Both gold and silver rose quietly in early morning trading in the Far East. The top for both metals was shortly before 11:00 a.m. in London while most of North America slept. The bottom in both metals came at the end of trading in London. Gold and silver closed the Thursday New York session with minor gains in the spot price. My daily commentaries are always based on Kitco's spot price charts.

I must admit that I was surprised that there was no further effort by the bullion banks to continue the downward price pressure, as they are still sitting with huge short positions in both metals However, we've still got two more trading days to go before options expiry, and it wouldn't be the first time they left everything until the last minute. We'll just have to wait and see.

Open interest for Wednesday showed a more significant decline, which is what I was expecting. Gold o.i. was reduced by 12,650 contracts...and silver o.i. fell a substantial 2,560 contracts. These declines in open interest over the last few days show that only a fraction of the bullion banks' short position has been covered...even if you take into account that they may be increasing their long positions to compensate for their lack of short covering. Ted Butler and I feel that there is more liquidation to go, so were both scratching our heads about Thursday's lack of activity.

Instead of the usual NY gold commentator that I post most days, here's an e-mail that was sent to me by a very good friend. It was sent to him...and I'm including it here completely unedited for spelling, grammar, punctuation...or capitals. The guy that wrote this certainly knows his stuff...and probably knows more than I do...so I thought I should share his insights...

"two time frames am working with...

"gold options expiration is on monday, so da boyz are shooting for that close, but think they might have shot their wad a bit early here. i bought 1 part (of potential 4 parts total) on today's (Wednesday - Ed) close... will buy every lower close thru rest of july (thursday) when gold rollover has done.

"but for the *big* move, am trying to hold out til end of august to go "all in"... as that will be silver's last roll before the longer time frame (3 months) for the December contract. any and all big lows by then will be expected to be bullet proof.

"thru the summer, they get to one-two punch the metals with alternating rollovers each end of month, but gold will enjoy December as front month for 4 (count em!) months straight after aug 1st... and silver will join in for 3 months. that's so key to the futures market. everything waxes and wanes with the rolls. and December is only time both gold and silver are on same wavelength.

"luv it.

"just gotta hang in there about 6 more weeks of this silly summer season. :)"

I've got one story and one video today. The story is about the "Golden Arches Supper Club"...also known as McDonald's Corp. It appears that inflation is about to hit the McDonald's menu. The story is from the Chicago Tribune and is entitled "Changes Ahead for McDonald's Dollar Menu". The link is here.

While I'm on the subject of menus and food prices, here's a menu from Woolworth & Co...circa the 1950s. Not only were food prices lower, but they were steady for years on end, and you actually paid for them with mostly real money...silver coins. Enjoy!

click to enlarge

The following video is currently posted at one of Peter Spina's web sites, goldseek.com. It's about an 8-minute expose by Congressman Ron Paul on all the hidden 'treasures' in the bill that will nationalize Freddie and Fannie. It's all very depressing. The link is here.

In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem: government is the problem… It is no coincidence that our present troubles parallel and are proportionate to the intervention and intrusion in our lives that result from unnecessary and excessive growth of government. -- Ronald Reagan, Inaugural Address, January 20, 1981

The bad news finally caught up with everything yesterday...except gold and silver, of course. Nobody was around to save the Dow, and it did what it should have. Today is Friday, and they're always interesting. This one will be no different.

Enjoy your Friday...and your weekend...and all of us at Casey's Daily Resource Plus will see you here on Saturday.