Precious Metals

Gold was rangebound between $870 and $890 straight through the day on Wednesday, holding near the high end to late COMEX trading, but then experiencing a decline in the Globex similar to Tuesday’s, and finishing at $868.20, down $1.80. Overnight, gold has slipped lower.

Platinum fanciers finally had something positive to talk about as the metal was sharply higher in the far East, lost all its gains into early New York trading, but then retook a big chunk of the lost ground and ended at $1033/oz., up $35. Overnight, platinum is sharply lower.

Silver noodled around until the New York open, but then really took off, blasting almost to $13 before being taken down after noon, and closed at $12.59/oz., up 53 cents. Overnight, silver has fallen off. (Click here for charts)

Once again, gold spun its wheels looking for a bit of traction, and coming away with nothing. But it certainly wasn’t a terrible day, considering that the usual suspects provided little help, with the dollar continuing to rise and crude falling.

It’s unlikely that we will be stuck in this listless pattern through the historically-important fall gold buying season, but it could happen. In the current financial climate, with uncertainty the only constant, all bets are off.

Buyers of physical metal continue to vote with their paper, however, with those who can afford it transferring large blocks of their wealth into something tangible. Investors are demanding “unprecedented” amounts of bullion bars and coins and moving them into their own vaults, the London Bullion Market Association says.

“There is an enormous pick-up in investment demand. I have never seen a market like this in my 33-year career,” says Jeremy Charles, chairman of the LBMA. “The gold refineries cannot produce enough bars.”

“Vault staff are also doing overtime,” said a banker at the LBMA’s annual meeting, adding that investors in some countries were paying premiums of up to $25 an ounce above the London spot price to secure scarce gold bars.

Johan Botha, a spokesman for the Rand Refinery in South Africa, which manufactures the Krugerrand, the world's most popular gold coin, said the plant was now running at full capacity seven days a week. “Even so, now and then we have shortages,” Botha said.