Silver opened around $18.50 per ounce, lower from last Friday’s Federal Reserve speech, in which Janet Yellen indicated a potential rate hike in the near future. Physical demand in India and Asia tapered off a seven-day streak of lower sales volumes.
Silver broke from its direct side-by-side movement with gold this week. As gold slipped on a high dollar and Fed talks, silver remained low as well during the majority of the week, but launched toward $19.40 by Friday—a greater price breakthrough than gold’s, though the yellow metal did recover losses by Friday as well.
The non-farm payrolls report released Friday showed that the U.S. added 151,000 jobs in August, a slowdown in growth—down from July’s 177,000 additional jobs. Both gold and silver prices ended the week strong.