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

The Metals:

Gold fell $24.10 to $1704.70 by a little before 8:30AM EST before it rallied back higher in New York, but it still ended with a loss of 0.53%. Silver slipped to as low as $33.165 before it also rallied back higher in New York, but it still ended with a loss of 1.09%.

Euro gold rose to about €1306, platinum lost $1.50 to $1651.50, and copper fell 12 cents to about $3.85.

Gold and silver equities fell about 2% at the open and remained near that level for the rest of the day.

The Economy:

Bernanke: Housing Holds Back Fed Efforts Bloomberg

Foreclosures to Climb Before Bank Deal Helps U.S. Housing Market Bloomberg

Economists see Q4 jobless rate at 8.1 percent Reuters

All of this week’s other economic reports:

Next week’s economic highlights include Export and Import Prices, Retail Sales, and Business Inventories on Tuesday, Empire Manufacturing, Net Long-Term TIC Flows, Industrial Production, Capacity Utilization, and FOMC Minutes on Wednesday, Initial Jobless Claims, Housing Starts, Building Permits, PPI, and the Philadelphia Fed survey on Thursday, and CPI and Leading Economic Indicators on Friday.

The Markets:

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

Oil fell as the U.S. dollar index and treasuries rose on worries over Greece that sent the Dow, Nasdaq, and S&P almost 1% lower.

“Striking Greek workers denounced a new wave of austerity on Friday as an imposition too far by Europe and the IMF. Finance Minister Evangelos Venizelos told the nation it faced a stark choice between sacrifices inside the euro area and bigger sacrifices outside.

Police fired teargas at black-masked protesters who threw petrol bombs, stones and bottles in central Athens at the start of a 48-hour general strike against planned pay and job cuts. But street protests were relatively small and mostly peaceful.”

“Greece's future in the euro grew increasingly precarious Friday as violence erupted on the streets of Athens during a general strike and five politicians resigned from the government after European leaders demanded deeper spending cuts.

Hours after Greece claimed it had reached an agreement among its squabbling party leaders on new cutbacks, European officials dashed any hopes that the country was close to getting its bailout. Finance ministers said more austerity needs to be agreed and set a deadline for the middle of next week.”

Among the big names making news in the market Friday were Pimco, P&G, and LinkedIn.

The Commentary:

“Gold has now spiked through the $1750 level several times since the end of last month but has not been able to CLOSE THROUGH this level. Until it does, the market will not be able to start a new leg higher in the uptrend.

Generally speaking, markets tend to pause at resistance levels until they can gather enough of a spark to take them strongly through those or they retreat and consolidate leading to some basing action. During the latter, some of the shorter term oriented bulls will liquidate longs out of frustration or out of a desire to cash in some profits and bank them. That selling then paves the way for some opportunistic short selling to emerge.

We had a combination of both today leading to a pullback in price. Support on the downside remains near $1725 - $1720 with stronger support down closer to $1710 - $1705.

Silver needs to get above $34 and stay there to allow it a chance to test major resistance near $35.00 - $35.25.”- Dan Norcini, More at http://www.traderdannorcini.blogspot.com/

GATA Posts:

A 'controlled retreat' by central banks in the gold market isn't nearly enough

Ted Butler: Enough is enough

Traders say Iran paying for wheat with gold and oil

The Statistics:

Activity from: 2/09/2012

Global Gold ETF Holdings

[WGC Sponsored ETF’s]

Note: Change in Total Tonnes from yesterday’s data: SPDR added 1.209 tonnes.

COMEX Gold Trust (IAU) Total Tonnes in Trust: 178.44: No change from yesterday’s data.

Silver Trust (SLV) Total Tonnes in Trust: 9,700.53: +36.27 change from yesterday’s data.

The Miners:

Claude’s (CGR) production forecast, Richmont’s (RIC) drill results, Timberline’s (TLR) first quarter financial results, and Excellon’s (EXN.TO) production results were among the big stories in the gold and silver mining industry making headlines Friday.

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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