The prices of gold and silver continued their rally during last week. Despite the high expectations the publication of the minutes of the last FOMC meeting didn’t offer any additional information or insight behind the future steps of the Fed. So I guess we will just have to wait for the September meeting to see if the FOMC will cut down its asset purchase program this year. In the forex market there was a mixed trend as the Euro slightly rose against the US dollar, while other “risk related leading currencies including the Aussie dollar and Canadian dollar depreciated against the USD. This unclear trend may have contributed to the low volatility of precious metals during last week. , In the U.S, jobless claims bounced back by 13k to reach 323k; existing home sales sharply rose in July, while new home sales tumbled down. Finally, in China, manufacturing PMI rose during August, which is a positive sign of progress and may have positively affected commodities prices. By the end of the week, gold rose by 1.74% and silver by 1.78%.
Here is a short review of the latest changes in precious metals prices between August 19th and August 23rd:
Precious Metals Review:
The price of gold rose by 1.74% last week; further, during the previous week, the average price reached $1,374.72 /t. oz which was 2.25% above last week’s average rate of $1,344.52 /t. oz. Gold ended the week at $1,395 /t. oz.
During last week silver price, much like gold, increased by 1.78%; moreover, the average weekly rate was $23.19/t oz, which was 4.74% above last week’s rate $22.15/t oz.
During last week, the average daily percent shifts of gold were 0.348%; silver had an average daily change of 0.364%.
The chart below presents the changes in precious metals prices, in which they are normalized to 100 as of August 16th. Gold and silver prices didn’t do much during most of the week only to sharply rise on Friday.
The second chart shows the daily percent changes of precious metals prices (or in other words the shifts around the trend). Silver and gold didn’t move by sharp changes during most of the week except on Friday. Precious metals prices daily percent changes ranged between 3% gain and 0.67% drop.
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