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Gold/Mining/Energy : Gold Price Monitor -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Alex who wrote (28531)	2/18/1999 11:34:00 AM
From: Enigma	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 116764

Edit - CBS shows gold up 50 cents - guess Kitko has gone stark raving mad?? According to Kitko gold straight down off the chart and silver straight up?? Can this be right? d

To: Alex who wrote (28531)	2/18/1999 11:39:00 AM
From: Ahda	Respond to of 116764

So here it is commodities hold the world and now any increase is going to hurt Japan yet more as the yen goes down and i wonder about China Russia and all as our dollar is still strong. [ Business \| US Market \| By Industry \| IPO \| AP \| S&P \| International \| PRNews \| BizWire ] Thursday February 18, 11:13 am Eastern Time FOCUS-U.S. wholesale prices show surprising jump (Adds reaction in paragraphs 3, 5, 9-10, jobless claims data in paragraphs 11-13) By Caren Bohan WASHINGTON, Feb 18 (Reuters) - Soaring food and energy prices pushed up U.S. wholesale prices at their fastest rate in more than two years, the government said on Thursday, but inflation in other major sectors remained mild. The Producer Price Index jumped 0.5 percent in January after a 0.4 percent increase in December, the Labor Department said. January's was the biggest one-month gain since a matching increase in October 1996. It also was well above the 0.1 percent rise forecast by U.S. economists in a Reuters survey. There was very little reaction in financial markets, as traders saw the gain in producer prices outweighed by a fall in the core rate. The core PPI, which strips out volatile food and energy costs, eased by 0.1 percent in January after a 1 percent rise in December. Economists had expected the core index to increase by 0.1 percent. ''I tend to focus on the core measure,'' Dan Seto, economist with Nikko Securities, told Reuters Television. ''What we are concerned about at this stage in the economy is demand-driven inflation and we see no signs of that in the producer price report.'' Food and energy prices have been extremely soft over the past year because economic problems in Asia, Russia and Latin America have depressed global demand for farm products, oil and an array of other commodities. Prices of food products, which make up nearly one-fourth of the PPI, surged 1.6 percent in January, their biggest gain since a matching rise in April 1993. Prices of energy goods rebounded from two straight months of steep declines, climbing 1.8 percent last month. Soaring gasoline and heating oil costs helped drive the gain, but costs for residential electric power and natural gas also grew. Helping to offset those strong price gains was a 1.2 percent drop in the cost of passenger cars. While stressing that the latest PPI data did not set off any inflation alarm bells, some economists said it may be an indication the best news on prices is in the past. ''I think it demonstrates just how important energy has been in the past two years in holding down U.S. inflation,'' said Paul Kasriel, an economist with Northern Trust Corp. ''Although there's still no sign of any meaningful sustained increase in energy prices, all it would take is ... stability in energy prices to ramp up inflation.'' In a separate report on Thursday, the Labor Department said the number of Americans filing first-time claims for unemployment benefits rose slightly last week, but remained at levels suggesting a strong labor market. Initial jobless claims rose by 4,000 to 288,000 in the week ended Feb. 13 from 284,000 in the prior week. The four-week average of initial claims, viewed as a more accurate barometer of the job market, fell to 292,000, the lowest since 1989.