email reply from ir, page-7

From the US, an hour ago...

Precious Metals
Gold was flat in the far East, dipped between the London and New York opens, bottoming at $955, but then took off with no significant setbacks for the rest of the day, finishing at $972.10/oz., up $6.80. Overnight, gold is sharply higher.

Platinum still can’t seem to generate any positive momentum, as it gave back all of its gains in the far East and then some, falling as low as $1990 at the NYMEX open before finding some buying support and rising to end at $2001/oz., down $17. Overnight, platinum has been flat.

Silver also hit its intraday low, at $18.60, just as New York opened, but went vertical from there nearly straight through to the Globex, then drifted a bit lower to close at $19.09/oz., up 29 cents. Overnight, silver is trending higher.
(Click here for charts)

It was another very strong day for gold and silver, with support offered by the usual suspects, rising oil, sliding equities, and a dollar that couldn’t hold most of its early gains. Platinum, however, continued to lag, primarily on concerns that the struggling auto industry will have diminished demand for the metal in the near term.

As he often does, Peter Spina, of Goldforecaster.com, had a cogent summary of why the markets are doing what they’re doing, writing that, “Investors had the weekend to further digest the latest unfolding financial debacle and wondering where their insurance policy is. Those who have assessed the risk the way I view it are driving the investment demand in the gold and silver markets. I do not believe there is much of a speculative premium in the gold market as other have suggested. I could see another pullback to the low $900’s, but the door is now open for gold to stage another rally to record levels. Again, this gold rally may be another false start but I now believe there will not be many more false starts going forward, under this climate of failing banking and financial institutions.

“The news of Fannie and Freddie is just confirmation that the Federal government is willing to effectively nationalize and print money to bailout these monstrous (ticking) financial time bombs. With the news of the second largest bank failure on Friday afternoon also adding to the financial jitters, one must now question the integrity of the FDIC with some $50 billion to work with. Once the FDIC reserve is extinguished, where will further billions come from when more and more banks continue to crumble? Confidence is deteriorating and that will only foster this secular gold bull market!

“It is not too difficult to see the path we are on and headed. Investors who now understand this are flocking into the metals."

Nothing there that we would disagree with.


GO GOLD!