Gold Spot Price Open: $1,379
Gold Spot Price Close: $1,390
Change in Gold Spot Price:+$11
Silver Spot Price Open: $21.68
Silver Spot Price Close: $22.09
Change in Silver Spot Price:+$0.41
Gold and silver had decent days to end the week, especially considering that this week has been one of ups and downs for precious metals. Gold ended the day on Friday up about 11 dollars on the day and about 9 dollars on the week. Silver finished Friday up over 40 cents while its weekly gains were a little over a half dollar.
President Obama gave the US the authority to provide Syrian rebels with weapons, even though the move was highly criticized. As America sticks their nose in the Syrian conflict it seems as though the situation will only get worse, and thus bloodier. Any precious metals investor knows that war is good for gold and silver, and this was the case today. Gold and silver were both seen as safe-haven assets today, something that hasn’t been seen all week.
In Europe, employment is doing worse than ever having hit its lowest number of active workers in almost a decade. Employment in the euro zone was reported as having fallen by about half a percentage point in the first quarter of 2013 when compared to the last quarter of 2012. Inflation was also reported as having risen by about 1.4%, though this number was lower than the expected 2% increase.
Expect heavy speculation during the first part of next week as investors, especially those based in the United States, will not so patiently wait for the Federal Open Market Committee’s meeting next Wednesday. The topic of the meeting, as it usually is, is monetary policy in the US which means that more or less anything that is discussed on the day has the potential to impact the precious metals market. Some people are expecting an announcement that the easy monetary policy known as Quantitative Easing will be wound down sometime soon while others are banking on an announcement regarding a continuation of QE.
All in all gold and silver fared decently this week, when things looked like they could have shaped up to be a lot worse.