The prices of gold and silver moved in an unclear trend as silver slightly fell while gold moderately increased during yesterday. Their unclear trend was despite the little rally of leading risk related currencies such as the Euro and Australian dollar against the USD. In the US, the PPI spiked by 0.7% during February mostly due to the spike in oil prices; jobless claims declined by 10k to reach 332k as of last week. Currently gold and silver prices are slightly rising. On today’s agenda: Euro Area CPI, U.S Core Consumer Price Index, U.S. TIC Long Term Purchases, American Industrial Production and UoM Consumer Sentiment .
Here is a short outlook for precious metals for Friday, March 15th:
Precious Metals – March Update
On Thursday, the price of gold rose by 0.14% to $1,590.7; Silver decreased again by 0.53% to $28.78. During March, gold rose by 0.82%; silver increased by 1.36%.
In the chart below are the normalized rates of gold and silver between late February and March (normalized to 100 as of February 18th). The rate of gold and silver remained virtually unchanged in recent days.
The ratio between the two precious metals rose on Thursday to 55.27. During the month, the ratio declined by 0.53% as gold slightly under-performed silver.
The gold and silver futures volumes of trade have reached on Thursday 171 thousand and 46 thousand, respectively. These numbers are lower than the volume traded during the beginning of the month. If the volume will remain low today, this could suggest the odds of sudden sharp shifts will fall. The chart below shows the volume of trading gold and silver futures in the CME during the month.
Euro Area CPI: according to the previous update the annual CPI slipped to 2.0%, which is at the ECB’s target inflation; if the inflation will continue to fall, it could raise the odds of ECB cutting its cash rate in the near future;
U.S Core Consumer Price Index: According to the U.S Bureau of Labor statistics during January, the CPI remained flat (M-o-M); the core CPI rose by 0.3%; the core index rose over the past twelve months by 1.9%.
U.S. TIC Long Term Purchases: The Treasury International Capital monthly update will show the developments in the purchases and sales of US long term treasuries for January 2013. In the recent report regarding December 2012, the net foreign sales of U.S Treasuries longer-term notes increased by $64.2 billion;
American Industrial Production: The upcoming report will refer to February 2013. In the previous monthly report, the index slipped by 0.1% during January; this news may affect the USD;
UoM Consumer Sentiment (preliminary): University of Michigan will publish its preliminary consumer sentiment monthly report; this survey could offer an insight to recent changes in U.S consumers’ sentiment; based on the latest update, the sentiment index changed course and rose to 76.3;
Currencies / Bullion Market – March Update
The Euro/ USD rose on Thursday by 0.29% to 1.2999. During the month, the Euro/USD slipped by 0.53%. Moreover, several currencies such as the Canadian dollar and Aussie dollar also appreciated again yesterday against the USD by 0.53% and 0.85%, respectively. The correlations among gold, Canadian dollar and Aussie dollar remained weak: during February/March, the linear correlation between gold and USD/Yen reached -0.3 (daily percent changes); the linear correlation between the silver and AUD/USD reached 0.24 (daily percent changes). Despite the weak correlations, if leading currencies will continue to rise against the USD, they might drag up precious metals.
Current Gold and Silver Rates as of March 15th
Gold (short term delivery) is traded at $1,591 per t oz. a $0.7 or 0.04% increase as of 11:11*.
Silver (short term delivery) is at $28.87 per t oz – a $0.07 or 0.2% increase as of 11:11*.
(* GMT)
Here is a reminder of the top events and publications that are scheduled for today (all times GMT):
Today
10:00 – Euro Area CPI
13:30 –U.S Core Consumer Price Index
14:00 – U.S. TIC Long Term Purchases
14:15 – American Industrial Production
14:55 – UoM Consumer Sentiment
For further reading: