-- Posted 24 July, 2008 | Digg This Article |

Please Note: There will not be a Gold Seeker Report tomorrow.

The Metals:

Gold rose to $931.20 in early London trade before it fell to $916.00 by late morning in New York, but it then rallied back higher into the close and ended with a loss of just 0.13%.  Silver climbed to $17.61 and dropped to $17.075 before it also rallied back higher into the close and ended with a loss of 1.38%.  At the time of writing, both metals have risen further in after hours access trade to roughly erase those losses.

Euro gold rose to about €589, platinum lost $45.50 $1712, and copper fell 4 cents to about $3.67.

Gold and silver equities fell about 2% by late morning before they rallied back near unchanged in early afternoon action, but they then fell back off a bit into the close and ended over 1% lower.

The Economy:

Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Christopher Cox today asked the House Financial Services Committee for “authority to regulate investment bank holding companies and to provide explicit instructions on how to handle - and fund - financial difficulties at Wall Street firms.”  Also speaking today was Federal Reserve Bank of New York President Timothy Geithner who said that the fed “should play an important role in the consolidated supervision of those institutions that have access to central- bank liquidity and play a critical role in market functioning.”

Tomorrow at 8:30AM EST brings the Durable Goods Orders report for June expected at -0.3% and at 10AM are New Home Sales for June expected at 505,000 and Michigan Sentiment for July expected at 56.4.

The Markets:

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

Oil traded mostly slightly higher on fears of further disruption in Nigeria after “Nigeria's main militant group -- the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta, or MEND, -- has threatened to destroy the African nation's major oil pipelines within 30 days to counter claims that it had struck a $12 million deal with the government to protect them.”

The U.S. dollar index found a slight gain as troubling euro-zone data dragged the euro lower and a surprise rate cut by the Reserve Bank of New Zealand gave the dollar nice gains versus the kiwi.

Treasuries rose as the Dow, Nasdaq, and S&P fell for most of trade and ended roughly 2% lower on mostly poor earnings reports, the worse than expected Existing Home Sales report, and comments from Cox and Geithner that were all fresh reminders of the dire economic and financial condition the country is in.

Among the big names making news in the market today were Ford, Occidental Petroleum, Starwood, Kimberly-Clark, United Airlines, Continental, Dow Chemical, 3M, Lilly, Level 3, MBIA, and Ambac.

The Commentary:

“Do not jump to the Pollyanna approach that compares the financial if, ands or maybes to the Resurrection Trust during the Savings and Loans Crisis.

The problem is that the forms of assets are not clear cut mortgages unencumbered by OTC derivatives as was the case during the S&L crisis. Freddie and Fannie assets are convoluted items that took consultants more than a year to determine anything close to worth, and even still the values were computer simulated. This type of asset just might not recover ever if the counterparty or Fannie and Freddie fail to perform on the specific performance arrangements.

Even if these assets were straight forward, the solution to them recovering still would not be. You would need a significant and intact long term housing market improvement to bring value back to the worth assumed at origination.

To allow an organization, be it a bank or Fannie and Freddie, to continue to operate via financial perceptive camouflage only makes the problems worse over time.

An inviting conclusion is all plans now in place or to be put in place are designed with a hope and prayer that they last 180 days. After that who as a planner really cares?”- Jim Sinclair, JSMineset.com

“August Gold finished down 0.5 at 922.3, 5.7 off the high and 6.3 up from the low.

September Silver closed down 0.16 at 17.298. This was 0.088 up from the low and 0.227 off the high.

Gold and silver prices were just not happy with the overall environment on Thursday. Clearly evidence of more slowing in the US was detrimental to a number of physical commodity markets but seeing the Dollar generally stand up to patently slower than expected US existing home sales figures could have been seen as a double negative for the gold bulls. On the other hand, a sharp slide in equity prices Thursday and a more serious deterioration in macro economic sentiment in the wake of new home sales readings on Friday morning could begin to rekindle flight to quality concerns in the gold market again.

The silver market clearly saw more pressure from the developments Thursday than did the gold market. Apparently the silver market was overtly concerned about slowing and the silver trader seemed to be tracking closely with moderately weak action in the copper and platinum markets. However, concerns of slowing in and outside of the US seemed to be applying pressure to a number of physical commodity markets like silver, which in turn seemed to be settling into a tight correlation with the US equity market.”- The Hightower Report, Futures Analysis and Forecasting

GATA Posts:

You want gold with that?

Ron Paul discloses housing bailout bill's money and power grab

More than G7, G20 now may be needed for dollar propping

Rescue for Fannie, Freddie may cost trillion, senator says

The Statistics:

As of close of business: 7/23/2008

Global Gold ETF Holdings

[WGC Sponsored ETF’s]

Note: Change in Total Tonnes from yesterday’s data: SPDR subtracted 16.86 tonnes and the JSE added 0.24 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:

Kinross Gold’s (KGC) combination with Aurelian (ARU.TO), Buenaventura’s (BVN) stock split, Solitario’s (XPL) drilling, NovaGold’s (NG) conference call, Apollo Gold’s (AGT) closed offering, IAMGOLD’s (IAG) resources update, New Gold’s (NGD) Q2 production, cash cost, and project update, Yamana’s (AUY) resource updates, Newmont’s (NEM) and Agnico’s (EM) second quarter results, Tumi’s (TUMIF.OB) completed drill program, and U.S. Silver’s (USA.V) repair activity were among the big stories in the gold and silver mining industry making headlines today.

WINNERS

LOSERS

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

All of today's gold and silver stock news:

NQ Exploration: Closing of Financing and Appointment of New CFO - More
- July 24, 2008 | Item | E-mail

Ventana Gold Appoints New CEO and CFO - More
- July 24, 2008 | Item | E-mail

Romarco Announces Clarification - More
- July 24, 2008 | Item | E-mail

Tumi Completes Phase 1 Drill Program at Sala, Sweden - "Tumi Resources Limited ("Tumi" and/or "the Company") (CDNX:TM.V - News)(OTC BB:TUMIF.OB - News)(Frankfurt:TUY.F - News). David Henstridge, President of Tumi, announces the completion of the Phase 1 core drill program at its 100% owned Sala silver-zinc-lead project in Sweden. Ten drill holes were completed totalling 2,282.3 meters." More
- July 24, 2008 | Item | E-mail

Mr. Richard Graff named to Anatolia Board - More
- July 24, 2008 | Item | E-mail

Kinross to buy Aurelian in friendly C$1.2 bln deal - "Kinross Gold Corp (K.TO: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) said on Thursday it plans to buy Aurelian Resources Inc (ARU.TO: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) in a friendly deal valued at C$1.2 billion ($1.19 billion) that gives the Canadian mid-tier gold miner ownership of the big Fruta del Norte gold discovery in Ecuador." More
- July 24, 2008 | Item | E-mail

I-Star Announces Results From Recent Exploration Activities - More
- July 24, 2008 | Item | E-mail

Bayswater's Gold Joint Venture Approved - More
- July 24, 2008 |