The week of February 15th will likely go down as one of the worst weeks for precious metals in all of 2013. Obviously it is a bit early to make such a prediction, but it isn’t every week that precious metals tests the waters of a 6 month low. This is all coming after many experts thought that this week would be fairly harmless for metals.
China Takes the Week Off
The first bit of news that affected gold and silver was the fact that China was taking the week off in order to observe their New Year. Because of this, demand for precious metals, especially gold, dropped off by quite a bit. China is a huge consumer of gold so any time that they are not in the picture will likely be trying for metals.
Luckily the Chinese will be back next week and will hopefully turn the tide of precious metals markets.
Much Anticipated G20 Meeting
The top 20 nations in the world were set to kick off a meeting in Moscow this week, a meeting that many thought would have little impact on the price of precious metals. We all quickly learned quite the opposite as a talking point in the first day’s discussions did well at knocking silver and gold down a few pegs.
The news was that the G20 pleaded with nations of the world to stop killing the value of their currencies so fervently. Their fear was that currency wars would break out and the whole economic platform would be turned on its head. The very same money wars that the G20 is striving to avoid are typically perfect for precious metals. Whenever we witness falling, devaluing currencies we also witness a booming precious metals market.
Moving Forward
As we try to get the memory of this abysmal week out of our heads, it is hard to imagine that gold and silver could slip much more. With the Chinese back in the picture next week we will hopefully see an improving outlook for precious metals, but as this week has shown, one can never really know.
Weekly Shift
By the time all was said and done on Friday, gold had declined by almost $60. It opened the week sitting at $1,668 and finished in a strikingly low $1,609 position. Silver didn’t fare well either as it dropped over a dollar and a half moving from $31.48 on Monday to $29.83 on Friday.