Silver Price News and Forecast: XAG/USD struggles below $17.00 mark, near 1-week lows

Silver held on to its weaker tone through the mid-European session on Monday and dropped to the lower end of a one-week-old trading range, around the $16.80 region.

The white precious metal failed to capitalize on Friday's attempted recovery move and came under some renewed selling pressure on the first day of a new trading week amid reports of revival in China's manufacturing sector activity.

Silver Price Today

In fact, the official data released over the weekend showed that China's manufacturing PMI unexpectedly moved in the expansion territory after six consecutive months of slowdown and rose to 50.2 in November from 49.3 previous.

Adding to this, China’s Caixin PMI also bettered market expectations and edged up to 51.8 from 51.7 reported last month, which coupled with slightly stronger US dollar exerted some additional downward pressure on the commodity.

Against the backdrop of last week’s mostly upbeat US macro data, the risk-on mood-led strong intraday upsurge in the US Treasury bond yields, now up over 3.5% for the day, turned out to be one of the key factors underpinning the greenback demand.

Meanwhile, the US-China standoff over Hong Kong legislation might have dampened prospects of a "phase one" trade deal between the world's two largest economies might help limit deeper losses, at least for the time being.

Moving ahead, market participants now look forward to Monday’s US economic docket, highlighting the release of ISM Manufacturing PMI, which might produce some short-term trading opportunities later during the early North-American session.

Technical levels to watch