Gold and silver prices didn’t do much during last week as the bullion market moved in an unclear trend throughout the week. The aftermath of the September FOMC meeting has left the bullion market weak with investors aren’t sure what’s the next move of the Fed. On top of that, the recent government shutdown has raised the uncertainty of the U.S economy and has also resulted in the non-farm payroll report not getting published on Friday. This may have raised the speculations in the forex and commodities markets including gold and silver. Despite the shutdown several U.S reports came out and didn’t offer a clear picture regarding the progress of this economy: U.S jobless claims slightly increased by 1k to reach 308k; manufacturing PMI slightly rose to 56.2%, while non- manufacturing PMI slipped to 54.4. ADP estimated 166k private jobs added, which is close to last month’s growth. These news items didn’t seem to affect the path of gold and silver prices. In Europe, Draghi left the EU interest rate unchanged at 0.5%. By the end of the week the Euro slightly rose again the USD by 0.52%. Moreover, other risk currencies such as Aussie and Canadian dollar also rallied against the USD. These developments in the forex market, however, didn’t seem to have a strong positive effect on gold and silver. Finally, in India, gold imports may further drop on account of higher taxes on imports. These developments along the uncertainty in the U.S may have contributed to the unclear trend in gold and silver prices.
Here is a short review of the latest developments in precious metals prices between September 30th and October 4th:
Precious Metals Review:
The price of gold decreased by 1.29% last week; further, during the past week, the average price reached $1,312.06 /t. oz which was 1.21% below last week’s average rate of $1,328.18 /t. oz. Gold ended the week at $1,309.70 /t. oz.
The price of silver, unlike gold, slightly rose by 0.21%; moreover, the average weekly rate was $21.63/t oz, which was 0.48% below last week’s rate $21.74/t oz.
During last week, the average daily percent changes of gold were -0.416%; silver had an average daily change of -0.033%.
The chart below presents the shifts in bullion rates, in which they are normalized to 100 as of September 27th. Gold and silver prices moved in an unclear trend during the past 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 changed direction nearly on a daily basis during the previous week. Gold and silver prices daily percent changes ranged between 3.3% gain and 3.1% decline.
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