From today's Gartman Letter...... (12-15)

"COMMODITY PRICES ARE HIGHER GENERALLY, but only marginally so, and if one were to judge by the movements in the past twenty four hours in the precious metals one might reasonably imagine that the markets were and are closed. In reality, since last Thursday, gold has been locked within a relatively small range in US$ terms between $1110 on the low side and $1140 on the high side, with the vast majority of the trading taking place between $1117 and $1128. As we write, gold is trading toward the bottom of that narrowing range. Until and unless spot gold is able to move upward through the rather well defined trend line that offers strong resistance at the $1125-$1130 level this morning, the gold bulls shall have some difficult making their case again.

The same, however, cannot be said of gold predicated in other currencies, for despite the non-strength of gold in US$ terms, it is stronger in terms of the EUR and the Yen, and it is steady in terms of Sterling. In EUR terms, gold has found strong support at the €758-€760 level, and is trading €676 as we write. In ¥ terms, gold is trading just under the psychologically and technically important ¥100,000/oz level, and interestingly where gold is down 0.5% in US dollar terms in the past twenty four hours it is up 0.3% in terms of the ¥. Finally, in £ terms, gold has found support over the past several days at £680-£685 and is trading £689 as we write.

Again where gold is down 0.5% in US dollar terms since yesterday morning, it is almost exactly unchanged in £ terms. Given the problems now plaguing Spain, Greece, Ireland, Italy et al within the EU, and with talk at the periphery of the EU being torn asunder… a circumstance we doubt shall happen given the huge sums of “political” capital expended thus far to create this “nation”… one has to wonder what shall be the propensity on the part of the monetary authorities of China, or India, or Indonesia or the Persian Gulf to push reserves toward the EUR when they can instead push their gold reserves higher and avoid the entire problem? Certainly were we at the helm of any of these reserve banks we’d be quietly moving money from the EUR to gold… the operative word here being quietly, for that is how great central banks act: quietly, steadily and thoughtfully."