Gold Seeker Closing Report: Gold and Silver Gain About 1.5%

The Metals:

Gold climbed $9.47 to $1729.67 in Asia before it fell back to $1709.99 in London, but it then rose to as high as $1749.76 in New York and ended with a gain of 1.46%.Silver rose to $33.806 before it slipped back to $33.15, but it then surged to as high as $34.337 in New York and ended with a gain of 1.67%.

Euro gold rose to about €1317, platinum gained $24 to $1645.50, and copper rose slightly to about $3.87.

Gold and silver equities fell almost 2% at the open before they rebounded and saw slights gain midday, but they then fell back off in late trade and ended with slight losses.

The Economy:

Bernanke: 8.3% Unemployment Understates Job Market Weakness Bloomberg

Job Openings in U.S. Rose in December for First Time in Three Months Bloomberg

Bernanke: U.S. Labor Market ‘Long Way’ From Normal Bloomberg

California, N.Y. Are Among Fewer Than 10 Mortgage Deal Holdouts Bloomberg

Tomorrow at 7AM EST brings the MBA Mortgage Index for 2/04.

The Markets:

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

Oil rose as the U.S. dollar index and treasuries fell on renewed hopes for Greece’s debt deal that sent the Dow, Nasdaq, and S&P higher.

Greece drafts bailout text for parties as talks inch forward Reuters

Among the big names making news in the market today were BP, Coca-Cola, and UBS.

The Commentary:

“Someone needs to inform Ben Bernanke that he is not reading from the proper script. After all, he is employed there as head of the Federal Reserve courtesy of his boss, the President. One would think that he would get the memo to "help re-elect Obama" by spinning last week's fabrication, aka, the payrolls report, and spelling out in glowing detail how the President's policies are taking us all in the right direction and "not to muck things up".

Whoops - Bernanke went and did the exact opposite by basically confirming 100% what many of us have been saying about last week's government propaganda publication on the jobs situation here in the US. I am paraphrasing what his comments were this morning in front of the Senate Budget Committee but they were blunt and direct when he said that the 8.3% unemployment rate in January understated the real weakness present in the US labor market.

And what exactly did he say to prove this - Voila! the same thing many have been noting - it is a simple matter to manipulate this official number downwards if you stop counting people who have been dropped off out of the labor force. He spoke to the "unusually high level of long term unemployment" and noted that "we still have a long way to go before the labor market can be said to be operating normally". KERPLUNK! That was the sound of the Obama spinners' lies hitting the floor.

As I have stated before and will do so again - IGNORE all the political spin coming from the re-elect Obama friendly media and watch what the Fed does and what its members say in public. So what did they say this morning that should be noted? Interest Rates will stay near ZERO until late in 2014. That is all one needs to know about the TRUE state of the US economy. If things were improving at the pace that the Obamaites were assuring they were, we would not be getting any ZERO interest rate talk for another 2 years!

This is what got gold moving so strongly to the upside once again. Once those remarks began circulating, traders wasted no time responding in the exact same fashion they did when the FOMC first informed the hedge fund community that the speculative party was back on. Up went gold, down went the Dollar, into the toilet went the long bond and up went the commodity sector in general. What was this all about? Simple - the market took back all the losses that it incurred when fears arose that the payrolls number was so strong that it would signal an abrupt end to the FREE MONEY environment and would usher in the first interest rate hikes. That is a big no-no to these leveraged funds who want a green light to keep piling on the leveraged bets.

This news was once again large enough to overshadow any worries about Greece or any other sovereign debt problems out of Europe in the mind of traders. FREE MONEY trumps debt defaults any day.

Once the Dollar started getting thumped, gold and silver both moving higher with gold in particular loving the news. After all, there is little to no opportunity cost to hold and own gold in a zero interest rate environment.

On the technical price chart, gold had dropped into the support level I had noted on the chart and then violently spiked higher. That move has taken it right back up into the resistance zone near the $1750 level. Bulls need to clear this level and keep the price ABOVE $1750 to send it towards $1780. With the bears still reeling, thanks to Bernanke, it is going to take the deep pocketed bullion banks to stem the advance as the weaker shorts have run once again just as they did when the FOMC scared the hell out of them when it first announced the easy money policy would last for nearly another 2 years.”- Dan Norcini, More at http://www.traderdannorcini.blogspot.com/

GATA Posts:

Paul Brodsky and Lee Quaintance: An adult approach -- Part I

NYTimes pays a little grudging respect to Ron Paul

Paul's gaining delegates could force Republicans to confront Fed

Charles Kadlec: Fed's explicit goal is to devalue dollar 33%

The Statistics:

Activity from: 2/06/2012

Global Gold ETF Holdings

[WGC Sponsored ETF’s]

Note: No change in Total Tonnes from yesterday’s data.

COMEX Gold Trust (IAU) Total Tonnes in Trust: 177.68: No change from yesterday’s data.

Silver Trust (SLV) Total Tonnes in Trust: 9,664.26: +15.11 change from yesterday’s data.

The Miners:

Paramount’s (PZG) assay results, NovaGold’s (NG) closed bought deal equity offering, Midway’s (MDW) performance in 2011, Nevsun’s (NSU) 2012 outlook, and Golden Minerals’ (AUMN) new VP of exploration were among 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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• http://www.capitalupdates.com
• http://www.goldseek.com
• http://www.silverseek.com
• http://www.goldreview.com

©Gold Seeker 2012

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