The gold and silver market remained relatively flat as precious metals investors continue to get mixed signals regarding the future plans of the FOMC on its monetary policy, which tends to influence bullion traders. The minutes of the FOMC meeting was released and rekindled the conversation about the upcoming future tapering of the Fed. Despite the release, it didn’t seem to have much of an effect on the prices of gold and silver and at best only slightly pressured down gold and silver. But by the end of the week, gold and silver bounced back mainly after the NF payroll showed a very low gain in employment of only 74k – much lower than what many had expected. On the other hand, initial claims fell by 15k to reach 330k. By the end of the week, gold price rose by 0.67% and silver by 0.05%.
Here is a short overview of the recent developments in precious metals prices between January 6th and January 10th:
Precious Metals Overview:
The price of gold slightly increased by 0.67% last week; moreover, during the previous week, the average price reached $1,233.88/t. oz which was 1.6% higher than last week’s average rate of $1,206.18 /t. oz. Gold ended the week at $1,246.9 /t. oz.
The price of silver, less than gold, inched up by 0.05%; further, the average weekly rate was $19.86/t oz, which was 0.47% below last week’s rate $19.72/t oz.
During last week, the average daily percent changes of gold were 0.136%; silver had an average daily change of 0.022%.
The chart below presents the developments in precious metals prices, in which they are normalized to 100 as of January 3rd. Gold and silver haven’t done much during the 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 fell on Tuesday and Wednesday only to rise on Thursday and Friday. The daily percent changes ranged between 2.7% gain and 1.6% drop.
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