| Close | Gain/Loss |
| Gold | $953.30 | +$6.15 |
| Silver | $13.71 | +$0.21 |
| XAU | 148.13 | -0.02% |
| HUI | 657.63 | -0.11% |
| GDM | 1092.96 | -0.01% |
| JSE Gold | 2331.92 | -28.29 |
| USD | 78.76 | -0.14 |
| Euro | 142.13 | -0.02 |
| Yen | 106.94 | +0.27 |
| Oil | $65.40 | -$0.21 |
| 10-Year | 3.554% | +0.077 |
| T-Bond | 117.28125 | -1.046875 |
| Dow | 8881.26 | -0.39% |
| Nasdaq | 1926.38 | +0.53% |
| S&P | 954.07 | -0.05% |
The Metals:
Gold and silver saw slight gains in Asia before they fell to see modest losses at as low as $944.60 and $13.37 in London, but they then rallied back higher for most of trade in New York and gold ended near its high of $954.45 with a gain of 0.65% while silver ended near its high of $13.748 with a gain of 1.56%.
Euro gold rose to about €670, platinum gained a dollar to $1169, and copper gained over 7 cents to about $2.52.
Gold and silver equities fell about 1.5% by midmorning before they rallied to see over 1% gains by early afternoon, but they then fell back off into the close and ended with slight losses on the day.
The Economy:
There were no major economic reports today, but Bernanke continued his testimony before Congress today with a Q&A session in front of the Senate Banking Committee. His comments were mixed, but the overall feeling was definitely one of cautiousness on the future of the economy heading forward. He also "fought hard to protect the independence of the U.S. central bank and keep responsibility for consumer protection on financial products in its hands."
May FHFA Home Price Index Rises 0.9% Forbes
Tomorrow at 8:30AM EST brings Initial Jobless Claims for 7/18 expected at 558,000 and at 10AM is the Existing Home Sales report for June expected at 4,830,000.
The Markets:
Charts Courtesy of http://finance.yahoo.com/
Oil pared early losses but still ended slightly lower after it was announced that crude inventories fell 1.8 million barrels, gasoline inventories rose 800,000 barrels, and distillates rose 1.2 million barrels. Capacity Utilization fell 2.1% to 85.8%.
The U.S. dollar index and treasuries fell on renewed worries over the continually enormous amounts of debt to be auctioned.
The Dow, Nasdaq, and S&P traded mixed and near unchanged in reaction to varied earnings reports.
Among the big names making news in the market today were Pfizer, GE, PepsiCo, Delta, CIT, Boeing, IBM, Morgan Stanley, and Wells Fargo.
The Commentary:
"Dear Friends,
This is the real thing.
Gold is going for its third try against $1000 which will after minor work fall as gold moves on to $1224.
If you are not protected you are about to lose the opportunity to protect yourself.
May God and Gold help us.
Respectfully yours,"- Jim Sinclair, JSMineset.com
"Dear CIGAs,
From my vantage point, the big story of the day is the action in the copper market which soared through its high of this year and pulled gold and silver along with it even in the face of a weaker crude oil market and collapsing grain prices.
Copper is moving higher in anticipation of a rebounding Chinese economy and thoughts among some that the US economy has hit a bottom. Keep in mind that does not necessarily mean that we are off to the races in the US; even those subscribing to the "worst is over" theory are not proclaiming that. What they are looking for is very flat growth with the economy meandering sideways over here in the US. Interesting enough, the lumber market does not seem to be buying into the recovery theory. Neither do the bonds for that matter which although lower on the day thus far, have rallied sharply over the last two trading sessions especially after Bernanke's Congressional testimony of yesterday.
Chatter today was that the CFTC looking into limiting the index funds (and perhaps some of the hedge funds) position wise spooked wheat market traders putting pressure on that market which did not help corn any, as it has been under pressure from what appears to be nearly perfect growing weather (there is talk of record yields and perhaps even a record crop). That has me eying the CCI index, which is off its high of this year but appears to be holding well above the lows it recorded late last year and early this year. If the commodity markets are looking for deflation, they do not appear to be showing it at least on that chart and particularly on the copper chart which is amazing bullish.
The commodity currencies also do not appear to be voting with the deflationists as they are all higher as well. It will take a push by the bonds above 121 ^00 to tip the scales in favor of the deflation argument as well as a meltdown in those commodity currencies. For now, that crowd seems to be running out of allies.
The Dollar was weaker today. There does not appear to be much in the way of chart support until we get down to this year's low near 78.40. A crack of that and kiss the greenback goodbye until at least 76. That should be the catalyst to push gold above $980 and on up to $1,000. Generally once we get through August, seasonals tend to begin favoring gold advances.
Taking a look at the hourly gold chart you can see that the same pattern of consolidation, followed by a leg higher, followed by consolidation is very obvious. Resistance can clearly be seen near today's session highs which is where our "friends" the bullion banks continue to ply their evil craft attempting to create a make believe world in which there are no consequences resulting from nearly unlimited Quantitative Easing.
The gold shares are higher today with quite a battle shaping up near the 360-363 level on the HUI. Should the miners be able to push cleanly through this level on the close, it would augur further strength and a test of the 380 level. The mining shares look to be steadily GRINDING higher. It would take a closing push through the 400 level to set them on more of a sharper uptrending move."- Dan Norcini, More at JSMineset.com
"August Gold closed up 6.4 at 953.3. This was 8.7 up from the low and 1.7 off the high.
September Silver finished up 0.222 at 13.7, 0.045 off the high and 0.315 up from the low.
After some initial weakness the gold contract managed a fairly impressive recovery effort on Wednesday morning and that strength seemed to be off a combination of residual weakness in the Dollar, periodic up beat economic views and gains in US equity prices. With the Dollar flirting with a significant downside breakout on the charts, it is possible that the currency market influence was a dominating force in the trade. Some players even went as far as suggesting that the decision to leave quantitative easing in place (from the Humphrey Hawkins testimony) for an extended period of time might have rekindled inflationary expectations again.
The silver market seemed to outperform gold after the initial early morning choppiness. Like the gold market, the silver market seemed to garner buying interest off the combination of weakness in the Dollar, strength in equity markets and perhaps even because of strength in copper prices. In fact, copper prices managed to reach the highest level since last October and that in turn seemed to provide some spillover buying interest in the silver market."- The Hightower Report, Futures Analysis and Forecasting
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