Gold Seeker Closing Report: Gold and Silver End Slightly Higher

The Metals:

Gold climbed to $1660.03 in Asia before it fell back to $1646.50 in London and then rose to a new session high of $1661.80 by a little after 10AM EST, but it then fell back off into the close and ended with a gain of just 0.08%.Silver rose to $32.385 before it slipped back to $31.845, but it then bounced back higher in New York and ended with a gain of 0.22%.

Euro gold rose to about €1249, platinum lost $13.50 to $1637, and copper rose slightly to about $3.84.

Gold and silver equities waffled near unchanged and ended mixed.

The Economy:

Mortgage Applications Drop as Rates Jump CNBC

Bernanke and Geithner testified before a House committee about the European sovereign-debt crisis and noted that:

“The difficulties in the euro area have affected the U.S. economy. The European Union accounts for roughly one-fifth of U.S. exports of goods and services. Not surprisingly, U.S. exports to Europe over the past two years have underperformed our exports to the rest of the world. In addition, weaker demand from Europe has slowed growth in other economies, which has also lowered foreign demand for our products.”

Tomorrow at 8:30AM EST brings Initial Jobless Claims for 3/17 expected at 355,000 and at 10AM are Leading Economic Indicators for February expected at 0.6% and the FHFA Housing Price Index for January.

The Markets:

Charts Courtesy of http://finance.yahoo.com/

Oil continued higher after the Energy Information Administration reported that crude inventories fell 1.2 million barrels, gasoline inventories fell 1.2 million barrels, and distillates rose 1.8 million barrels.

The U.S. dollar index and treasuries rose on disappointing housing data and worries about Europe that held the Dow, Nasdaq, and S&P near unchanged.

Among the big names making news in the market today were General Mills, JPMorgan, and Hartford Financial.

GATA Posts:

New York Sun: Bernanke 101

British Treasury's reserve boost plan doesn't include gold

Vin Maru: Paper trading and manipulation in precious metals

Charles Kadlec: The rising price of the falling dollar

With college kids, Bernanke gets away with dissing gold

Too bad South Africa won't help break the gold price suppression scheme

The Statistics:

As of close of business: 3/20/2012

Global Gold ETF Holdings

[WGC Sponsored ETF’s]

Note: Change in Total Tonnes from yesterday’s data: SPDR subtracted 3.021 tonnes.

COMEX Gold Trust (IAU) Total Tonnes in Trust: 182.36: No change from yesterday’s data.

Silver Trust (SLV) Total Tonnes in Trust: 9,752.67: No change from yesterday’s data.

The Miners:

Rubicon’s (RBY) permits, NovaGold’s (NG) amended spin-out, ITH’s (THM) audited financial statements, Golden Star’s (GSS) Preliminary Economic Assessment, and Hochschild’s (HOCH.L) 2011 results were among the big stories in the gold and silver mining industry making headlines today.

WINNERS

LOSERS

Winners & Losers tracks NYSE and AMEX listed gold and silver mining stocks that trade over $1.

Please see Yahoo’s Mining/Metals News Wire for all of today’s mining news.

- Chris Mullen, Gold Seeker Report

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Additional Resources for today’s Gold Seeker Report can be found:

• http://www.capitalupdates.com
• http://www.goldseek.com
• http://www.silverseek.com
• http://www.goldreview.com

©Gold Seeker 2012

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