Gold & Silver Market 5-4-2015
A lot of discussion among metals traders last week was about gold, which fell spectacularly from Monday through to Friday, but in fact it was a fairly good week overall. Most prices managed to climb slightly and a lot of the damage done the previous period was reversed. Faltering oil prices may have helped this, along with falling equities. At the same time there’s been more activity in the currency markets and that probably stopped metals doing as well as they could have.
Gold was the loser over the week, and even then its fall wasn’t really significant – although it looked that way for most of the period. A slide that started on Monday and kept going all the way through to Friday afternoon masked large gains made over the previous weekend, and the result was that gold closed $2.50 down at $1,177.90. This continues the downward movement that’s been under way for the past couple of weeks but it’s such a small drop that it’s not worth reading anything into right now.
On the other hand silver did much better last week, despite again falling for most of it. Again it was weekend gains that made the difference but here they were large enough that the Monday to Friday slide didn’t wipe them out. The result was that silver closed up, by 35 cents, at just over $16.09. That’s well below the 50 cents it lost the week before but still a very welcome sign; if confidence in silver had been seriously dented it’s unlikely there would have been any gain at all.
Platinum started the week on a sharp upward slope, recovering strongly from its losses the previous week, and by Tuesday looked set to reach $1,160. Unfortunately it then turned downwards for the rest of the period and closed at $1,129. However that’s still $6 above where it stood seven days earlier, so again while it’s not a spectacular gain by any means it still shows a move in the right direction.
Although palladium has probably been the strongest metal over the last few months it took a significant hit two weeks ago, so we were watching it with a lot of interest last week. What we saw was a mixed performance, with some rises early in the week and a sustained fall over the last two days, but overall it finished $4 up at $772.
And, finally, rhodium. After a fairly large loss the week before this sluggish metal gained back much of its lost value over the weekend, then settled down again and didn’t really move all week. It closed on Friday at $1,065. If there is a trend with rhodium it’s probably down, but there really isn’t a lot of movement to base it on.
So overall it was a cautiously positive week in the sector. The only loser was gold and even that was very minor. It’s likely we’d have seen a much stronger rise across the board, powered by the falling stock markets, if the Euro hadn’t suddenly risen almost 4% against the dollar. If equities stay shaky this week we could see some much better results for metals.
About the Author: Clint Stelfox
Clint is the director of marketing at Golden Eagle Coins. Son of Richard Stelfox, co-founder of the company, Clint has been living and breathing coins his entire life. After trading for a Philadelphia Stock Exchange firm for several years Clint returned to give Golden Eagle the online presence it has today. 
