Gold and silver slowed down and slipped during last week mainly on Thursday following the recent FOMC’s decision to cut down again its asset purchase program by an additional $10 billion to $65 billion a month. This mini-taper was expected and yet it still dragged down the prices of gold and silver. Moreover, the U.S economy continues to show slow progress: the GDP for the fourth quarter grew by 3.2% – a slower pace than the third quarter, but still a good result. Conversely, jobless clams rose by 19k to reach 348k. By the end of the week, gold price fell by 2% and silver by 3.2%.
Here is a short overview of the recent changes in precious metals prices between January 27th and January 31st:
Precious Metals Overview:
The price of gold fell by 1.95% last week; moreover, during last week, the average price reached $1,251.72/t. oz which was 0.01% lower than last week’s average rate of $1,251.82/t. oz. Gold ended the week at $1,239.8 /t. oz.
The price of silver, even more than gold, plunged by 3.23%; further, the average weekly rate was $19.40/t oz, which was 2.68% below last week’s rate $19.94/t oz.
During last week, the average daily percent changes of gold were -0.39%; silver had an average daily change of -0.65%.
The chart below presents the changes in precious metals prices, in which they are normalized to 100 as of January 24th. Gold and silver have slowly descended during last 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 declined mainly on Tuesday and Thursday. The daily percent changes ranged between 0.91% gain and 2.2% decline.
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