Gold & Silver Market 5-24-2015
Last week saw prices fall across the preciou smetals sector, with all the major benchmarks losing value except rhodium. It’s not all bad news though. Only palladium is below where it was two weeks ago, and then only fractionally. Most of the losses happened early in the week and by Wednesday prices were stabilizing, with a couple of metals showing signs of wanting to break upwards again, so there’s no reason to expect renewed falls this week. If equities head down or look shaky there’s every change metal prices will benefit from that and start to regain what they lost. It’s probably best to think of last week as a retrenchment rather than a turnaround.
Looking at gold first, the spot price fell steeply as soon as markets opened Monday morning. This slide continued through Thursday, but on Wednesday it leveled out and started to climb slightly. That didn’t last, and by the end of the day it had turned down again, but the decline was slow and hesitant, and by the end of the week the price looked stable. The final trades on Friday went through at $1,205.90, a fall of $17.60 over the period. Almost all of that happened before Wednesday, though, so the most recent trend is more or less flat.
Silver followed a roughly similar pattern to gold, dropping sharply on Monday and Tuesday before rallying slightly midweek. Again it was more or less stable by Friday. The closing price was $17.075, 42 cents down. However that’s well under half of what it gained the week before, and after the depths silver has hit recently even holding around where it is now is a big step forward.
We saw a very similar performance from platinum, too, with a substantial loss in the first two days followed by leveling out around Wednesday. From an opening value close to $1,175 it dropped more than $25 in two days, climbed back up slightly then dipped again Thursday. Platinum didn’t flatten out until around the middle of Friday, though, so it isn’t looking quite as stable as gold and silver. The closing price was $1,146, a $22 fall from the week before.
Palladium seems to have anticipated the fall in the market and was already heading down in weekend trading, but that didn’t spare it from the same Monday drop as the others. It did perform better for the second half of the week though, with the price rising through to Friday with no second dip, then holding steady for the final day. It closed at $779, an $11 loss.
For a few hours on Wednesday it looked as if rhodium was going to buck some trends and head up, with the price suddenly jumping to around the $1,055 mark, but that hope soon receded as it fell back to $1,045 – exactly where it finished the week before.
So, as we said, a disappointing week in many ways but far from a disastrous one. Most metals lost value but the trend for the month is still heading up, and there’s no obvious reason for that to change this week.
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. 
