Silver Prices Rise as Hurricane Harvey Takes Its Toll

New York (Aug 28)  Silver prices rose on Monday, as investors assessed the damage of Hurricane Harvey.

December silver futures rose 13 cents, or 0.8%, to reach $17.26 a troy ounce at 7:30 a.m. ET. The futures contract was trading near session highs.

 Gold prices broke above $1,300.00 on Monday. The December futures contract was last up $5.20, or 0.4%, at $1,303.10 a troy ounce on the Comex division of the New York Mercantile Exchange.

In currencies, the U.S. dollar plumbed 19-month lows against world peers, as markets continued to react to Janet Yellen’s Jackson Hole speech. The Chairwoman of the Federal Reserve gave a strong defense of the regulatory measures put in place following the 2008 financial crisis. Those same measures have been met with severe criticism by the Trump administration, which, among other things, is looking to scrap the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act.

The dollar index was down 0.3% at 92.47.

Hurricane Harvey was downgraded to a tropical storm as it made landfall on Friday. The storm has caused widespread damage that local newscasts have described as “tragic” and “unprecedented.” The rain is expected to last days, with some areas seeing as much as 50 inches.

The economic damage could reach $24 billion, according to one estimate that was published by Bloomberg. The storm has halted roughly one-quarter of oil and natural gas production in the Gulf of Mexico and more than 10% of U.S. refining capacity.

More than 1,800 flights to and from Houston, Corpus Christi, San Antonio, Austin and Dallas have already been cancelled. Another 1,580 have been cancelled for Monday, according to airline tracking service FlightAware.

European equities were down across the board in intraday trading, while U.S. stock futures traded mixed.

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