By 3:00 p.m. in Hong Kong on their Tuesday afternoon, gold was up about seven dollars...and from there until shortly before the Comex opened in New York, the gold price gave back about half of that gain...such as it was.
But the moment that trading began in New York, it was a whole new ball game. In four separate steps, gold rose another twenty dollars...and closed virtually on its high of the day.
Gold closed at $1,760.30 spot...up $26.20 from Monday's close. Net volume, which was pretty chunky around the London open...checked in around 188,000 contracts. A bunch of that volume was from Monday, so it wasn't as heavy as it seemed, but heavy enough nonetheless.
As I pointed out in 'The Wrap' in yesterday's column, the rally going into the London open on their Tuesday morning ran into some real resistance...and it's obvious that the $20 rally in New York ran into heavy resistance as well.
It was pretty much the same price action in silver. Nothing much happened until shortly before 2:00 p.m. in Hong Kong on their Tuesday afternoon. The subsequent rally ran into a lot of resistance...and every penny of those gains...and a few cents more...disappeared by 12:30 p.m. in London.
Then, in a manner very similar to gold, away silver went to the upside when the Comex opened less than an hour later. The high of the day [$34.58 spot] came moments before the Comex trading day ended at 1:30 p.m. Eastern time. Silver then got sold off about two bits into the close.
Silver finished the Tuesday trading day at $34.35 spot...up 74 cents. Net volume [after removing the roll-overs and Monday's trading volume] was around 36,000 contracts. I was expecting a much higher volume number than that...and was happy that it was 'only' that much.
The dollar index spent Tuesday in a wild 40 basis point trading range around the 79.00 mark...which is exactly what it was doing when I wrote about it twenty-four hours ago as well.
The gold stocks gapped up...and then added to their gains for the next hour or so. But by 11:00 a.m. Eastern..more or less...they traded basically sideways in a very tight range, despite what the gold price did after that. The HUI finished up 3.08% on the day.
It almost goes without saying that the silver stocks put in a robust performance as well...helped along immensely by the Hecla Mining announcement of silver-linked dividends. Nick Laird's Silver Sentiment Index closed up 3.35%.
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The CME's Daily Delivery Report showed that only 24 gold contracts were posted for delivery on Thursday.
The GLD ETF showed a small increase yesterday as an authorized participant shipped in 9,718 troy ounces. But it was a different story over at the SLV ETF yesterday, as 680,164 ounce were reported withdrawn.
Obviously the silver was more desperately needed elsewhere, as there was nothing in the price activity during the last two or three trading days that would warrant such a withdrawal. Since February 9th, there has been 4.1 million ounces of silver withdrawn from SLV, even though the silver price has basically traded sideways for the last month, at just under $34 the ounce.
The U.S. Mint started off the week with a sales report...but a very small one. They sold 1,000 ounces of gold eagles...1,000 one-ounce 24K gold buffaloes...and 115,000 silver eagles. Month-to-date sales are pretty pathetic...16,000 ounce of gold eagles...4,500 one-ounce 24K gold buffaloes...and 950,000 silver eagles.
The Comex-approved depositories reported receiving 930,708 ounces of silver on Friday...and shipped 457,876 ounces out the door. The link to that action is here.
I have slightly fewer stories today than I did yesterday, which suits me just fine...and you as well, I would suspect.