Ed Steer comments this morning
posted on
Sep 26, 2008 06:52AM
Golden Minerals is a junior silver producer with a strong growth profile, listed on both the NYSE Amex and TSX.
From Ed Steer:
Gold didn't do much in Far East and European trading yesterday. The real action came the moment that the London p.m. fix was in at 10:00 a.m. New York time. The dealers pulled their bids and 'presto'...gold was down $25. Silver followed a slightly different path. Just before the London p.m. gold fix, silver had a big spike to the upside before it too succumbed to the same not-for-profit seller(s)...an 81 cent move from the top to the bottom. As was (correctly) pointed out by UBS gold analyst John Reade...yesterday was options expiry on the Comex and the boys were doing everything that they usually do around this time of month to make sure a lot of those call options they'd written since August's option expiry finished out of the money...and the bullion bank(s) gets to keep all those lovely premiums. Mission accomplished!
Yesterday morning I got an e-mail from Bart Chilton, one of the nicer commissioners over at the CFTC...informing me that the enforcement division (rather than the oversight division) of the CFTC was going to be investigating the silver market. My e-mail back to him was right to the point..."Bart, the first place your boys can look is the price moves around the London p.m. fix today. Whoever was behind those shenanigans should be able to tell you a lot."
Open interest numbers for Wednesday were relatively unexciting. Gold o.i. went up 850 contracts...but silver dropped another 560 contracts. Thursday's changes in open interest should be interesting when they're reported later this morning. I'll let you know on Saturday.
Not a lot of interesting things to report in the precious metals market yesterday...except for the fact that the US Mint announced that they were "temporarily" not taking orders for the one ounce 24K Buffalo because of "unprecedented demand". Below is a current graph of SLV...the silver ETF. A lot of somebodys have been buying silver with both hands all year long...regardless of the price action. I thank Gene Arensberg for providing this.
![]() |
click to enlarge |
Today is Friday. It could get really ugly and we'll find out soon enough if the prudent are going to get sacrificed on the altar of the wanton one more time. All of us at Casey's Daily Resource Plus will be here Saturday morning to examine the entrails...and we'll see you then.
Casey Research correspondent-at-large Ed Steer is a keen observer of the financial scene and a board member of GATA.org.