Gold posted yet another disappointing week as values for both gold and silver were down significantly for a second consecutive week. Despite the US economy cooling down and tensions throughout Asia, precious metals were unable to make the breakthrough that many had hoped they would towards the end of last week. While heavily invested people were upset yet again this week, bargain hunters can be expected to be out in droves due to the most recent dip in prices.
Gold Not Reacting
Usually when terrible economic data is released, gold’s value shoots up in response to people putting their faith in the yellow metal as opposed to anything having to do with a given country’s economy. The US is not only seeing an increased amount of people without jobs, they are also seeing some of the worst retail sales in just short of a year.
These two key factors, coupled with North Korea threatening the outbreak of war at any given moment, should be enough to make gold and silver gain in value, but such is not the case. This is a strange situation that many hope will be remedied sooner rather than later.
Cyprus Won’t Go Away
Even though, to us, it seems as though the banking situation in Cyprus is done and dusted, nothing could be further from the truth. The tiny European nation is once more in the news this week regarding their countries financial situation and the bailout that is supposed to help.
In response to the fact that they need more money to fund a bailout, the island nation is selling off more than 3/4s of its gold holdings. While this has little no effect on the euro, it made it pretty hard for gold to have a strong comeback like we saw last Friday. Instead, gold and silver both slipped a long way at the end of the day on Friday.
The Week Ahead
As we move forward into the next week of April, we will have our attention focused on a number of ongoing situations around the world. For one, we will be posted on every threat North Korea is making because, just like last week, the threats have been coming steady and strong to a number of different nations; now including Japan.
Additionally we will obviously be watching gold as it strives to pick back up after its most recent fall. If you though last week was bad, this week was worse, and at this point there is no way of being sure that next week won’t be even more terrible.
Weekly Shift
Gold started the week at $1,582, and when the week ended on Friday it was sitting at $1,479. This was a loss of $103. Silver, on the other hand. started the week at $27.32 and ended at $26.13. This was a loss of $1.26.