caseyresearch.com / By Ed Steer / December 19, 2012
YESTERDAY IN GOLD AND SILVER
I was expecting another leg down in the precious metals sometime between Christmas and New Years…but it began yesterday. Ted Butler had been expecting since the Sunday night open in New York.
Gold rose gently in early Far East trading, with the ‘high’ tick…around $1,702 spot…coming shortly after 1:00 p.m. in Hong Kong…and by the Comex open it was back to unchanged from Monday’s close.
The first of many engineered price declines began shortly before 10:00 a.m. in New York…which may have been an early London p.m. gold fix. It was sold down in stair-step fashion from there, with the final down-leg coming shortly after the 1:30 p.m. Comex close. That was gold’s low price tick of the day…recorded by Kitco as $1,660.10 spot.
From there the gold price recovered somewhat…but that smallish rally only lasted until 4:00 p.m. Eastern…and then it traded sideways into the 5:15 p.m. electronic close.
Gold finished the Tuesday session at $1,670.90 spot…down $27.20 for the day. Net volume was a very chunky 195,000 contracts.
Of course it was silver that JPMorgan et al were really after…and they certainly did a number on it. The sell-off was much more severe, but the price pattern was the same, so I’ll spare you the play-by-play.
Silver’s high tick…around $32.55 spot…came shortly before noon Hong Kong time. The low price tick, like gold’s, came ten minutes after the Comex close…and Kitco reported that as $31.25 spot.
The subsequent rally pared the losses by a bit…and silver finished the day at $31.64 spot…down 64 cents on the day. Once again silver had an intraday price move of well over a dollar. Net, volume was pretty decent at around 46,000 contracts…but with a price decline of that magnitude, I was hoping for more.
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