As far as bad weeks go, gold and silver knows all about them thanks to the last 5 days. Heavy losses over Tuesday and Wednesday could not even be undone after gold picked up over 30 dollars on Friday. Most investors are clueless too because there is not any real, good reason why gold should have taken such a heavy hit. Silver also had a week proportionally similar to gold.

USD, Stock Markets Staying Strong

The improbable good form of the US economy has continued even into the first week of April. Both stock markets and currency in the United States performed well this week which made it even harder for gold and silver to get up after their early week drop-off. There are a lot of people who continue to predict that the US economy is going to fall off and slow down, but that has yet to be seen.

So long as the US economy does well it is hard to imagine that gold and silver will be able to make any substantial gains.

North Korea

We all know that the government of North Korea can be a little off their rocker from time to time, and this whole week did nothing more than prove that sentiment true. The government of the rogue nation has spent a good part of this past week making threats towards the United States and South Korea. While it is not uncommon for North Korea to talk a big game like this, this time seems a bit more serious.

An outbreak of war is an unwanted thing, but if it does happen precious metals investors need to be aware. For this reason we will continue to keep an eye on this part of Asia.

Moving Ahead

As we push forward through the month of April a few things we are going to be watching are the continually increasing tensions in North Korea as well as the ongoing economic downturn Europe is facing.

Leaders throughout EU countries need to step up and start making some big decisions before they too face crises like Cyprus just went through. If a nation like Germany were to be failing on a Cypriot level, who is going to bail them out? These are all things that leaders over there really need to be taking into consideration.

Weekly Move

Despite gold picking up over 30 dollars and silver picking up a half dollar on Friday, the week was pretty disappointing for precious metals. Gold started the week at $1,599, and ended the day Friday at about $1,579. Silver started off the week at $28.38 and when things wrapped up it was down over a dollar, finishing at $27.32.