Silver price hits three month high following biggest weekly gain since 2013

The price of silver has fallen after touching its highest level since mid-October in earlier trading following its biggest weekly gain in 16 months. Market participants will be eyeing important releases later during the week as uncertainty in equity markets continues to support safe haven demand.

Silver for immediate delivery had shed four cents, or 0.21 percent, to $17.67 as of 06:33 GMT, and was trading 8.6 percent above its 50-day simple moving average of $16.27. It touched $17.95 in earlier trading, the strongest since 15 October. Last week, the precious metal surged 7.39 percent after the Swiss National Bank (SNB) , propelling prices of precious metals higher as investors sought safe haven assets.

The price of silver for March delivery had shed 14 cents, or 0.78 percent, to $17.70 as of 06:49 GMT. Scotiabank wrote in a report from Friday that last week’s rally may have been “underpinned by safe haven buying on speculation that the European Central Bank would most likely announce a quantitative easing program next week”.
The ECB will convene on Thursday for its first monetary policy meeting of the year with market participants expecting the announcement of a quantitative easing (QE) asset purchasing programme. The Bullion Desk cited Howie Lee, an investment analyst at Phillip Futures, as saying:

“With markets expected to be volatile this week – China releases its 2014 GDP on Tuesday and the world awaits the ECB’s expected QE on Thursday,” investors are likely to continue seeking safe haven assets during the course of the week.
Based on the two most actively traded COMEX contracts, with a total volume of trade in gold and silver of 24,540 contracts as of 06:49 GMT today, the gold:silver ratio was at 72.10. The ratio was up 0.13 percent from last week’s 72.00 close.