Only the willfully blind won’t acknowledge that fact

Yesterday In Gold & Silver

The gold price didnt do much in Far East trading on their Tuesday, but was up a couple of bucks going into the 8 a.m. GMT London open. At that point it popped for a few more dollars—and then climbed to its high of the day which came at the 8:20 a.m. EDT Comex open—and then down it went, hitting its New York low about a minute before London closed for the day. From there, the gold price recovered about ten bucks of its loses by the Comex close—and traded quietly sideways into the close of electronic trading.

The CME Group recorded the low and high ticks as $1,337.80 and $1,353.00 in the April contract.

Gold closed in New York yesterday at $1,349.50 spot, up $9.70 from Mondays close. Net volume was around 123,000 contracts, which was about 25% more volume than on Monday.

Silver followed a very similar price pattern to gold, with the sellers of last resort also showing up at the Comex open as well.

The low and high ticks were recorded as $20.67 and $21.325 in the May contract, an intraday move of more than 3%.

Silver finished the New York trading session at $20.885 spot, up a nickel on the day.

The rallies in both platinum and palladium lasted until 10 a.m. EDT yesterday before the not-for-profit sellers showed up there as well. Then minutes before the London close, the HFT boyz did their thing in these two metals as well—and that, as they say, was that. Both metals recovered a bit, but not by much. Here are the charts.

It should be obvious to anyone except the willfully blind, that all four precious metals would have finished materially higher if allowed to trade freely during the Comex session yesterday, which they obviously werent.

Copper was under the gun again yesterday for the third day in a row—the worst 3-day thrashing the metal has ever had. Heres the 1-year chart.

Copper slumped to its lowest level in nearly four years, with May futures off 2.5 percent to $2.9520 a pound and now down 8 percent in three sessions. China is responsible for 40 percent of the worlds copper imports. is a paragraph out of a copper story posted on the CNBC website yesterday that reader M.A. sent our way.

Ted Butler thinks that the Commercial traders [JPMorgan et al ] took the opportunity with the news coming out of China to drive the technical funds into going mega-short the copper market—and as you can see from the chart, this is certainly the case, as the copper market is now more technically oversold than it has been in over three years.

The dollar index closed in New York late on Monday afternoon at 79.75—and traded fairly flat until about 7 a.m. GMT in London. Then it rallied to its 79.96 high minutes after 11 a.m. GMT. From there it headed south, hitting its absolute low of the day of 79.72 around 2:20 p.m. in New York. Then it gained back a handful of basis points into the close. The index finished on Tuesday afternoon at 79.79—down 4 basis points from Mondays close. Nothing much to see here, except to note that the index failed at the 80.00 mark on its weak rally attempt.

The gold stocks popped about a percent and change at the open of the equity markets in New York, but began to fade almost immediately, hitting their low at the 12 p.m. EDT London close. From there they bounced along the bottom for most of the remainder of the trading session, despite the fact that gold had rallied well off its low tick. But they managed to catch a bid in the last few minutes, as the HUI finished up 0.56%.

The silver stocks also jumped up about the same amount as the gold stocks within 10 minutes of the New York open, but it was pretty much down hill for the remainder of the day from that point—and Nick Lairds Intraday Silver Sentiment Index closed down 0.96%.

The CMEs Daily Delivery Report showed that 2 gold and 114 silver contracts were posted for delivery within the Comex-approved depositories on Thursday. In silver, the two biggest short/issuers were Barclays and Jefferies with 61 and 52 contracts respectively. Of course JPMorgan Chase was the biggest long/stopper in its in-house [proprietary] trading account with 89 contracts. Canadas Scotiabank was a distant second with 16 contracts stopped. The link to yesterdays Issuers and Stoppers Report is here .

There were no reported changes in GLD yesterday—and as of 10:19 p.m EDT yesterday evening, there were no reported changes in SLV. either.

The good folks over at shortsqueeze.com were kind enough to update the changes in the short interest in both SLV and GLD as of the end of February. There was a huge drop in the short position of SLV. as it declined by 22.73% from 17.65 million shares/troy ounces to 13.64 million shares/troy ounces. The 4 million troy ounces deposit on February 18 may have been used for just that purpose.

The drop in GLD s short position was only 4.97% from 1.29 million ounces to 1.23 million ounces. Ted Butler has been speculating that some of the gold deposited in GLD over the last few days may be the authorized participants covering short positions. If thats the case, then we should see that in the next report for mid-March, which will be out two weeks from now.

The U.S. Mint had another sales report. They didnt sell any gold of any description, but they did sell more silver eagles. This time it was 388,500 of them. Teds question of who is buying all these silver eagles [2.22 million in the first seven business days of March] remains unanswered.

Over at the Comex-approved depositories on Monday, there were 30,032 troy ounces of gold shipped out of HSBC USAs vault—and nothing was reported received. The link to that activity is here .

Of course there was big movement in silver on Monday, as 843,525 troy ounces were reported received—and 539,955 troy ounces were shipped out. The link to that action is here .

I have a very decent number of stories again today—and I hope you have the time to read the ones that interest you the most.

Critical Reads

U.S. Investors Closely Monitoring Pimco After Internal Strife

Several U.S. institutional investors said they are closely monitoring the developments at Pimco, the worlds largest bond firm, in the wake of Mohamed El-Erians abrupt resignation as CEO and ensuing acrimony between him and co-founder Bill Gross.US District Judge Jeffrey White in San Francisco issued a nationwide decree prohibiting the NSA from destroying the records until March 19, when another hearing will be held to further extend the deadline. The court order overrides an earlier ruling by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court in Washington to destroy the records. Governor Mark Carney told MPs on the Treasury Committee that it would create a new deputy governor position with responsibility for markets and banking.

The investors, including retirement systems, have formally put Pimco on watch lists, a signal that they will keep a much closer eye its performance than usual. It could eventually lead to reductions in the amount of money they allocate to funds at the firm, whose full name is Pacific Investment Management Co. and which has $1.91 trillion in assets.

We intend to go out and meet with them over the course of the next month, said David Hunter, chief investment officer of the North Dakota State Investment Board. The board, which has about $400 million invested with Pimco, put the fund on its watch list on Feb. 28.

This news item showed up on the moneynews.com Internet site very early yesterday morning EDT—and todays first story is courtesy of West Virginia reader Elliot Simon.

Labor Force Participation Hits Record Low for Americans in Their 20s

The labor force participation rate in 2013 for Americans in their twenties hit the lowest level recorded since 1981, when the Bureau of Labor Statistics started releasing employment data on people in the full age bracket of 20 through 29.

Since 2008, the last year before President Barack Obama took office, the number of Americans in their twenties who were not in the labor force during the average month has climbed from 8,756,000 to 10,511,000an increase of 1,755,000 or 20 percent.

This story appeared on the cnsnews.com Internet site late yesterday morning EDT—and I thank reader Howard for sending it our way.