Gold & Silver Market 6-8-2015
It’s been another bad week for precious metals, with only gold managing to avoid a fall in price. Why? Nobody’s really sure. The Dow Jones rose slightly overall but ended the week on a sharp downward slope; the FTSE 100 was similar. Oil isn’t going anywhere. US industrial demand is strong, and plenty of investors in Europe are nervous about the ongoing Greek debt train smash – so they should be looking for a safe haven for their money. Despite all that, most metal prices went down.
Let’s start with the exception – gold. The spot price started the week slightly above where it was the previous week thanks to some good weekend trading, and immediately took off quite strongly. On Wednesday it ran out of steam and fell back, but by the end of the week it had steadied again and was inching back upwards. The final price was $1,181.30, which put it $9 up on the Friday before. That’s a tiny gain but the key fact for investors is that it wasn’t a loss; after slipping for three weeks it’s always nice to have some reassurance, and last week provided it for anyone sitting on gold.
Unfortunately the same doesn’t apply to silver. Through the first few days it tracked gold quite closely, but where gold steadied after its initial drop on Wednesday silver just kept going down. Eventually it closed 17 cents down at $15.955. It’s disappointing to see it on the wrong side of $16 again and it looks like confidence in the metal has taken another dent.
Platinum followed the same track as silver, with a promising few days early in the week followed by a rapid fall that was still going on when the markets closed. There wasn’t much overall change in the spot price, which ended the period $2 at $1,093, but it was an unimpressive performance anyway. The booming US economy should be keeping demand high enough to ensure a good price but we didn’t see that last week.
The first week in June was a bad one for palladium, so while last week wasn’t good it could only be an improvement. Still, performance was sluggish and lagged behind most of the other metals for the first few days; it actually fell on Monday before picking up into a modest rise, but then slumped again on Thursday to end the week at $735. That’s a $15 loss on top of the $25 it shed the week before, and another week like that will see it break through its one-year low.
Rhodium has been the least exciting metal for a while now and nothing changed last week. It didn’t show much activity at all for the first couple of days then slid on Thursday, dropping through the $1,000 point and ending the period at just $980. That’s a fall of $25, the second major drop in a month. Rhodium looks like it’s on a downward run and we don’t recommend buying.
So overall not a good week, and if you are determined to buy into metals in the near future gold looks like being the best bet.
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. 
