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Gold/Mining/Energy : Medinah Mining Inc. (MDHM) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: JP Jouver who wrote (860)	1/23/1998 9:48:00 PM
From: EtTuBrute	Respond to of 25548

Gold going up up up: New York--Jan 23--COMEX Feb gold futures stormed to a 2-month high of $301 per ounce on the dollar's slide against other currencies. Feb settled up $9 at $300.30 per ounce making a late break through the psychologically important $300 resistance level. Gold's momentum helped to carry silver higher, with Mar settling up 17.5c at $5.893 after hitting $5.94. The gold- silver jump was little-embraced by platinum and palladium, with platinum barely scraping its way into positive territory and palladium down on physical selling and fund profit-taking. As the dollar fell, one large trade house started off the buying, and some funds were caught heavily short giving a "sort of domino effect," said one trader. "Everyone's confidence is undermined by the US airing its dirty laundry in public," said one trader. "This knocked the dollar big time and gold and silver rallied," said one trader. "We saw increased demand from institutional and small investors moving assets back into gold," said Joe Rosta, analyst at CPM Group. With the dollar down, the mark and yen still "unattractive" to investors for various reasons and with stocks "going largely sideways," some investors are expecting more upside in gold and have decided to cover shorts. "The Deutsche Mark is not attractive due to concerns with European monetary union and the euro and how comfortable are people having yen in their portfolio given the Asia crisis?" he said. The approach of the first delivery day in the Feb contract has also prompted some short covering, given the fact that open interest is many times above COMEX stock levels, said Rosta. With the funds still heavily short, CPM is predicting that if gold continues its climb it could quickly hit levels of $320-330. "One of things we had been saying is that as long as dollar is king, gold's roll as currency hedge restricted to Europe and South Asia...Now the dollar is down it's pretty much worldwide," he said. "We need the continued uncertainty in currency markets and equity markets for gold to continue to climb," he said. Some are predicting that gold will stay volatile ahead of next week's over-the-counter option expiry. Silver climbed today on the dollar's weakness and received heavy support from gold. Supporting the silver market's move up was a 1,057,591 ounce decline in silver stocks overnight, which brought stocks to a total of 107,468,636 ounces. Stocks are at their lowest level since Jun 3 1985. "That decline in COMEX stocks is definitely supportive...You have to pick your sides in the silver market right now...Do you think the stock decline is absorbed or not?" said Refco analyst Jim Steel. Market opinion on the cause of the stock decline has wavered back and forth over the past few weeks, which has contributed to recent volatility. Rumors that the CFTC was investigating a possible squeeze on the silver market helped knock silver back from recent highs made on the back of the stock decline, traders say. The CFTC at first declined comment on the rumors, but later admitted that it had increased its surveillance of silver activity. The Bank of England, which regulates precious metal trade in London, has now also said it is taking a closer look at the silver market, an official told Bridge earlier this week. Steel said that only "time will tell" whether the stocks have truly been absorbed, but added that he believed they had been. Platinum and palladium pulled off early lows but remained weak after coming under pressure from some physical selling and fund profit-taking. SETTLEMENT PRICES --Feb gold (GCG8) at $300.30, up $9; RANGE: 301.0-290.3 --Mar silver (SIH8) at $5.893, up 17.5c; RANGE: 5.94-5.715

To: JP Jouver who wrote (860)	1/23/1998 9:57:00 PM
From: EtTuBrute	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 25548

More interesting info on gold: From Kaplans' site................. Updated @ 5:40 p.m. EST, Friday, January 23, 1998. COMMENTS OF THE DAY: Commodities in general ended Friday with modest gains. Silver surged 17.5 cents, platinum edged up ten cents after a sharply lower start, and palladium sank $5.05. The real story of the day was gold, which rallied nine dollars in very heavy trading after initially starting lower and finding stiff resistance at $290 spot. The current spot price is about $299.45, which is technically a very unstable level. Therefore, the yellow metal next week is either likely to retreat to its European close around $296.75, or else the huge number of stop loss orders placed by short sellers will trigger a chain reaction of short covering. There are mild resistance levels on the upside around $325 spot and $350 spot. With COMEX estimated volume at 110,000 lots, it will be important to see how much of the rally could be attributed to short covering, which will be made clearer around noon on Monday when the open interest figures for Friday's trading are released. The less the quantity of short covering, the greater the likelihood of an extended rally. Gold is now about one percent above its fifty-day moving average, which represents an important technical point, and is also just above the critical downward trendline formed by connecting the descending peaks on a weekly chart dating back to the first week of February 1996. Gold mining shares, meanwhile, gained an average of ten percent on Friday. On Friday, the junior mining companies rallied more than their senior counterparts for the first time since late October. This indicates that gold fund managers must be receiving a sufficient net inflow of funds so that they are not fearful of investing in only the most liquid issues. Over the past two years most fund managers have been burned time and time again as they attempted to dip into mid-cap golds, only for the market to plunge lower again and these shares to have trouble finding a ready buyer. Since this represents an important technical change in direction for the junior issues, which have been especially hard hit over the past two calendar years, a sustained gold rally would probably induce a substantial flow of cash (especially in percentage terms) into gold funds, where junior companies are far underrepresented in terms of their market capitalization. Thus, such shares would significantly outperform their senior counterparts as fund managers gradually shed their current near-absolute insistence on liquidity and restore the junior shares to reflect their actual share of total mining output.