Gold And Silver Prices | Weekly Recap for December 24-28

Gold and silver edged down during last week. The discussions between the White House and Congress officials regarding cutting the U.S budget deficit in this decade and avoiding the fiscal cliff didn’t seem contributed to movement in the bullion market. The holidays resulted in low volume of trading and low volatility. Several U.S related reports were published during the previous week and may have affected forex and commodities markets: U.S new home sales rose in November, U.S consumer confidence slipped in December; the U.S jobless claims declined by 12k to reach 350k. These news items may have adversely affected gold and silver during the week as most of them show positive growth in the U.S economy. Finally, the Euro/USD edged up again last week by 0.21%; the Canadian dollar and Aussie dollar, on the other hand, depreciated against the USD. The depreciation in these currencies may have also partly adversely affected precious metals prices.

By the end of the week, gold decreased by 0.27%; silver, by 0.76%.

Here is a short recap of the developments in precious metals prices between December 17th and December 28th:

Precious Metals Recap:

table weekly gold and silver December 24-28   2012

Gold price slipped during last week by 0.27%; moreover, during said week, the average rate reached $1,659.26 /t. oz which is 0.5% lower than the previous week’s average rate of $1,667.62 /t. oz. Gold ended the week at $1,654.9 /t. oz.

Silver, much like gold, declined during last week by 0.76%; moreover, the average rate also decreased by 2.75% to reach $29.92/t oz compared to the previous week’s average $30.93/t oz.

During last week, the average daily percent change of gold reached 0.12%; silver had an average of 0.2%.

The chart below shows the developments of precious metals, as their prices are normalized to 100 as of December 21st. Bullion prices had an unclear trend during the week.

weekly precious metals chart December 24-28  2012

The second chart shows the daily percent changes of precious metals (or in other words the changes around the trend). Silver and gold mostly declined during the week. During last week, precious metals rates daily percent changes ranged between nearly 0.7% gain and a 0.9% loss.

weekly precious metals chart  December 24-28  2012 percent change

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