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-- Posted Friday, 30 May 2008 | Digg This Article | Source: GoldSeek.com

The Metals:

Gold fell to $870.70 by late trade in Asia, but it then rose throughout most of trade in London and New York and ended near its high of $888.90 with a gain of 1.2%.  Silver fell to $16.39 by late trade in Asia, but it then rose throughout most of trade in London and New York and ended near its high of $16.92 with a gain of 1.6%.

Euro gold rose near €571, platinum gained $17 to $2006, and copper gained roughly 6 cents to about $3.63.

Gold and silver equities rose roughly 2% at the open and remained near their highs for most of the rest of the day.

The Economy:

All of this week’s economic reports:

Next week’s economic highlights include Construction Spending and the ISM Index on Monday, Factory Orders on Tuesday, ADP Employment, Productivity, and ISM Services on Wednesday, Initial Jobless Claims on Thursday, and May’s jobs data, Wholesale Inventories, and Consumer Credit on Friday.

The Markets:

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

Oil rose as traders started to worry about hurricane season which officially starts this weekend.

The U.S. dollar index fell and treasuries rose as interest rates fell from their 2008 highs on mostly tame economic data.

The Dow, Nasdaq, and S&P rose slightly for most of trade on tame inflation data and decent earnings news, but the Dow sold off in the final minutes of trade and ended modestly lower on apprehension heading into the weekend.

Among the big names making news in the market Friday were Dell, United and US Airways, Tiffany, and Calpine and NRG Energy.

The Commentary:

“June Gold finished up 10.1 at 887.3, 0.7 off the high and 2.8 up from the low.

July Silver closed up 0.35 at 16.865. This was 0.075 up from the low and 0.085 off the high.

The gold market managed at least a technical bounce on Friday but some traders were suggesting that the improved macro economic outlook could have been cause for some bottoming picking. However, the Dollar finished the week with a pretty impressive overall gain and oil price volatility seems to have left a partially negative influence on the gold market. In total the US economic information released on Friday was just good enough to imply something positive for the US economy but not apparently strong enough to give the US Dollar a definitive lift. While a number of physical commodities remained under pressure there wasn't as many big downside failure in the outside markets as were seen in the Thursday trade and that might have inspired some short covering buying in gold.

The silver market seemed to reject the sub $16.50 level Friday but in general the silver market remained in the lower quarter of the May range and that might continue to inspire the bear camp. However, the silver market does appear to be focused intensely on the action in the gold market and the action in the Dollar and perhaps not as much on the action in platinum and copper. Perhaps commentary from the Fed's Rosengren rekindled some slowing concerns in the silver market just ahead of mid session, especially since the Fed member seemed to have lingering doubts on the US housing sector. In the short term slowing concerns might deflate the Dollar and in turn support silver prices, but in the long run too much slowing could put a host of physical commodities like silver back under liquidation style pressure.”- The Hightower Report, Futures Analysis and Forecasting

GATA Posts:

Wall Street may get permanent credit line at Fed

The Statistics:

As of close of business: 5/29/2008

Global Gold ETF Holdings

[WGC Sponsored ETF’s]

Note: Change in Total Tonnes from yesterday’s data: SPDR added 6.13 tonnes and the JSE added 0.25 tonnes.

COMEX Gold Trust (IAU)

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

Silver Trust (SLV)

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

The Stocks:

DRDGOLD’s (DROOY) worker strike, Crystallex’s (KRY) Las Cristinas update, Paramount’s (PZG) trenching, Kinross Gold’s (KGC) gold production, and Midway’s (MDW) letter of intent to acquire Kinross Gold's 75% ownership of the Golden Eagle property were among the big stories in the gold and silver mining industry making headlines Friday.

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