Bright day for bullions

Silver registers 14% on a weekly basis

Bullion prices ended higher on Friday, 16 August 2013. Futures for gold and silver advanced on Friday, with silver a standout in the metals complex as prices for the white metal scored their best weekly performance in nearly five years.

Gold for December delivery rose $10.10, or 0.7%, to settle at $1,371 an ounce on the Comex division of the New York Mercantile Exchange. Gold futures saw a weekly rise of 4.5%. Gold futures were on track for a loss of around 19% for the year, which would mark their first yearly decline since 2000.

Silver prices, meanwhile, leapt 14% for the week the biggest weekly percentage increase for a most-active contract. Silver for September delivery on Friday tacked on 39 cents, or 1.7%, to settle at $23.32 an ounce after Thursday's surge of more than 5%.

In terms of U.S. data, investors on Friday took in a worse-than-expected report on housing starts, plus a reading on productivity that beat forecasts. There was batch of economic data today that included the Housing Starts and Building Permits report for July, the Productivity report for the second quarter, and the University of Michigan Consumer Sentiment report for August. True to recent form, the economic data was uneven.

Housing starts and building permits were basically in-line with expectations, rising 5.9% and 2.7%, respectively, to an annualized rate of 896,000 and 943,000, yet those increases were driven entirely by multi-family units. Starts and permits for single-family homes were down 2.2% and 1.9% from June.

Second quarter productivity increased 0.9% and unit labor costs rose 1.4%. Both numbers were better than expected and both were promptly ignored by the market given the dated nature of the report.

The University of Michigan Consumer Sentiment report, however, captured some of the market's attention with a disappointing headline print of 80.0. That was down from 85.1 in July. Still, the pullback in the indexes for current conditions and expectations were downers in terms of the report's overall messaging.

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