Over the last week, between February 13th and 20th, both gold and
silver moved lower, especially in the first half of the week. Gold
tested three times $1200 during the week, as silver did the same with
the $16.25 price level. Uncertainty around Greece caused several
rallies, but they were short lived. The “risk on” mood seems to be back
in the markets. Consequently, the appetite for a safe have seems to be
lost; even the TLT 20 year U.S. Treasuries is quite aggressively losing
value in the last couple of weeks.
The precious metals continue to be vulnerable. That is not because of economic data, but because of futures positions in the COMEX market. For the week commencing February 23d, there are quite some economic data
coming out, as seen in the table below. No central bank announcement
is planned. Our expectation is that the GDP data in the U.S. on Friday
can cause some volatility in COMEX gold and silver, hence influence the
gold and silver price. The German and U.K. GDP, German and U.S.
inflation index CPI, etc should not result in signficant gold or silver
price changes, unless those data would be very shocking.
