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.
The gold price was under pressure pretty much through the entire Far East and London trading session on Thursday, with the low of the day coming shortly after the Comex open at $1,350.50 spot.
Shortly after 10:30 a.m. Eastern, gold finally caught a bid, with a New York high coming a few minutes before 11:30 a.m. at $1,367.40 spot. From there, it basically traded sideways into the close of electronic trading.
Silver traded mostly unchanged until around 1:00 p.m. Hong Kong time on Thursday. From that point, the selling pressure really began in earnest. Silver’s low came shortly after 11:00 a.m. GMT in London. It traded sideways until it’s New York low of $29.69 around 8:35 a.m. Then silver also caught a bid and hit its zenith [$30.32 spot] shortly before lunch. It then closed a bit lower than that in electronic trading at 5:15 p.m. Eastern.
The dollar went on a bit of a tear yesterday, opening around 77.60 in early Thursday morning trading in the Far East, adding about 60 basis points by the close of trading in New York.
It’s easy to attribute most of gold’s and silver’s decline in Far East and early London trading to the steady rise of the dollar, but that doesn’t explain the big rallies in both metals that occurred in early morning trading in New York, as the world’s reserve currency continued to rise.
The gold shares pretty much followed the gold price action on Thursday; they recovered somewhat from their absolute lows, but the HUI still finished down 0.83%, despite the fact that gold finished unchanged from Wednesday. This is very similar to the HUI action on Wednesday, even though gold finished unchanged from Tuesday, which you can see on the gold chart above.
The CME Delivery Report showed that 87 gold and 63 silver contracts were posted for delivery on Monday. All the major New York bullion banks were in attendance. the link to the action is here.
The GLD ETF showed another decline yesterday. This time it was 29,270 troy ounces. But over at the SLV ETF they had a fairly chunky addition — 585,976 ounces of the stuff.
The U.S. Mint had smallish sales report yesterday, adding another 2,500 ounces of gold eagles along with 40,000 silver eagles. Month-to-date gold eagle sales are 26,500 ounces and 937,000 silver eagles.
Another chunk of silver was withdrawn from the Comex-approved depositories on Wednesday. This time it was 383,690 troy ounces. The link to that action is here.
