Here is a short overview of the recent developments in gold and silver during the week of March 19th to 23rd and an outlook for the week of March 26th to 30th; this includes a short description of the main news items, decisions and events that may have affected metals traders during last week; in this analysis I use charts and a fundamental analysis to examine how if at all last week's events, decisions and financial reports affected the path of gold and silver.

During last week the flash estimates of China and Europe's manufacturing PMI were released and didn't look well. This news may have pulled down gold and silver. The protests in India regarding the new tax on gold didn't help the gold as well.

On the other hand there were several U.S reports about the real estate market that didn't show progress including the decline innew home sales,existing home sales, and a 1.1% decrease inhousing starts during last month. All these report may have weakened the USD mainly against the Euro and consequently may have helped precious metals to remain high.

During last weekgold prices edged up by 0.4% while silver price slipped by 1.02%.

In the following graph are the shifts in silver and gold, which were normalized to 100 to the end of last week – March 16th.

Thevideo link on gold and silver prices provides a broad outlook for the major news and events that might affect the path of metals during the week of March 26th to March 30th; the video includes reviewing the main reports, events, decisions and news items to be published during the upcoming week. Some of these reports and events include:

German Business Climate Survey: This survey estimates the developments (on a monthly basis) of the business climate of Germany. In the recent report regarding February 2012, the business climate index continued to rise from 108.3 in January to 109.6 in February; if this upward trend will continue, it could positively affect the Euro;

U.S. Pending Home Sales: This report shows the changes in pending home sales in the U.S. for February 2012; in the recent report thepending home sales index rose by 2% compared with the previous month's index. These data are another indicator for the developments in America's real estate market; based on last week's results on housing sales (new and existing) the pending sales may also decline. In such a case US dollar may weaken;

Final U.S GDP 4Q 2011 Estimate: This will be the final estimate of U.S's fourth quarter 2011 real GDP growth. In the recentestimate the U.S GDP in the fourth quarter rose by 3%; in the 3Q2011 the GDP growth rate was 1.8%, compared with 1.3% increase at 2Q2011. This shows a slight increase in the growth rate for the US's GDP. The current expectations are that the growth rate in the fourth quarter will remain high. if there will be a sharp shift in this estimate it could also affect the path of not only the US dollar but also commodities;

For further reading:

Weekly Outlook for 26-30 March

Gold and Silver Prices Outlook for April 2012

By: Lior Cohen, M.A. in Economics, Commodities Analyst and Blogger atTrading NRG

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