Another week without net gain for gold has been bad news for investors. As the dollar continues to pick up steam, precious metals have suffered as a result, with gold in particular dropping by ten dollars from the start of the week to the end. With prices as low as they’ve been in years, a lot of buyers have started to look at buying gold in large quantities, including some surprising parties.
Monday started the week off with the trend of dropping value as gold began just above $1,185 an ounce and fell to $1,180. The Greek imposition of capital controls as the EU crisis reaches a boiling point continued to drag the Euro downward while providing buoyancy for the dollar. In addition to Greek news, the release of non-farm payroll data provided the dollar with strength and gold with volatility.
The second day of the week continued the trend as the price of gold fell below $1,175 on news of the official Greek decision. CME Group’s implied probability of a Fed interest hike in September kept the metal from dropping as hard as it could have, giving a bit of a cushion but still failing to turn gold into positive thresholds.
Wednesday was the worst day of the week for gold, dropping nearly ten dollars an ounce to close out at $1,167. Futures for gold were extremely light at 105,000 contracts, indicating not much interest in gold overall. As bad as the day was for gold, it proved even worse for the price of silver, which lost nearly a full percentage point compared to gold’s loss of just .33%. Conversely, platinum gained about seven dollars per ounce.
With gold dropping far and fast, some parties decided to pick up on the metal. Thursday saw the release of headlines that the Iranian government had seized no less than 13 tons of gold, valued at half a billion dollars, purchased from South Africa and held up in the negotiations and sanctions over the Iranian nuclear program. Gold held steady through Thursday without any net gain.
Friday gave gold the only rise in value of the entire week, closing out at just under $1,170. The Friday rise prevented gold from losing an entire 1% in value throughout the course of the week, leaving investors with nothing to do but hope for a better performance come Monday.