The dollar higher vs. the European currencies,
lower against the Yen. A number of rumors of legal action coming
out of Germany where some people have sued the gov't saying
that they cannot join the EMU because they have not met the
requirements, and rumors that the supreme court had sided with them.
Those were later on denied but damage was already done to the market.
The Yen was sharply lower pulling the Swiss franc right along with it.
The D Mark was quiet, but had alot of cross trading where we had seen people buying the D mark and selling the yen, today those positions were being reversed. People were buying the yen and selling the D Mark. That brought the dollar higher against the Europeans and lower
against the yen. Overall, trading was relatively quiet but we will
have to see what happens, especially with the British Pound, if it will show weakness if the D mark and Swiss franc come up over the next few days. Pound unchanged on the day, Swiss Franc and D mark down,
yen up, the dollar index was up .29 at 100.97.
What can cause the dollar to decline? The national debt, the trade
imbalance, your guess is as good as mine. With the turmoil in the
Pacific Rim we have the monoploy money of choice.
The lease rate story again that we had a couple of years ago where the
lease rates on gold are going up and that brought buying into the market. Also some stop loss buying in silver. That led the market
higher, and in late trading prices moved back to resistance. The
palladium market also sharply higher once again on concerns of supplies coming out of Russia in the weeks ahead. Only the platinum
market dragged, as traders took profits, but it did close slightly higher on the day. The critical number in the silver market is $6.00,
prices need to move above this level in order to re-establish the
uptrend. Gold has solid resistance around $292-296. If we can get
above that level and get above $300, then we can say that we have finally put in a bottom in the gold market. Gold up $4.00 today at
$286.40, silver up 12.5 cents at $5.813, platinum up 60 cents at
$388.60.
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