Gold & Silver Prices | Weekly Recap May 7-11

The precious metals market continued to show weakness all through last week as both gold and silver sharply fell. During the month so far gold has shed 4.82% off its value and silver tumbled down by 6.85%. At the current progress this could be the worst performing month for bullion this year so far and worst since December 2011. The result of the elections in France and Greece raised the concerns that the austerity plans in these countries won’t be carried through by the new elected officials. This news weakened the Euro and as a result precious metals also suffer from the strengthening of the USD. The industrial production output of China and India may have also adversely affected commodities rates. Several U.S reports came out during the week but didn’t seem to have much of an effect on the markets: The U.S PPI declined by 0.2% in April; U.S initial jobless claims remained virtually unchanged at 367k according to its latest update. 

By the end of the week, gold fell by 3.72% and silver by 5.07%.

Here is a short recap of the developments in Bullion between May 7th and May 11th:

 Precious Metals Weekly Recap:

table weekly gold and silver -  7-11 May  2012Gold price tumbled down during last week by 3.72%; furthermore, during said time the average rate reached $1,603.46 /t. oz which is 2.95% below the previous week’s average rate of $1,652.12 /t. oz. Gold finished at $1,645.2 /t. oz.

Silver, even more than the yellow metal, plummeted on a weekly scale by 5.07%; furthermore, the average rate reached $29.38/t oz which is 4.01% below the previous week’s average $30.61/t oz.

During last week, the average daily percent change of gold decreased by 0.75%; silver fell by an average daily rate of 1.03%.

The chart below presents the developments of precious metals, as their rates were normalized to 100 to May 4th. Bullion rates have sharply fell mainly at the middle of the week; except for a modest rise in gold price on Thursday, both metals fell all throughout the week.

weekly precious metals chart 7-11 May 2012The second chart shows the daily percent changes of precious metals (or in other words the movement around the trend). Bullion sharply declined on Tuesday by over 2%, besides that during the week both metals didn’t change by more than 1% in either direction; their daily percent changes ranged between nearly little over 0.08% gain and 2.2% loss.

weekly precious metals chart  7-11 May 2012 percent change

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