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Strategies & Market Trends : Rande Is . . . HOME -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: BANCHEE who wrote (10176)	7/29/1999 1:31:00 PM
From: Rande Is	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 57584

Silver hits 10-week high in late Europe, gold up Thursday July 29, 11:40 am Eastern Time LONDON, July 29 (Reuters) - Spot silver hit 10-week highs during late European business on Thursday, reaching a well-worn trading zone at $5.40 an ounce amid buying interest from at least two large U.S. banks, dealers said. Gold chopped around in a $1.50 range after New York opened, returning to challenge session highs in late Europe on buying interest from one of the two same banks, dealers added. ''Silver was seriously overbought on the charts this morning and came off a bit before one U.S. bank came in and whipped it up,'' a London dealer said. ''It was not huge volumes but enough to scare people,'' Spot silver rose again with New York's opening, lifting near $5.40 bid, its highest since mid-May, before settling to $5.35/$5.38 versus Wednesday's $5.23/$5.25 U.S. close. London gold fixed at $253.90 a troy ounce in the afternoon, down on the morning's $254.50 but well within gold's recent $252.50/$256.50 range. ''There are one or two people becoming slightly more friendly towards gold. It could be that we try to head higher towards $258.00 or $260.00 although it's probably going to present some juicy selling opportunities to producers,'' one dealer said. Gold lease rates eased in the afternoon, dropping below the morning's 3.02 percent towards 2.50 percent. Dealers and analysts have suggested lending tightness, most acute in the short dates, could be due to increased miner hedging, central bank sales or withdrawal of metal in anticipation of market disruptions due to the 2000 date change. Central banks lend gold to the market for bullion transactions such as mine financing, forward sales and options writing, earning modest interest on their metal. Miners' second quarter results so far have showed major increases in hedging activity, something which may have pressured lease rates as bullion banks handled the business. Ghana's Ashanti said on Wednesday it had increased its hedge protection to 11 million ounces at an average price of $389 per ounce, representing half its reserves. Battle Mountain Gold (NYSE:BMG - news) and leading U.S. miner Newmont Mining Corp (NYSE:NEM - news), avowed non-hedgers in the past, recently announced plans to start hedging in response to low gold prices. Spot gold was last at $254.60/$255.10 versus Wednesday's New York close of $253.90/$254.40. Platinum added a bit to its overnight recovery, trading up $3.50 at $345.00/$347.00. Palladium was up $2.95 at $340.50/$345.50.