Precious Metals

Gold was up all day and, though it dropped to a low of $958 early in the New York session, picked up from there and rose slowly but steadily, finishing at $965.80/oz., up $11.20 from Friday. Overnight, gold is sharply higher.

Platinum blasted $30 higher in the European market, but the enthusiasm dissipated as soon as New York opened, and the metal gave it all back, ending at $1832/oz., up just $2. Overnight, platinum has been pushing higher.

Silver followed gold’s path very closely, moving steadily higher after mid-morning to close at $18.41/oz., up 30 cents. Overnight, silver is trending higher.
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After last week’s declines, gold and silver got a boost on Monday, and started the week with a bang as the usual suspects supplied some help with crude starting up again and the dollar falling.

“The new week started out on a firm note in the precious-metals complex as a combination of geopolitics and weather boosted crude-oil prices,” said Kitco’s Jon Nadler.

Nadler referred to weekend talks over Iran's controversial nuclear program, which went approximately nowhere, and the movement of Tropical Storm Dolly toward the western Gulf of Mexico.

Or it could have been, as Zachary Oxman of Wisdom Financial said: “I think the market was a bit oversold last week and it seems [that] for lack of a better trade today, gold seems to be catching a small bid.”

The big boys are moving into gold, as the Commodity Futures Trading Commission reported that hedge-fund managers and other large speculators increased their net-long positions in New York gold futures for the week ended July 15.

Speculative long positions outnumbered short positions by 202,783 contracts on the Comex, the highest disparity since February. Net-longs rose by 13,181 contracts, or 7%, from a week earlier.

In addition, smaller investors are hopping the train. Bullion vaulted by the SPDR Gold Trust, the biggest exchange-traded fund backed by gold, rose to an all-time high of 705.9 metric tons (22.65 million ounces) on July 11 before backing off. As of last Thursday, the fund held 702.5 tons (22.59 million ounces).

Looking ahead, “In the near term, gold will be driven by risk-aversion fears,” wrote John Reade of UBS. “If gold moves from being a minority-held asset class to a popular safe haven, then our short-term forecast of $1,000 in one month and $1,050 in three months will look very conservative.”