Gold Seeker Weekly Wrap-Up: Gold and Silver Fall Nearly 2% and 6% on the Week

	Close	Gain/Loss	On Week
Gold	$912.60	-$3.50	-1.95%
Silver	$12.63	-$0.31	-5.68%
XAU	129.99	-0.23%	-7.13%
HUI	313.89	-0.13%	-8.40%
GDM	968.80	-0.31%	-7.90%
JSE Gold	2253.08	+13.19	-1.41%
USD	80.24	+0.37	-0.02%
Euro	139.50	-0.76	-0.39%
Yen	108.21	+0.61	+3.74%
Oil	$59.89	-$0.52	-10.25%
10-Year	3.295%	-0.118	-5.72%
Bond	120.71875	+1.375	+1.50%
Dow	8146.52	-0.45%	-1.62%
Nasdaq	1756.03	+0.20%	-2.25%
S&P	879.13	-0.40%	-1.93%

Gold fell in London to see an almost 1% loss at as low as $907.50 at about the open of trade in New York, but it then chopped its way back higher for most of the rest of trade and ended with a loss of just 0.38%. Silver fell to as low as $12.52 by late morning in New York before rebounded a bit in the last couple of hours of trade, but it still ended with a loss of 2.4%.

Euro gold rose to about €654, platinum lost $5 to $1101, and copper fell a few cents to about $2.20.

Gold and silver equities fell about 2% at the open before they rallied back to unchanged by midmorning and then returned to their earlier lows midday, but they then climbed back higher in afternoon trade and ended just slightly lower on the day.

Report	For	Reading	Expected	Previous
Import Prices	June	3.2%	2.0%	1.4%
Import Prices ex-oil	June	0.2%	-	0.1%
Export Prices	June	1.1%	-	0.5%
Export Prices ex-ag.	June	0.8%	-	0.3%
Trade Balance	May	-$26.0B	-$30.0B	-$28.8B
Michigan Sentiment	July	64.6	70.0	70.8

Next week’s economic highlights include the Treasury Budget on Monday, PPI, Retail Sales, and Business Inventories on Tuesday, CPI, Empire Manufacturing, Capacity Utilization, Industrial Production, Business Inventories, and FOMC Minutes on Wednesday, Initial Jobless Claims, TIC Flows, and the Philadelphia Fed on Thursday, and Building Permits and Housing Starts on Friday.

Oil fell back below $60 a barrel and the U.S. dollar index and treasuries rose while the Dow, Nasdaq, and S&P fell throughout most of trade on renewed worries over the economy and poor earnings reports after Michigan Sentiment came in much worse than expected.

Among the big names making news in the market Friday were Infosys, Anglo and Xstrata, GM, and Sony.

You are watching the biggest challenge MOPE (Management of Perspective Economics) has faced since 1990.

This 3rd quarter presents multiple challenges to the funding programs of the US economy. The demand for money due to the exploding Federal deficit must strain the US Treasury market.

Dress up maneuvers for the US dollar are part of keeping the US bond market from breaking below the 28 year uptrend line, an event that would derail any hope for easy financing of the enormous bond offerings now in the Federal pipeline.

You must see that publishing gold and dollar time and price targets tend more to set targets for the Goldman Sachs type trading programs that are key elements in the Management of Perspective central planners now fighting desperately to keep the US Treasury financing window wide open.

You must recognize that the key element to success in the Battle Royal is the value of the US dollar.

The most intense challenge in the ability to make markets camouflage economic reality is gathering momentum in present time.

Unemployment is approaching 10% in the USA with no STOP expected at that level. All the financial programs so far have been structured to bail out the Fat Cats of Wall Street. No bailout of any significance has had a positive impact on employment. The GM restructuring is a brilliant example of paper shuffling and worker elimination. Truth be known, it was the financial arm of motors that thrust the first bankruptcy stone.

The cancer of the OTC derivative, having turned a normal and modest recession into a total disaster, has spread its deadly tentacles down into the real economy where bankruptcies of previously sound businesses unable to withstand the decline in demand are occurring. Worker reduction in the real economy now stimulates the unemployment figures hardly likely to stop at 10% in the USA.

These deadly tentacles are strangling states, counties and cities in the USA where many are on the brink today. California has already passed the point of no return with an uncertain future and an economy larger than some countries.

Despite statements to the contrary, the BRIC nations are clearly lowering their dependence on US Treasury instruments as national reserves. It is the momentum change in buying that impacts the US dollar and treasuries trend-wise. A close on the USDX below .82 was the first crack in the dyke of the strong dollar policy. The next challenge to the US dollar is the 112-113 28 year up trend line of the 30 year US treasury instrument. When broken down, the event will represent the two measures of the US dollar’s worth in a major down leg of their respective long term bear markets.

I feel for those making this gigantic effort to mask reality as they have an impossible job. The size of the demand for money means the ever increasing creation of larger and larger offerings of US treasury instruments into a market that, outside of the knee-jerk risk aversion crowd, witnesses declining non-US Federal demand.

The Battle Royal is to keep Washington from looking exactly like California, with the exception that via Quantitative Easing the dollar will continue to be manufactured albeit losing value significantly through USA IOUs.

Gold as the only currency without a liability attached to it is therefore the only method by which you can protect yourself from the inevitability of Washington being a California.

The Battle Royal today is MOPEs effort to camouflage the reality that the US sheeple may buy, but not the BRIC nations lead by China. The more that media mocks China the more perturbed China becomes. The more perturbed China becomes the closer we get to the neutralization of MOPE. Then the King dollar appears and the dollar is not wearing clothes of any value or worth.”- Jim Sinclair, JSMineset.com

Trying to get a read on these markets is like trying to measure the distance from East to West. You can never quite get there because your starting and ending points are always in flux.

Yesterday was “WE LOVE RISK” day. Today was “WE HATE RISK” day. About noon it seemed to become “WE HATE LIFE” day “Because we have no idea whether we should love or hate risk”. That was about the time that the Euro came off its worst levels of the session with crude oil moving over $1.00 off its lows and soybeans and corn moving well off their lows. Gold then moved off its worst levels of the session.

The only thing which seemed to be stuck in la-la land was the bond market which promptly proceeded to erase every single bit of yesterday’s losses after having erased every single bit of the previous day’s gains. Bonds are worse than schizophrenic right now. They are hopelessly broken as no one knows what the hell to do in that market. Players are fearful that convexity plays are going to emerge if they move a bit higher from here and that will bring in even more buying as mortgage outfits look to hedge against potential waves of re-financing as interest rates drop. The FED would no doubt love that and is probably helping to push things along since they are scared out of their mindless wits about a market driven rise in the long end of the curve.

I gotta hand it to the ol’ pork belly market however – it is happy as a lark and is limit up for the second day in the row. The guys in the belly pit ( all six of them that are left) could care less about what the frenetic action in the bond market is – they are hungry for some BLT sandwiches and do not care whether Dick or Jane are going to refinance.

The move up in gold corresponded once again with the move down in the Dollar and the move up off the lows in crude. That is pretty much going to be the tune until something emerges to change things in a bigger way. Everything will depend on whether or not the market wants risk or wants to avoid risk. Personally I think it is beyond stupid that gold would be considered a “risky” asset (especially compared to worthless scraps of paper IOU’s called Treasuries) but it is what it is until the algorithms say otherwise.

The move up in Comex gold yanked the HUI and the XAU off of the cellar and pushed both of them into positive territory as I write this. Whether that will last through the closing bell is anyone’s guess at this point.

There is not a whole lot to say about the price action of the day other than the fact that once again we are witnessing markets that are being tossed around by hedge fund activity tied to movement in the Dollar and in the equity markets. Perhaps the only good thing that might come out of this is that these monstrosities will rip and shred each other to pieces in the process of their trading activities happily making them all disappear with their managers going to work doing “shovel ready projects” for the government as part of their penance for destroying our markets. They are a plague of locusts that are devouring everything in sight.

The Dollar continues to bounce from the lower end of its trading range as every time it threatens to break down below support, it pops up and rebounds. It is hard to say whether the authorities are playing games in the Forex markets but it is difficult to believe that they are not especially when one considers that with the passing of each day, the news coming out about the Dollar just seems to worsen as more and more the Chinese are voicing their disgust with US economic and fiscal policies. They are being joined by India, Brazil and Russia and none of this bodes well for the fortunes of the greenback over the long haul.

My take on this is that while the hedge fund algorithms are ruling the markets for the immediate now, the actions by these other sovereign nations is what is going to ultimately put an end to this trading volatility and begin a long term trend in the Dollar as it fades from its lone position of supremacy atop the pack of global currencies. Esau squandered his birthright for a bowl of stew – what have our monetary and political leaders gained for squandering the inherent stability in the Dollar that has served our nation so well for so long???”- Dan Norcini, More at JSMineset.com

“August Gold closed down 3.7 at 912.5. This was 5.9 up from the low and 1.7 off the high.

September Silver finished down 0.29 at 12.645, 0.035 off the high and 0.135 up from the low.

After an early attempt to bounce August gold washed out ahead of mid session but eventually the gold market managed to regain its footing and managed to make a new high for the trading session. It goes without saying that persistent strength in the Dollar was a pressuring force, but it also seemed as if renewed fears of slowing added into the initial weakness in gold prices. In fact, at times Friday morning, gold and other physical commodity markets were acting as if they were about to return to the deflationary environment. With the last scheduled US data point (Michigan sentiment readings) coming in weak and the key corporate earnings news of the day also pointing to discouraging conditions in the economy, the bear camp seemed to have a long list of issues in their court.

The September silver contract forged a big range down washout but at times the market managed to reject a moderate portion of the weakness. However, the downside washout on the silver charts was accompanied by sagging economic views and a rising Dollar and that seems to justify the bearish market tilt. In fact, with noted weakness in copper prices and a slide in energy prices most of the outside market action seemed to justify the overly weak action in silver prices.”- The Hightower Report, Futures Analysis and Forecasting

ITH’s (THM) share ownership by AngloGold (AU) and MAG’s (MVG) joint venture update 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.

Jourdan Resources 2009 Annual General and Special Meeting - More
- July 10, 2009 | Item | E-mail

Virginia Grants 142,750 Stock Options - More
- July 10, 2009 | Item | E-mail

Excel Gold Mining Inc., Announces the Signing of a Letter of Intent for 100% Acquisition of the Montauban Mine and 2 Adjacent Mining Claim Properties - More
- July 10, 2009 | Item | E-mail

Unico, Inc. Announces the Acquisition of Additional Equipment to Expedite Processing of Precious Metals Concentrate at the Deer Trail Mine - More
- July 10, 2009 | Item | E-mail

Hana Mining Ltd. Reports That Fraser Institute Annual Survey of Mining Companies Ranks Botswana as the Most Favourable Mineral Investment Climate in Africa - More
- July 10, 2009 | Item | E-mail

Gold Coast Mining Announces Corporate Update - More
- July 10, 2009 | Item | E-mail

Anglo Swiss Resources Inc. Assays a Remarkable 2,696 g/tonne (78.63 oz/ton) Gold at the Kenville Gold Mine Property - More
- July 10, 2009 | Item | E-mail

Wallbridge Mining Defines Large IP Target on Rogers Creek Porphyry Copper-Gold Property - More
- July 10, 2009 | Item | E-mail

International Tower Hill Receives Share Ownership Top-Up Notice From AngloGold Ashanti - "International Tower Hill Mines Ltd. ("ITH" or the "Company") (TSX-V:ITH - News)(AMEX:THM - News)(Frankfurt:IW9 - News) is pleased to announce that AngloGold Ashanti (U.S.A.) Exploration Inc., a subsidiary of AngloGold Ashanti Limited ("AngloGold"), has exercised its right to maintain its 13.2907% equity interest in the Company. AngloGold's equity interest had been diluted by virtue of the Company's issuance of shares since January 1, 2009, principally due to the exercise of 7,753,385 warrants, broker options and broker warrants in May." More
- July 10, 2009 | Item | E-mail

MAG Silver Reports on the Juanicipio Joint Venture - "MAG Silver Corp. (TSX:MAG - News)(AMEX:MVG - News) ("MAG") is pleased to provide an update from the June quarterly Technical Committee meeting of Minera Juanicipio SA, a joint venture between Fresnillo Plc and MAG. In addition assay results are reported for three definition drill holes along the Valdecanas Vein and one exploration hole recently completed on the Juanicipio Vein. The joint venture continues to execute the 2009 program where presently there are 4 drills turning. Preliminary engineering studies and detailed metallurgical work are also progressing." More
- July 10, 2009 | Item | E-mail

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