-- Posted Friday, 5 January 2007 | Digg This Article
| Close | Gain/Loss | On Week |
Gold | $605.10 | -$18.90 | -4.86% |
Silver | $12.12 | -$0.54 | -5.68% |
XAU | 133.04 | -1.02% | -6.47% |
HUI | 314.12 | -0.94% | -7.13% |
GDM | 1014.05 | -0.81% | -6.46% |
JSE Gold | 2774.53 | -1.52% | -5.56% |
USD | 84.66 | +0.31 | +1.18% |
Euro | 130.11 | -0.75 | -1.37% |
Yen | 84.28 | +0.34 | +0.35% |
Oil | $56.31 | +$0.72 | -7.76% |
10-Year | 4.646% | +0.0028 | -1.36% |
Bond | 112.15625 | -0.25 | +0.64% |
Dow | 12398.01 | -0.66% | -0.52% |
Nasdaq | 2434.25 | -0.78% | +0.78% |
S&P | 1409.71 | -0.61% | -0.61% |
The Metals:
Gold fell a bit in Asia before it rebounded and traded near unchanged to slightly higher around $625 in London, but it then fell off markedly throughout morning trade in New York and dropped to as low as $601.50 before it rebounded a few dollars in afternoon trade and ended with a loss of 3.03%. Silver followed a similar pattern and dropped to as low as $12.02 before it rebounded slightly and ended with a loss of 4.27%.
Euro gold fell to about €465, platinum lost $16 to $1,108, palladium lost $8 to $330, and copper fell over 5 cents to about $2.52.
Gold and silver equities fell over 2% in morning trade before they rebounded in afternoon trade and ended with about 1% losses.
The Economy:
Report | For | Reading | Expected | Previous |
Nonfarm Payrolls | Dec | 167K | 100K | 154K |
Unemployment Rate | Dec | 4.5% | 4.5% | 4.5% |
Hourly Earnings | Dec | 0.5% | 0.3% | 0.3% |
Average Workweek | Dec | 33.9 | 33.9 | 33.9 |
The BLS net birth/death adjustment added 55,000 payrolls to December’s data.
All of this week’s economic reports:
Next week’s economic highlights include Consumer Credit on Monday, the Trade Balance and Wholesale Inventories on Wednesday, Initial Jobless Claims and the Treasury Budget on Thursday, and Export and Import Prices, Retail Sales, and Business Inventories on Friday.
The Markets:
Charts Courtesy of http://finance.yahoo.com/
Oil rebounded from large losses earlier in the week off a strong technical level around $55 and found some gains heading into the weekend, but continued warm weather in most of the U.S. still had oil bulls cautious.
The U.S. dollar index rose and treasuries fell on better than expected jobs data that reduced any hopes for a fed interest rate cut anytime soon and brought back talk over a possible interest rate hike by the fed sometime this year.
The Dow, Nasdaq, and S&P fell throughout most of trade and ended with notable losses on interest rate fears and analyst downgrades.
Among the big names making news in the market Friday were XM, Freddie Mac, Best Buy, Circuit City, and Motorola.
The Commentary:
“Newmont’s Pierre Lassonde was recently quoted that the producers still have 1900 tonnes of forward sales on their books, which accounts for that much in gold loans, leaving very little to accommodate other activity in the gold market. I would bet that if GFMS and Virtual Metals were asked to break their own numbers down, they would allocate a much higher number to the gold producers in terms of loans, because (as far as I know) they don’t account for gold loans to any significant degree, except the ones to the producers and some for jewelers.
GATA’s work, based on the work over the years of Frank Veneroso, James Turk and Reg Howe, show the gold loan number to be far higher, at least 10,000 tonnes higher. There is no gray area here. Someone is very right and the other very wrong. Veneroso, Turk and Howe all used DIFFERENT methodologies to come up with their numbers.
The gold loan situation is a key one and explains why gold has risen the last five years. Demand is far higher than acknowledged by the mainstream gold world. There is something like a 1500 tonne per year supply/demand deficit, meaning demand is that much greater than mine and scrap supply. That deficit has been greatly met by surreptitious central bank lending into the market.”- From yesterday’s Midas report by Bill Murphy of LemetropoleCafe.com
“February Gold finished down 19.3 at 606.9, 17.9 off the high and 3.9 up from the low.
March Silver closed down 0.605 at 12.23. This was 0.11 up from the low and 0.57 off the high.
Gold fell sharply again today after stronger than expected US jobs data sent the US Dollar up sharply for the third straight day. The non-farm payrolls report this morning showed an additional 167,000 jobs in December, which was higher than the 115,000 expected. This comes on the heels of several reports over the past week showing surprisingly strong US data, and has lowered expectations that the Federal Reserve would cut interest rates. February gold sold off on the report and fell to its lowest level since October on reported fund selling. Modest declines in energy prices appeared to have little bearing on gold today; most of the action appeared to be off of the Dollar. Longer term hope for the gold bulls stems on expectations for the Dollar’s depreciation into futures.
Like gold, silver sold off sharply today when the better than expected payrolls number sent the Dollar higher for the third straight session. The precious metals are viewing the Dollar's strength as an indicator that investor interest in gold and silver will wane, contrary to expectations as recently as a week ago. In addition to the stronger Dollar, metals prices have been under pressure from a general decline in commodities, as they have recently slipped out of vogue with fund managers.”- The Hightower Report, Futures Analysis and Forecasting
GATA Posts:
Business Week welcomes more decline in the dollar
MineWeb: Central bank gold purchase was only bookkeeping adjustment
The Statistics:
As of close of business: 1/04/2007
Gold Warehouse Stocks: | 7,533,807 | - |
Silver Warehouse Stocks: | 113,477,130 | +392,431 |
Global Gold ETF Holdings
[WGC Sponsored ETF’s]
| Product name | Total Tonnes | Total Ounces | Total Value |
New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) AND Singapore Exchange (SGX) | Streettracks Gold Shares | 453.24 | 14,572,124 | US$ 9,158m |
LSE (London Stock Exchange) AND Euronext Paris | Gold Bullion Securities | 90.29 | 2,902,818 | US$ 1,763m |
Australian Stock Exchange (ASX) | Gold Bullion Securities | 10.53 | 338,359 | US$ 206m |
Johannesburg Securities Exchange (JSE) | New Gold Debentures | 10.25 | 329,478 | US$ 207m |
Note: No change in Total Tonnes from yesterday’s data.
COMEX Gold Trust (IAU)
Profile as of 1/4/2007 | |
Total Net Assets | $891,478,270 | Ounces of Gold
in Trust | 1,428,943.630 |
Shares Outstanding | 14,400,000 | Tonnes of Gold
in Trust | 44.45 |
Note: No change in Total Tonnes from yesterday’s data.
Silver Trust (SLV)
Profile as of 1/4/2007 | |
Total Net Assets | $1,540,705,752 | Ounces of Silver
in Trust | 122,091,233.400 |
Shares Outstanding | 12,250,000 | Tonnes of Silver
in Trust | 3,797.46 |
Note: Change in Total Tonnes from yesterday’s data: 29.44 tonnes were added to the trust.
The Stocks:
WINNERS
1. Northern Dynasty | NAK +10.16% $7.48 |
2. Great Basin | GBN +6.87% $1.71 |
3. Cardero | CDY +4.96% $1.48 |
LOSERS
Gold Seeker Weekly Wrap-Up: Gold & Silver Lose About 5% on the Week