Precious metals started off the week in the same direction from the previous week – trading down. This direction changed coming Wednesday when both metals along with other commodities rates and “risk currencies” rose. The news of the contraction of GB’s GDP during Q2 and ECB President Mario Draghi’s statement to preserve the Euro helped rally these markets. The decline in number of new home sales sold and the pending home sales may have also contributed to the weakening of the USD. The jobless claims changed direction and declined to 353k. On Friday U.S GDP estimate for Q2 was released and showed the U.S economy expanded by only 1.5%, which wasn’t much different than many had anticipated.
Finally, during the week the Euro/USD rallied by 1.36%; this rise may have helped push up major commodities rates including gold, silver and oil.
By the end of the week, gold rose by 2.52% and silver by 0.72%.
Here is a short recap of the changes in Bullion between July 23rd and July 27th:
Precious Metals Recap:
Gold price rose during last week by 2.52%; further, during said time the average rate reached $1,602.68 /t. oz which is 1.24% above the previous week’s average rate of $1,583.02 /t. oz. Gold finished at $1,622.7 /t. oz.
Silver, less than gold, rose on a weekly scale by only 0.72%; on the other hand, the average rate nearly didn’t change as it reached $27.25/t oz which is 0.01% above the previous week’s average $27.25/t oz.
During last week, the average daily percent change of gold reached 0.5%; silver also edged up by an average 0.15%.
As seen below, the chart demonstrates the changes of precious metals, as their rates normalized to 100 to July 20th. Bullion prices declined during the first couple of days of the week and then changed direction and rallied during the rest of the week.
The second chart shows the daily percent changes of precious metals (or in other words the changes around the trend). Bullion prices didn’t do much during most of the week except on Wednesday when both precious metals hiked. During the week precious metals daily percent changes ranged between nearly 2.5% gain and 1% loss.
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