Silver Prices Up Nearly 2%, on Track for Fourth Consecutive Session

New York (May 15)  Silver prices surged Monday and were on track for their fourth consecutive gain, picking up where they left off last week.

July silver futures advanced 30 cents, or 1.9%, to $16.70 a troy ounce at 7:47 a.m. ET. The futures price fluctuated within a band of $16.41 and $16.71 overnight.

  The grey metal is on track for its fourth consecutive advance after snapping a three-week downtrend.

Gold futures also traded higher Monday, with the June futures contract adding $4.50, or 0.4%, to $1,232.20 a troy ounce.

The dollar was on track for its fourth consecutive decline Monday, as investors continued to assess mixed economic data from the world’s largest economy. The U.S. dollar index was last down 0.4% at 98.88.

Precious metals have run into volatility recently despite persistent weakness in the U.S. dollar. Declines over the last three weeks have been accompanied by a rise in global equity prices as investors bet on a favorable outcome in the French presidential election. Investors were vindicated May 7 when market-friendly Emmanuel Macron secured the presidency from nationalist Marine Le Pen, and in the process stemmed fear about an imminent E.U. crisis.

In economic data, broad measures of Chinese factory output and retail consumption softened in April, although the underlying trend continued to show stability in the world’s second-largest economy.

Industrial output rose at an annualized 6.5% in April, down from 7.6% the month before, the National Bureau of Statistics reported Monday.

China’s retail sales growth also slowed to an annualized 10.7% from 10.9% in March.

The government also said annual fixed-asset investment – a proxy for long-term spending, slowed to 8.9% annually in the January-April period.

Source:EconomicCalendar