Gold sold off gently in thin Far East trading on Monday morning…and the bottom was in a couple of hours before Hong Kong closed. From there, gold rose until about 10:00 a.m. in London, and although it tacked on about another ten bucks during Comex trading in New York, it had given all that back by the Comex close.

As for the silver price, it bottomed at the same time as gold and was off to the races shortly after London opened. The top was was in shortly after 10:30 Eastern time when it appeared that the about-to-become-parabolic rally drew the attention of the boyz. From that point on, the silver price didn’t do too much.

As would be expected, volume in gold on the Comex Friday was pretty heavy; but somewhat lighter yesterday. In silver, volume was heavier yesterday than it was on Friday…which stands to reason when you consider the

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On Tuesday, both gold and silver started to decline at one of their usual times…about 3:00 a.m. New York time on Tuesday morning…with the bottom coming at the close of London trading. The price managed to recover somewhat after that…but once again (at 3:00 a.m. New York time on Wednesday morning) gold and silver prices began to decline. There was a temporary bottom at the London close again yesterday, but the recovery was short-lived, and both metals were taken down right into the close of after-hours trading on the Globex.

Monday’s activity showed another decline in gold open interest…down 2,312 contracts. Tuesday’s sell-off brought another o.i. decline in gold of 906 contracts. Without doubt, yesterday’s activity will show a further decline when the data becomes available later this morning.

In silver, Monday showed a decline of 1,600 contracts and Tuesday’s o.i. was up (surprisingly) by 730 contracts. I would suspect that Wednesday’s

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Financial News OnlineJason Corcoran in Moscow18 September 2008 Energy giant Gazprom's pension fund manager Leader is close to buying up troubled Russian brokerage KIT Finance as the government drew up a "red list" of 15 banks requiring urgent capital injections.In a statement late on Wednesday night, KIT said it was in the final stages of selling a controlling stake to Leader Asset Management with credit support from state-controlled banks Gazprombank and VTB.The rescue of KIT comes as Moscow's stock markets were suspended for the second day in a row and as the state pledged $60bn (€41.9bn) to save banks as a spreading liquidity crisis threatened to push the sector into insolvency.Minister for Finance Alexei Kudrin told Russian media several banks were have difficulties with meeting their obligations and were now holding talks with strategic investors.KIT, a ...