-- Posted 8 August, 2008 | Digg This Article |

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

The Metals:

Gold steadily fell throughout most of world trade and dropped to as low as $850.65 by about 10AM EST in New York before it rebounded nearly 1% into the close, but it still ended with a loss of 1.54%.  Silver fell throughout the day and ended near its low of $15.245 with a loss of 5.76%.

Euro gold rose to over €570 on significant euro weakness, platinum lost $23.50 to $1555, and copper fell nearly 6 cents to about $3.40.

Gold and silver equities fell for most of the day and ended roughly 5% lower.

The Economy:

All of this week’s economic reports:

Next week’s economic highlights include the Trade Balance and Treasury Budget on Tuesday, Export and Import Prices, Retail Sales, and Business Inventories on Wednesday, CPI and Initial Jobless Claims on Thursday, and the NY Empire State Index, Net Foreign Purchases, Capacity Utilization, Industrial Production, and Michigan Sentiment on Friday.

The Markets:

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

Oil fell markedly as the U.S. dollar index rose on the view that the financial and economic problems in the US have spread to the rest of the world and influenced central banks to join the fed in its policy of not raising interest rates anytime soon.

Treasuries saw slight gains while the Dow, Nasdaq, and S&P soared higher on lower energy prices.

Among the big names making news in the market Friday were Fannie Mae, RBS, Beazer Homes, MBIA, and McDonald’s.

The Commentary:

“August Gold finished down 12.9 at 857.8, equal to the high and equal to the low.

September Silver closed down 0.927 at 15.33. This was 0.04 up from the low and 0.46 off the high.

The gold market was pushed to the lowest price level for the year as a surge higher in the Dollar along with a steep drop in oil prices triggered broad based selling in a wide range of physical commodity markets. This type of outside market action tends to have a bearish influence on gold since a strong Dollar and weak oil prices lower gold's appeal as a hedge against inflation. In fact, seeing a sharp recovery in equity markets certainly lowers the economic anxiety a bit which in turn is reducing gold's appeal as a safe haven asset. Ideas that the Fed's next rate move is likely higher and that Euro-zone rates may drop due to softening economic conditions also appears to be dimming investment demand for gold. Lower gold prices are expected to attract physical buyers to the market, but spec liquidation certainly dominated the action during Friday's trade. Even an escalation in geopolitical tensions with a military confrontation between Russian troops and Georgian separatists failed to provide support to gold this session.

The silver market couldn't escape the massive liquidation that took place across all metals markets on Friday. The combination of an upside trend reversal move in the Dollar and a drop in oil prices to the lowest levels in 3 months trounced the appeal of silver as an alternative investment. This bearish outside market action tends to dampen inflation expectations and that lowers silver's appeal as a safe haven investment. With the market falling below key levels, sell-stops certainly appeared to accelerate silver's decline with prices dropping to the lowest level for the year.”- The Hightower Report, Futures Analysis and Forecasting

GATA Posts:

Are central banks getting it all wrong?

James Turk: Central banks intervening to support U.S. dollar

'An Inconvenient Truth' for the U.S. economy

If the CFTC can botch oil market regulation like this ...

Rate cuts likely ahead for European Central Bank

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard: Governments caused credit crisis, capitalism gets blamed

The Statistics:

As of close of business: 8/07/2008

Global Gold ETF Holdings

[WGC Sponsored ETF’s]

Note: Change in Total Tonnes from yesterday’s data: The LSE subtracted 0.31 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:

Cardero’s (CDY) acquired shares of ITH (THM), Claude’s (CGR) second quarter results, Gammon Gold’s (GRS) second quarter results, Aurizon’s (AZK) second quarter results, IAMGOLD’s (IAG) second quarter results, NovaGold’s (NG) lawsuit, and Coeur’s (CDE) second quarter results were among the big stories in the gold and silver mining industry making headlines Friday.

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: