Gold Seeker Weekly Wrap-Up: Gold and Silver End Mixed on the Week

The Metals:

Gold waffled near unchanged in Asia and London, but it then fell back off for most of trade in New York and ended near its late session low of $1649.32 with a loss of 1.14%.Silver slipped to as low as $31.33 and ended with a loss of 2.66%.

Euro gold platinum lost $21.50 to $1578.50, and copper

Gold and silver equities fell about 1.5% in the first half hour of trade and remained near that level for the rest of the day.

The Economy:

All of this week’s other economic reports:

Next week’s economic highlights include Retail Sales, Empire Manufacturing, Net Long-Term TIC Flows, Business Inventories, and the NAHB Housing Market Index on Monday, Housing Starts, Building Permits, Industrial Production, and Capacity Utilization on Tuesday, and Initial Jobless Claims, Existing Home Sales, the Philadelphia Fed, and Leading Economic Indicators on Thursday.

The Markets:

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

Oil fell as the U.S. dollar index and treasuries rose on worries about slower than expected economic growth in China that sent the Dow, Nasdaq, and S&P lower.

Among the big names making news in the market Friday were Goldman Sachs, Apple, JPMorgan, Wells Fargo, and Google.

The Commentary:

“What more is left to say at this point other than the fact that the hedge fund computers and their damnable algorithms have destroyed the integrity of the US futures markets. The sheer size, extent, ferocity and volatility of the moves that these pestilential computers are creating have rendered these markets basically useless for what they originally came into being for, namely, risk management for commercial entities.

Price swings of this magnitude are blowing up hedged positions put on by commercials and other end users/merchants/processors, etc. While margins are reduced for legitimate hedgers, they still must meet any and all margin calls on any hedged position, whether that is a long position or a short position. Some will say that all they need to do is to buy or sell the corresponding physical commodity and while simultaneously lifting the hedge. That might work fine on paper but in the real world it is a fabrication.

A cattle feedlot, a grain elevator owner/operator, a cocoa processor, a cotton mill, etc, may or may not have the actual product ready to sell as it is still maturing or growing in the field or may not be ready yet to actually buy the product but they might have hedges in place while they are waiting. So much for their hedges in this sort of idiotically insane trading environment. Their hedges are getting blasted to kingdom come but they must maintain the thing if it moves against them meaning that they need cash to meet any and all margin calls.

At some point, the cost of doing so, with hedge fund running prices all over the damn planet on a daily basis, is no longer feasible.

I am predicting here and now that unless something is done to corral these hedge funds, the futures market is going to become useless as a risk management tool for non-speculative entities.

Take a look at the following CCI chart (it might as well be copper or silver for that matter) and look at the extent of the daily price swings. Tuesday saw a big sell off across the sector as traders feared European debt woes and that brought about the RISK OFF trades. Commodities were dumped, the Dollar was bid higher and up went the bonds. The next day was relatively tame by comparison as traders were hesitant to do much of anything. Thursday saw the entire losses of the previous two days erased as Fed Governor Dudleys' comments were interpreted as making the case for another round of QE forthcoming sooner rather than later.

Today, news hit that Chinas' growth had slowed in the first quarter to a "pitiful" 8.1%. Yep, such a debacle ( if we could get half of that over here, a lot of our fiscal budget woes and our unemployment problem would actually get better). I am of course being sarcastic but once again the hedge funds and their mindless machines dumped everything in sight since we all know that no one needs to eat when growth is slowing down now do they? The result, YEP - all of the Dudley rally went down in flames with the market right back where it ended Tuesday.

Maybe we all should just go the hell to sleep and wake up in a year and see if the chart has actually gone anywhere besides up and down like a stinking yo-yo.”- Dan Norcini, More at http://www.traderdannorcini.blogspot.com/

The Statistics:

Activity from: 4/12/2012

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: 180.17: No change from yesterday’s data.

Silver Trust (SLV) Total Tonnes in Trust: 9,618.57: -7.55 change from yesterday’s data.

The Miners:

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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