Precious metals continue their rally with rises in gold and silver prices during most of last week. Gold prices even passed last week the 1,400$/t oz. mark, a price it hadn’t been at since the beginning of January 2011.
According to Bloomberg this ongoing rise in gold and silver prices is related to fear of traders for inflation in Europe in which case gold will be regarded as a safe heaven. Many speculate that the fear of inflation is also related to the uprise in Middle East mainly in Libya.
I think it’s still early to judge the cause for this rally in gold and silver, and while it makes sense to address the recent rises in crude oil prices to the turmoil in the Middle East (there is a direct link), putting the increase in gold prices on the shoulders of the Middle East news might be a bit of a stretch… It could easily be related to the rise in demand for gold in China, the largest rising consumer of gold in recent years.
One thing is for sure, the rising prices of silver and gold during February eliminated the falls these metals had suffered during January.
Let’s see the main changes for these precious metals prices:
Precious Metals Prices Analysis:
The following table is a summary of last week’s descriptive figures of gold and silver prices:
*This figure is calculated based on the percent change from the price at the beginning of the week compare to the price at the end of the week
Gold prices continue to rise as they have inclined by 1.49% from beginning to end of the week; this week’s average price was 1,405 USD /t. oz – a 2% incline compare to last week’s average weekly price of 1,377 USD /t. oz.
Silver prices, much like gold prices, have inclined by 1.98% from beginning to end of the week, and increased by 5.7% from this week’s average price of 32.91/$/t oz., compare to 31.15$/t oz. in the previous week.
On average, gold price inclined by 0.3% on a daily basis, while silver inclined by 0.39%.
During February gold prices rose by nearly 5.1%, while silver prices increased by 15.5%.
Nonetheless, these figures above only show part of the story, as silver prices rose very precipitately at the beginning of the week, only to decline very rapidly at the end of the week.
Gold prices, on the other hand, rose much more moderately throughout the week only to decline moderately at the end.
The price of silver and price of gold chart below are normalized to 100 to the price at the beginning of the week –February, 21st.
The graph shows the upward trend these precious metals had at the first of half of the week, followed by a slow down towards the end of the week.
In the last chart are the daily percent changes of silver and gold prices during last week.
For further reading (in this site):
- Is gold a safe heaven investment compare to S&P500
- Gold Prices Outlook for 2011 and Analysis of 2010
- Black January for gold and silver…February however looks good
Previous issues of weekly report:
- Gold & Silver Prices continue rising – weekly recap 7-11 February
- Gold & Silver Prices on the rise – weekly recap Jan 31-4 Feb
- Gold & Silver Prices bounce back to close the week– weekly recap January 24-28
- Gold and Silver Prices continue falling– weekly recap January 18-21