Precious Metals Climb, Gold Snaps 4-Month Losing Skid

Precious metals posted strong gains on Friday, as the euro zone agreement and weakness in the U.S. dollar helped fuel a broad-based rally on Wall Street.

COMEX gold futures, per the August contract, settled up by $53.80, or 3.5%, at $1,604.20 per ounce – marking its second-best day of 2012. In doing so, the yellow metal finished the week higher by 2.0%. Moreover, gold ended a four-month losing streak – its first since 1999 – by advancing 2.8% in June.

While the yellow metal still posted a 4.0% quarterly decline – its worst such stretch since 2008 – it returned to positive territory on a year-to-date basis, by 2.4%.

As for silver futures, the COMEX July contract surged $1.33, or 5.1%, to $27.58 per ounce on Friday. This brought silver’s weekly gain to 3.4%.

However, silver still fell 0.6% this month and tumbled 15.0% in the second quarter. Furthermore, gold’s sister precious metal remains down by 1.2% in 2012.

Gold and silver shares jumped alongside the metals on Friday, as the Philadelphia Gold & Silver Index (XAU) rose 3.3% to 157.54. Among the large-cap gold miners, two of the top performers today were Goldcorp (GG) and IAMGOLD (IAG) – which each climbed by 4.1% to $37.59 and $11.80 per share, respectively.

As for silver stocks, Silver Wheaton (SLW) rallied 5.3% to $26.83 per share while Silver Standard Resources (SSRI) rose 5.1% to $11.25 per share.

For the week, the XAU finished higher by 0.8%, and by 2.4% in June. Nonetheless, the XAU declined 11.9% this quarter and is now down by 12.8% on a year-to-date basis.