Gold Seeker Weekly Wrap-Up: Gold and Silver Fall Nearly 8% and 18% on the Week

	Close	Gain/Loss	On Week
Gold	$919.05	-$26.10	-7.96%
Silver	$16.93	-$1.46	-17.86%
XAU	172.01	-3.45%	-16.65%
HUI	439.05	-1.95%	-14.73%
GDM	1310.37	-3.02%	-15.64%
JSE Gold	2492.93	-116.39	-9.84%
USD	72.75	+0.56	+1.51%
Euro	154.53	-1.91	-1.18%
Yen	101.06	+0.07	+0.28%
Oil	$101.84	-$0.70	-7.59%
10-Year	3.328%	-0.034	-2.46%
Bond	121.1875	+0.546875	+0.40%
Dow	12361.32	+2.16%	+3.43%
Nasdaq	2258.11	+2.18%	+2.06%
S&P	1329.51	+2.39%	+3.21%

Gold fell all the way to $904.45 by early trade in London, but it then rallied back higher for most of the rest of trade and ended nearly $15 off its low with a loss of 2.76%. This week’s drop of 7.96% marks the largest one week drop since 1983. Silver, however, was not able to find a rebound in New York and it ended near its low of $16.752 with a loss of 7.94%.

PHYSICAL SILVER SHORTAGE? Today’s losses of 2.76% and 7.94% follow yesterday’s losses of 5.8% and 7.5% in gold and silver. The remarkable drops in the paper contract markets appear to be spurring plenty of demand in the physical markets, especially in the silver market with reports of shortages by Jason Hommel and many more individual reports in the forums today at SilverSeek.com. While physical metal in your possession is an important part of any diversified metals portfolio, a service I also use and have been happy with is holding metal in an online account at GoldMoney.com. Founder & Chairman James Turk reports today that they have no problems acquiring metal through LBMA:

“I've heard about the shortages of coin (particularly silver coin) and believe them to be accurate. We of course deal only in LBMA bars, so we haven't seen any shortage. There will always be LBMA bars available -- at a price.”

Euro gold dropped to about €594, platinum fell $45 to $1860, and copper lost roughly 5 cents to about $3.61.

Gold and silver equities fell over 5% at the open, but they then rallied back higher into the close and ended with only about 3% losses.

Report	For	Reading	Expected	Previous
Initial Claims	3/15	378K	360K	356K
Leading Indicators	Feb	-0.3%	-0.3%	-0.4%
Philadelphia Fed	Mar	-17.4	-18.0	-24.0

Next week’s economic highlights include Existing Home Sales on Monday, Consumer Confidence on Tuesday, Durable Goods Orders and New Home Sales on Wednesday, GDP and Initial Jobless Claims on Thursday, and Personal Income and Spending, Core PCE Inflation, and Michigan Sentiment on Friday.

Oil extended its losses as the U.S. dollar index continued its rebound on the Philadelphia Fed survey that was not as horrible as expected.

Treasuries rose as strong recent demand due to worries over the credit market has caused “failures to deliver or receive government debt in the $6.3 trillion a day market for borrowing and lending to climb to the highest level in almost four years.”

The Dow, Nasdaq, and S&P rose over 2% after the Philadelphia Fed reported manufacturing activity declined in March less than it did in February. The report barely beat consensus expectations, but there were rumors that a significantly worse report was coming and when those rumors proved unfounded buyers stepped in.

Among the big names making news in the market Friday were Allianz, Citigroup, JPMorgan and Bear Stearns, FedEx, and Barnes & Noble.

“April Gold finished down 25.3 at 920, 9 off the high and 5.5 up from the low.

May Silver closed down 1.595 at 16.85. This was 0.03 up from the low and 0.69 off the high.

The gold market forged a major range down extension and barely managed to recover from the selling ahead of the long holiday weekend. However, seeing such significant gains in the Dollar and also seeing continued deflationary price action in a host of physical commodities seems to leave gold under pressure from a number of fronts. In fact, seeing a sharp run up in US equity prices was taken by some traders as a sign that the US crisis was moderating and that in turn might have prompted another layer of spec longs to exit from gold positions. The stock market was embracing the idea that recent declines in long term interest rates could help to lessen the pain in the US real estate market and that type of view could have pushed another layer of gold bugs to the sidelines.

Like gold, the silver market remained under intense pressure for most of the trading session. Also like gold the silver market seemed to be under a broad based liquidation wave that might have been mostly technical in nature but it could also have been fundamental in nature. In fact, seeing massive gains in US stock prices and the US Dollar suggests that a portion of the fundamental bull case was coming apart. In fact, given the magnitude of the declines in a number of physical commodity markets this week, it wouldn't be surprising to see that some silver longs were exiting because they see the risk of inflation to be on the decline.”- The Hightower Report, Futures Analysis and Forecasting

Note: Change in Total Tonnes from yesterday’s data: StreetTRACKS subtracted 15.04 tonnes from its record high holding and the LSE added 1.09 tonnes.

Note: Change in Total Tonnes from yesterday’s data: 1.84 tonnes were added to the trust.

Lihir’s (LIHR) plans to merge with Equigold (EQI.AX), Almaden’s (AAU) optioned project, AngloGold’s (AU) joint venture in Congo, NovaGold’s (NG) priced offering, Imperial’s (III.TO) exploration results, Great Panther’s (GPR.TO) appointments, and Silvercorp’s (SVM.TO) normal course issuer bid were among the big stories in the gold and silver mining industry making headlines Friday.

Winners & Losers tracks NYSE and AMEX listed gold and silver mining stocks that trade over $1.

Almaden Options Tropico Project, Mexico - "Almaden Minerals Ltd. (Toronto:AMM.TO - News)(AMEX:AAU - News) ("Almaden") is pleased to announced that, along with its 60% joint venture partner Santoy Resources Ltd. (CDNX:SAN.V - News) ("Santoy"), Almaden (which holds a 40% interest in the project) has optioned the Tropico copper-palladium-platinum-gold project to Skeena Resources Ltd. (CDNX:SKE.V - News) ("Skeena") under terms whereby Skeena can acquire a 60% interest from the Almaden-Santoy joint venture ("the JV") by making $3 million in work expenditures ($100,000 in year one) on the project and issuing to the JV 1,250,000 shares of Skeena (250,000 upon regulatory approval) over 5 years." More
- March 20, 2008 | Item | E-mail

Bourkes Diamond Drill Program and Bulk Assay Check Results - More
- March 20, 2008 | Item | E-mail

Coro Reports 2007 Year End Results - More
- March 20, 2008 | Item | E-mail

Tara Gold Reports 10.4 m of 4.5 g/t Gold and Extends Northern Limit of Clavo 99 Within the High Grade San Miguel Vein - More
- March 20, 2008 | Item | E-mail

Paramount Gold and Silver Corp. Reports 10.4m of 4.5 g/t Gold and Extends Northern Limit of Clavo 99 within the High Grade San Miguel Vein - "Paramount Gold and Silver Corp. (Toronto:PZG.TO - News)(AMEX:PZG - News)(Frankfurt:P6G.F - News)(WKN: A0HGKQ) is pleased to announce assay results from four additional drill holes in the San Miguel Zone of its San Miguel project in the Guazapares Mining District, Mexico. Drill holes SM-21, 22, and 23 were drilled 50 meters below the upper row of holes in the southern portion of the vein to test the depth extent of that mineralization." More
- March 20, 2008 | Item | E-mail

Kalimantan Gold Makes Key Appointments - More
- March 20, 2008 | Item | E-mail

AuEx Ventures, Inc.: Trinity Silver Returns 110 Feet at 2.24 Ounce Per Ton Silver - More
- March 20, 2008 | Item | E-mail

Lund Arranges Private Placements to Raise $2.5 Million - More
- March 20, 2008 | Item | E-mail

Pele Mountain Shareholders Approve All Matters Presented at the Annual and Special Meeting of Shareholders - More
- March 20, 2008 | Item | E-mail

Golden Harp Resources intersects gold mineralization in preliminary drill program - More
- March 20, 2008 | Item | E-mail

Great Panther Appoints Financial & Metallurgical Professionals to Advisory Board - "As the regulatory and compliance environment in which public companies work today continues to become more demanding, management needs the expertise on hand to enable it to best deal with its various financial and production issues," said Robert Archer, the Company's President & CEO. "Martin and Ken will add another layer of depth to the Company's financial reporting and engineering capabilities and we welcome their input." More
- March 20, 2008 | Item | E-mail

Robex locates on surface the Wili-Wili minéralized zone - More
- March 20, 2008 | Item | E-mail

Eastmain Resources Inc.: Drilling Underway at Eleonore South - More
- March 20, 2008 | Item | E-mail

Verena Minerals Announces Closing of Private Placement With Sprott Asset Management - More
- March 20, 2008 | Item | E-mail

Congo seeks to raise stake in Anglogold venture - "The Democratic Republic of Congo's mines contract review commission on Thursday recommended state mining company OKIMO sign a new deal with Anglogold Ashanti (ANGJ.J: Quote, Profile, Research) and increase its stake in their Kilo joint venture." More
- March 20, 2008 | Item | E-mail

Silver Shield Resources Commences Drilling at the Welsh Silver Mine - More
- March 20, 2008 | Item | E-mail

Marathon Drilling Extends Strike Length of High-Grade W Horizon by 175 meters - More
- March 20, 2008 | Item | E-mail

Murgor discovers two new massive sulphide zones at the Hudvam copper-gold-zinc deposit in Manitoba - More
- March 20, 2008 | Item | E-mail

Frontera Copper Reports Annual and Fourth Quarter 2007 Results - More
- March 20, 2008 | Item | E-mail

International Minerals Reports Drill Results From Gaby Project, Ecuador, Including Intercepts of 205m at 1.3g/t and 202m at 0.8 g/t Gold - More
- March 20, 2008 | Item | E-mail

Ireland Inc. Reports Drilling Results at Columbus Project - More
- March 20, 2008 | Item | E-mail

Mine Development Associates Data Review Supports Upside Potential at Miranda Gold Corp. Redlich Project - More
- March 20, 2008 | Item | E-mail

Trigon provides update on Henry Mountains Project in Southern Utah - More
- March 20, 2008 | Item | E-mail

S.Africa backs big electricity price increase - "South Africa's government on Thursday backed a plan to raise electricity prices more than 50 percent to tackle a power crisis hitting vital mines, despite fears it could fan inflation in Africa's biggest economy." More
- March 20, 2008 | Item | E-mail

VMS Ventures Inc.: Hole RD-08-26 Assays 21.15m of 2.57% Cu and 3.13% Zn; RD-08-22 Assays 25.67m of 0.96% Cu and 4.37% Zn and Hole 08-34 has 35.73m of NSS - More
- March 20, 2008 | Item | E-mail

NovaGold Prices Public Offering for Gross Proceeds of US$95 Million - "NovaGold Resources Inc. (Toronto:NG.TO - News)(AMEX:NG - News) today announced the pricing of its public offering of US$95.0 million aggregate principal amount of its convertible senior notes due May 1, 2015 ("Notes") in Canada and the United States. Net proceeds before deducting estimated offering expenses are expected to be US$92.15 million." More
- March 20, 2008 | Item | E-mail

Silvercorp Metals Inc.: Normal Course Issuer Bid - "Silvercorp Metals Inc. ("Silvercorp") (Toronto:SVM.TO - News) is of the opinion that prevailing market conditions have resulted in Silvercorp's shares being undervalued relative to the immediate and long term value of Silvercorp's Ying, HLP, TLP and LM Mines in Henan Province, and its Na Bao Project in Qinghai Province, China." More
- March 20, 2008 | Item | E-mail

Imperial Update on Mount Polley Exploration - "Imperial Metals Corporation (Toronto:III.TO - News) reports results from the ongoing exploration at Mount Polley. In 2007 a total of 121 exploration drill holes totalling 39,503 metres were completed at eight different zones. Diamond drilling involved exploration and delineation of mineralization at the Northeast, Boundary, Skid, Southeast, Pond, C2, Area 9 and Springer zones." More
- March 20, 2008 | Item | E-mail

Barrick Gold: Notice to Holders of Placer Dome 2.75% Convertible Senior Debentures - "Barrick Gold Corporation (NYSE:ABX - News)(Toronto:ABX.TO - News) announced today that, pursuant to the terms of Placer Dome 2.75% Convertible Senior Debentures due 2023 (the "Debentures"), upon compliance with the terms and conditions of the Debentures, the Debentures may be surrendered for conversion until and including June 30, 2008 at a conversion rate of 39.9859 Common Shares per US$1,000.00 principal amount of Debentures." More
- March 20, 2008 | Item | E-mail

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