Mining’s old guard needs strong medicine
A new report details subpar investor returns in the mining industry over the last decade, particularly big cap diversified companies which have not adapted to new realities.
“Gold and silver weren’t allowed to do much on Thursday. Their respective attempts to break through $1,700 and $34 were turned back.”
Yesterday in Gold and Silver
The gold price made it above the $1,700 spot price for a few hours in London, before getting sold off into the London p.m. gold fix shortly after 10:00 a.m. in New York. It took the rest of the New York trading session for gold to make it back to that level…and closed just a bit under it.
Gold closed Thursday at $1,699.50 spot…up $15.20 on the day. Net volume wasn’t overly heavy…around 118,000 contracts.
Silver’s foray above the $34.00 spot level lasted just about the same length of time in London, but once the p.m. gold fix was in, silver never made it back to that price level for the rest of the day.
Silver closed at $33.88 spot…up 45 cents. Net volume was pretty light…around 35,000 contracts.
The dollar index didn’t take long to roll over once trading began in the Far East on their Thursday morning…and the absolute low of the day came minutes after 3:00 p.m. in New York. The index closed at 79.15…down about 55 basis points from Wednesday’s close.
Even though the dollar index declined, it would be stretching the imagination to the breaking point if you could make the gold and silver price activity fit the dollar chart. There were obviously other forces at work in the precious metals yesterday.
The low at the London p.m. gold fix shortly after 10:00 a.m. Eastern time is a prominent feature on the HUI chart below…as is the quick sell-off after gold dipped a bit around 3:15 p.m. in New York. The HUI finished Thursday up 1.30% on the day.
The silver shares did OK as well…and Nick Laird’s Silver Sentiment Index rose by 1.44%.
The CME’s Daily Delivery Report was another yawner, as only 50 gold and 1 silver contract were posted for delivery on Monday.
There were no reported changes in either GLD or SLV.
The U.S. Mint had another small sales report. They sold 1,500 ounces of gold eagles…and 5,000 one-ounce 24K gold buffaloes.
Wednesday was another busy day over at the Comex-approved depositories. They reported receiving 2,939,984 troy ounces of silver…and shipped 336,601 ounces out the door. Virtually every ounce received was unloaded at the Scotia Mocatta warehouse…and the link to all the activity is here.
Here’s an S&P 500 chart that Nitin Agrawal sent my way yesterday. A rising wedge on declining volume is almost always a danger signal. This is similar to a graph that reader Scott Pluschau shared with us last week.
It was a very slow news day yesterday…and my list of stories certainly reflects that…but there are quite a few must reads/watch/listens sprinkled throughout…so I hope you make time for those.
