Gold and Silver Market Update (9/28/14) – Golden Eagle
Once again precious metals have had a bad week. The only one to buck the trend was gold; everything else lost value, even in the face of a wobbling stock market. The excitement all seems to be in forex and oil right now, and metals are being dumped across the board. It’s worrying if you have significant assets tied up there, but there are opportunities too.
Gold has been having a rough time of it lately, but last week it managed to halt the recent slide and even regain a few dollars. It wasn’t much – just over $3, for a closing price of $1,219.60 – but at least the price has bottomed out for the moment. Right now it’s hard to predict where it will go over the next few days, but just the fact that a reversal in stocks can turn it round should be enough to start rebuilding some confidence. With a tense international situation gold could be well placed for a strong recovery.
The news for silver is less good. Its decline seems to have slowed slightly, but it’s been heading steadily down for over two months now and that’s the sort of pattern that can demolish faith in a commodity at least in the short term. Still, last week’s fall was only 13 cents, bringing the spot price to $17.66 by the time the markets closed on Friday. If equities don’t recover soon that might just be enough to persuade some people to look at silver again.
Platinum dropped below the $1,300 mark for the first time in five years, closing at $1,297. Again this is a trend that’s been running for quite a few weeks, but it’s surprising that the price has come down this far. There just doesn’t seem to be any reason for a five-year low.
All the platinum group metals have suffered this week, and palladium is no exception. It started the week fairly well, climbing strongly on Monday and Tuesday, then fell off a small cliff; from the week’s high of close to $815 it ended up at $772, $37 down on the previous period. Palladium has been sliding since the start of the month but its fall has been a lot more hesitant than most of the other metals, so it’s not reassuring to see such a sharp drop and if it doesn’t stabilize this week sell orders are going to start coming in a lot faster.
Finally rhodium lost close to $50, ending the week at $1,240. Like palladium most of the damage was done on Thursday and Friday, and it didn’t relate to any upswing in equity prices because there wasn’t one.
So, overall another week of poor performance. The only good news was gold and even there it’s much too tenuous an improvement to say that things are turning round. It did look like the platinum group took the worst of the pain however, with silver losing a lot less than it’s done some weeks over the last two months. If the Dow continues to fluctuate there’s definite potential for a recovery in the near future, and with prices at current levels it’s not going to be hard to get in on it when it materializes.
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. 
