What is not appreciated by most analysts when commenting on China is the power of the Chinese government over its people!

All of us follow COMEX in New York and assess the ‘net speculative long position’ there, so as to see the actual weight of opinion on the gold price.

The London Gold Fixing, the twice daily gold pricing mechanism at which the bulk of physical gold transactions take place is changing dramatically.

Throughout history, there have been a constant flow of schemes to try to manipulate the gold price and gold itself in terms of paper money.

And the impact on gold and oil prices

Silver weaker but should rise later this week.

After some considerable selling of gold from the SPDR gold Exchange Traded Fund in the preceding months, early in 2013, Goldman Sachs came out with a warning that the gold price was going to fall and fall heavily.

Despite the furore surrounding the Gold Fix [unfairly, we believe] it is a singularly determined attempt amongst commodities to set a twice daily price that does reflect demand and supply of gold, at those moments.

The most pertinent question would be whether the U.S. recovery will be damaged as markets raise interest rates discounting next year’s rate rises.

Ukraine crisis is likely to be gold neutral.

Since last August, the Indian government placed a stranglehold on gold imports into the country by requiring that 20% of all gold imported be exported as jewellery.

The silver price remains steady waiting for a clear direction from gold. It will take a breakout from gold to make silver move strongly, either way.