Mid-Day Gold & Silver Market Report – 9/24/2014

Peter LaTona

9/24/2014 12:18:00 PM

U.S. DOLLAR HITS A FOUR YEAR HIGH – GOLD & SILVER SLIGHTLY DOWN

Gold and Silver prices are down slightly this morning while U.S. and European stocks are recovering from recent losses. Investors are still remaining cautious as they await updated U.S. economic data due Thursday and Friday. Although Gold prices have been trending down, there is support expected at the $1,200 range. "A stronger dollar is a fairly consensus view as well as higher U.S. Treasury yields ... the Fed rhetoric lately has been helping as well, and for precious metals it means that the outlook remains poor," Credit Suisse analyst Karim Cherif said. "However, we were looking at support at $1,200/$1,180 and so far gold managed to hold above that ... there is not going to be a massive drop ahead, and we can even say that prices are already factoring an initial Fed rate tightening."

In a move that many investors would like to see replicated at Fort Knox, Venezuela actually opened up their central bank vaults and showed the Gold inside. This all transpired at the request of Francisco Rodriguez, an economist with the Bank of America Corp. Venezuela keeps $15 billion in Gold bars, which represents 71 percent of their foreign reserves. The U.S. maintains 70 percent, while China less than 3 percent. Since this foreign reserve was essential to provide collateral on debt, Rodriguez asked if he could see for himself. “You picture that amount of money requiring a lot of space when, in reality, it all fits in five small cells that were not even full to the top,” Rodriguez said. He said he started counting frantically in his head, summing up figures scrawled out on signs near each pile of the metal. By his quick math, the Gold was all there.

At 1:00 p.m. (ET), the APMEX Precious Metals spot prices were:

• Gold, $1,220.00 Down $3.30
• Silver, $17.78 Down $0.07
• Platinum, $1,321.30 Down $13.40
• Palladium, $820.30 Up $4.50

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