The precious metals market didn’t move in concert as price of gold slightly rose while silver slipped during last week. Moreover, the foreign exchange market also had a busy week as the US dollar sharply depreciated against the Euro and Japanese yen but rose against the Aussie and Canadian dollar. These different directions of the US dollar may have also contributed to the unclear movement of precious metals prices. During the past week several reports were released U.S jobless clams inched up by 1k to reach 326k; American existing home sales slightly disappointed and rose by only 1% during December to reach 4.87 million home sales. The main even of next week, however, the FOMC meeting could stir up the forex and commodities markets again. By the end of the week, gold price rose by 1% and silver fell by 2.6%.
Here is a short overview of the recent changes in precious metals prices between January 20th and January 24th:
Precious Metals Overview:
The price of gold rose by 1% last week; moreover, during last week, the average price reached $1,251.82/t. oz which was 0.52% higher than last week’s average rate of $1,245.38/t. oz. Gold ended the week at $1,264.5 /t. oz.
The price of silver, unlike gold, declined by 2.64%; further, the average weekly rate was $19.94/t oz, which was 1.35% below last week’s rate $20.21/t oz.
During last week, the average daily percent shifts of gold were 0.205%; silver had an average daily change of -0.528%.
The chart below shows the changes in precious metals prices, in which they are normalized to 100 as of January 17th. Gold and silver haven’t done much 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 declined at the beginning of the week only to bounce back on Thursday. The daily percent changes ranged between 1.91% gain and 2.12% drop.
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