the latest changes in precious metals prices between February 17th and February 21st:
Precious Metals Overview:
The price of gold rose by 0.4% last week; moreover, during last week, the average price reached $1,320.94/t. oz which was 1.94% higher than last week’s average rate of $1,295.76/t. oz. Gold ended the week at $1,323.7 /t. oz.
The price of silver, even more than gold, rose by 1.7%; further, the average weekly rate was $21.73/t oz, which was 6.1% above last week’s rate $20.48/t oz.
During last week, the average daily percent shifts of gold were 0.075%; silver had an average daily change of 0.34%.
The chart below presents the changes in precious metals prices, in which they are normalized to 100 as of February 14th. Gold and silver have slightly increased during last week.
The second chart presents the daily percent changes of precious metals prices (or in other words the changes around the trend). Silver and gold rose mainly on Tuesday. The daily percent changes ranged between -0.8% and 2.2%.
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