Mirroring gold's price gains are other precious metals that also received attention from investors amid a dull global economic growth sentiment. Metals like silver and platinum also saw strong increase in demand as safe-haven assets, in the last few weeks.

While gold rallied 19 percent in 2019 in the international markets, investors looked for cheaper alternatives to bet on the precious metals like silver, platinum and palladium.

Investors look for safe bets

Investors have been reluctant to invest in riskier assets like equity for a while now amid uncertainties around various global events like the US-China trade war, Brexit, Hong Kong riots and trade conflict between South Korea and Japan. Economic activity in significantly large economies like the US, China, Germany, the UK and even India has been seeing slowing down.

In this atmosphere, investors become nervous and load up on gold. Analysts feel that investors that maxed out on the gold comfort level started adding other relatively cheaper precious metals to their investment mix.

Silver shines as economy slows down

Last week, silver futures on MCX crossed the Rs 51,000/kg level for the first time ever. Recently, inflows to the world's largest silver exchange-traded-fund (ETF), the iShare Trust, surged to record levels. The price increase could also be due to its strong demand in the solar panel industry.

This week, however, the metals failed to remain at the elevated levels. Renewed hopes of negotiations between the US and China, recovery of equity markets globally and higher US treasury yields eased the demand. While this may be an indication that all hope is not lost on the global economy, changes that affect the capital markets are very sudden and often unpredictable.

Gold prices still remain above the Rs 38,000 per 10 grams level in India and $1,500 an ounce at the US spot market. Silver prices are known to follow gold's movement in making gains in the commodities market when the appeal for safe-haven assets improves.