Earlier this year, the Utah state legislature passed a law making gold and silver coins legal tender. Now, a Salt Lake City-area numismatist hopes to set up a system that will allow Utahans to use those precious metals to pay for anything they want.
[[wysiwyg_imageupload:2371:]]By Jeb Handwerger
The euro (FXE) slid compared to the U.S. dollar (UUP) after meeting and reversing at its long term down-trend resistance line two weeks ago. About four weeks prior to that, I alerted readers that the Euro could reverse lower supporting precious metal prices. In my March 28th article I wrote, "Watch for a move out of the euro to support precious metals prices as the euro reaches its descending upper resistance level. For the past two years the euro and the dollar have done this inverted dance wherein one goes up and the other goes down. But one thing I am not fooled about is the fact that they are both in secular long-term downtrends."
By Steve Saville
The price of gold is dominated by investment/monetary demand to such an extent that nothing else matters as far as gold's intermediate- and long-term price performance is concerned. Investment/monetary demand is probably also the most important driver of silver's price trend, although in silver's case industrial demand is also important. In addition, changes in mine supply have some effect on the silver market, because unlike the situation in the gold market the annual supply of newly-mined silver is not trivial relative to the existing aboveground supply of the metal.
[[wysiwyg_imageupload:2360:]]By Julian D. W. Phillips
The silver market is still reeling from its fall from $50 to $34 over a very short time. The move was driven by at least one investor selling around 1,000 tonnes of silver over a two week period. Silver had climbed quickly from around $25. The charts supported a rise to $29, but as silver went higher, it climbed out of technical range into new territory. All the time thereafter it was vulnerable to a selloff back to support around that level.
Utah legislators want to see the dollar regain its former glory, back to the days when one could literally bank on it being "as good as gold."
By Julian D. W. Phillips
The sales of Gold by George Soros
George Soros, the billionaire founder of Soros Fund Management LLC, sold most of his holdings in the bullion-backed SPDR Gold Trust and iShares Gold Trust funds in the first quarter, while buying shares of mining companies Goldcorp Inc. and Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold Inc. Soros's fund held 49,400 shares of SPDR Gold Trust as of March 31, compared with 4.721 million at the end of the fourth quarter. The New York-based fund sold all 5 million shares it held in iShares Gold Trust. This amounted to roughly 30 tonnes worth of physical gold held through the custodians, Barclays and HSBC.
By Jordan Roy-Byrne, CMT
Most mainstream pundits and reporters have assumed that it was speculative buying that caused Silver to go parabolic. After all, its always the dumb money or the public that gets in at the very end. However, in futures markets, parabolic moves are often the result of short squeezes. This is exactly what happened in Silver.
By Adam Hamilton
In a single week, the manic euphoria gripping silver recently was utterly obliterated. After promising such rapid wealth creation, this metal collapsed in what can only be described as a near-crash. New investors were left stunned, while leveraged speculators were slaughtered. Sadly, they could have easily avoided these devastating losses. Silver's massive reversal was both inevitable and predicted well in advance.
[[wysiwyg_imageupload:2328:]]By JW Jones
"Take calculated risks. That is quite different from being rash."
- George S. Patton -
Last week silver was the focus of incredible price swings which left many licking their wounds and shaking their heads at the trading losses they had incurred. This sell off was likely triggered by the increase in margin requirements for futures contracts, but the stunning price decline extended to all vehicles like exchange traded funds use to trade the glimmering metal.
[[wysiwyg_imageupload:2312:]]By David Galland
Today I'd like to share a couple of thoughts on the matter of the correction in commodities about which we have been so vocally warning, and which has now occurred.
After having written in early April about the possible market response to the end of QE2, specifically about it knocking the legs out from under the overbought precious metals and other commodities, the metals continued higher, causing some readers to express concern that we had led them astray. And any number of analysts opined that the market had already priced in the end of QE2 and thus, even after Bernanke's press conference, had decided it was go, go, go for higher commodity prices.
