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-- Posted Friday, 16 March 2007 | Digg This Article

The Metals:

CoT Reports: Gold | Silver 

Gold remained near unchanged in Asia, rose about $5 to over $650 in London, and rose to about $655 in late morning New York trade before it fell back off a bit into the close, but it still ended with a gain of 0.91%.  Silver rose to $13.15 in late morning New York trade before it also fell off a bit, but it was able to outpace gold’s gains and added 1.16% at the close.

Euro gold rose to about €490, platinum gained $7 to $1,218, palladium gained $2 to $348, and copper roes over 4 cents to about $3.02.

Gold and silver equities rose over 2% at the open before they fell off with the major indices and dropped near unchanged by mid-afternoon, but they then rallied back higher into the close and ended with about 0.5% gains.

The Economy:

All of this week’s economic reports:

Next week’s economic highlights include Building Permits and Housing Starts on Tuesday, a FOMC policy statement on Wednesday, Initial Jobless Claims and Leading Economic Indicators on Thursday, and Existing Home sales on Friday.

The Markets:

Charts Courtesy of http://finance.yahoo.com/

Oil fell on worries about the economy and its impact on demand as traders also sold the front-month contract heading into its expiration next week.

The U.S. dollar index fell on weak Michigan Sentiment data and worries over subprime mortgages as traders speculated weak economic signals will offset recent increased inflationary readings and influence the fed to keep interest rates unchanged at their meeting next week.

Treasuries fell as stronger than expected CPI and Industrial Production data pushed interest rates up, but losses were limited as the stock markets fell and encouraged some safe haven buying in bonds.

The Dow, Nasdaq, and S&P fell on mostly disappointing economic data as increased inflationary signals added to worries over the economy.

Among the big names making news in the market Friday were Bally, Wal-Mart, Caremark and CVS, JetBlue, Ghosn, Accredited, and Carnival.

The Commentary:

“April Gold finished up 6.8 at 653.9, 2.6 off the high and 2.9 up from the low.

May Silver closed up 0.14 at 13.215. This was 0.145 up from the low and 0.045 off the high.

With the Dollar falling sharply it is possible that the gold trade is shifting its focus toward the currency markets and perhaps away from the ebb and flow of equity prices. In the end the metals markets come away from the week with revived inflationary concerns and perhaps a slight deterioration in expectations for the US economy. However, in the absence of distinct evidence of growth or slowing from the scheduled numbers, the gold market is still expected to garner a large measure of guidance from the equity market. On the other hand, many gold traders on Friday suggested that a downside extension in energy prices could countervail the benefit that gold could be set to garner from persistent declines in the Dollar.

With the May silver contract managing to reach the highest level since March 2nd, it is likely that the market was seeing fresh short covering buying and perhaps even fresh outright speculative buying. Surprisingly the profit taking mentality in the copper market wasn't overly limiting to silver and that would suggest that silver is mostly tracking financial type themes instead of physical commodity market themes. However, the copper market did manage to reject the early weakness and then managed to rise to another new high and that should have emboldened the bull camp.”- The Hightower Report, Futures Analysis and Forecasting

GATA Posts:

China says investment plans won't affect its dollar assets

Keeping housing prices up solves subprime problem, Greenspan says

The Statistics:

As of close of business: 3/15/2007

Global Gold ETF Holdings

[WGC Sponsored ETF’s]

 Note: No change in Total Tonnes from yesterday’s data.

COMEX Gold Trust (IAU)

 Note: No change in Total Tonnes from yesterday’s data.

Silver Trust (SLV)