[Some excerpts from the latest issue of the Weekend Update in the
subscribers section of the website.]
Driven higher over the last month due largely to the prospect of
increasing central bank money printing, gold and silver challenged important
price levels early last week but failed to hold them, spurring technical
selling that led to their sharpest weekly declines since mid-December.
A short-term resolution to U.S. budget deficit troubles and yet
another gold import tax hike in India were negative developments for precious
metals, while central bank actions and strong demand for physical silver were
positives, however, traders were clearly more influenced by the former than
the latter.
It’s getting hard to be a gold bull these days and even more difficult
to be optimistic about mining stocks as noted in this article
last week.
For the week, the gold price fell 1.5 percent, from $1,684.70 an ounce
to $1,659.30, and silver dropped 2.2 percent, from $31.89 an ounce to $31.18.
Gold is now down 0.9 percent this year, 13.7 percent below its 2011 high, and silver is up 2.7 percent in 2013, down 37.0
percent from its high almost two years ago.
Technical selling on Wednesday sent precious metals tumbling as the
failure of the gold price to reach the important $1,700 an ounce mark and
silver stalling below $32.50 an ounce reportedly caused speculators to
liquidate long positions. This led to a tumbling silver price and the biggest
one-day decline in three weeks for gold that, as shown below, is now well
back of where it was at this point during the last three major corrections
going back seven years.
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