Gold and silver prices didn’t do much during the passing week as they have zigzagged around their levels form a week earlier. The news from Greece regarding its struggle to receive the next bailout package from the EU, and the announcement of Moody’sto downgrade the credit rating of several EU countries didn’t seem to affect much forex and commodities traders. The news of the contraction of the EU GDP by 0.3% in the fourth quarter was also something that didn’t catch traders by surprise as the Euro only slightly declined that day; furthermore, this news didn’t even pull down gold and silver prices upon publication. Finally, during last week there were several U.S. reports that came out and showed a slight improvement in the economic situation including a rise in the Philly Fed index, a growth in the housing starts and building permits and a moderate increase in U.S. retail sales. Nevertheless, these news items didn’t seem to have much of an effect on the forex market or the precious metals market.
Here is a short summary of the changes in gold and silver prices during the week of February 13th to February 17th 2012:
Precious Metals Prices Weekly Recap:
Gold price remained virtually unchanged on a weekly scale as it very moderately increased during the week by 0.03%; on the other hand, during last week the average gold price reached $1,725 /t. oz which is 0.53% below the previous week’s average price of $1,734.22 /t. oz. Gold price ended the week at $1,725.9 /t. oz.
Silver price, unlike gold price, moderately declined during last week by 0.96%; furthermore, this week’s average price reached $33.43/t oz which is 1.21% below the previous week’s average $33.83/t oz.
During the week, the average daily percent change of gold price slightly rose by 0.01%; silver price slightly decreased by an average daily rate of 0.19%.
In the following chart are the changes in silver and gold prices, which were normalized to 100 to the end of last week – February 10th. Gold and silver prices zigzagged during last week.
The second chart shows the daily percent changes of gold and silver (or in other words the shifts around the trend). Gold and silver prices shifted from gains to losses on a daily basis with daily percent changes ranging between 0.5% gain to a 1% loss.
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