PRECIOUS METALS RECAP

2/13/2012

April Gold closed down 0.9 at 1724.4. This was 6.7 up from the low and 11 off the high.

March Silver finished up 0.118 at 33.722, 0.148 off the high and 0.267 up from the low.

While the April gold contract spent a lot of time trading above the Friday closing level today, the bull camp might have been a little discouraged by the lack of overall gains in the face of a risk on environment. Clearly the Euro was waffling around and residual concerns for Greece and the Euro zone remain in place but after the sharp decline at the end of last week, the bulls probably expected a bigger technical bounce in gold today. Perhaps some gold traders were a little put off that gold continued to hold a moderately large non commercial and non reportable net long positioning in the COT reports.

The silver market spent a lot of time trading at or above the prior closing level today but the market was unable to carve out a higher high. Like gold, silver seemed to be partially held back by residual Euro zone concerns, global slowing concerns and a lack of definitive direction from the currency markets. With copper down sharply today it certainly didn't seem like the markets were fully embracing the risk on vibe that seemed to provide initial strength to equities and other physical commodity prices.