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.
Well, it’s pretty obvious, at least to me…that neither gold nor silver was going to be allowed to go anywhere during the Wednesday trading day. The first clue to how the day was going to unfold, was what happened at the London open at precisely 8:00 a.m. GMT…3:00 a.m. Eastern…which I mentioned in my closing comments in yesterday’s column.
From that interim high, the gold price sagged about five bucks, with the interim low coming at the London a.m. gold fix at 10:30 local time. Then gold rallied a bit through the New York open, but at 9:05 a.m…it’s high tick of the day at $1,380.40 spot…and for no reason I could see, gold got sold off $10 before trading sideways for the rest of the New York session.
Silver was really hot to trot yesterday…and was up about 65 cents by the same 9:05 a.m. Eastern time in New York…before an obvious not-for-profit seller hammered the price back to unchanged by 10:45 a.m. From there, the silver price drifted lower…and actually closed down eleven cents on the day. Silver’s high was $19.51 spot.
Yesterday’s price move in silver, in technical parlance, is called a key reversal to the downside. But, there was nothing natural about it. This was entirely manufactured by one or more of the ‘4 or less’ bullion banks. Free markets do not act like this. One can only imagine how high the silver price would have risen if it hadn’t been for malignant New York bullion bank intervention.
The dollar continued its slide in early Far East trading, with its low of the day coming at 8:30 a.m. Eastern time…on the button. That was a decline of about 65 basis points…and, from that low, the dollar struggled back about 25 basis points…closing the trading day around 78.57. The gold price sort of followed the dollar…but that certainly doesn’t explain the pounding that silver took between 9:40 and 10:45 a.m. in New York.
The gold stocks started in positive territory, because the real sell-off in gold and silver didn’t really get going until 9:40 a.m. Eastern time. It only took about fourty minutes from the open for the HUI to dip into negative territory…and it stayed there for the rest of the day. Gold had a tiny rally that started at precisely 3:00 p.m…and the shares responded instantly, so the HUI did not close on its low of the day. It was only down 1.21%. Needless to say, the silver shares did not do well.
Yesterday’s CME Delivery Report was not very exciting, as only 17 gold and 3 silver contracts were posted for delivery.
Once again there were declines in both GLD and SLV. The GLD ETF shed another 175,661 ounces of gold…and the SLV ETF reported a 341,920 troy ounce withdrawal.
After Tuesday’s big sales report, the U.S. Mint had nothing to say for itself on Wednesday.
There was decent activity over at the Comex-approved warehouses yesterday…and by the end of the day their silver stocks showed a small 51,976 ounce increase. The link to the action is here.
