From the first paragraph of my Saturday commentary…”I don’t know what it is about that [one hour and change] stretch of time between the Sydney close and the London open…but if there is going to be a down day…it starts right there a large percentage of the time.” Any questions? Actually, both gold and silver got sold off the moment that the New York bullion banks opened for business 6:00 p.m. on Sunday night…which is very early Monday morning in Far East trading. Shortly before 3:00 p.m. in Hong Kong, gold had almost made it back to unchanged…and silver was actually up a couple of cents when the hammer fell. The bottom for gold came very shortly after the London a.m. gold fix at 5:30 New York time…and in silver, shortly after the Comex open. The ‘rally’ in the US dollar that started at the same time as the precious

Gold managed to add about three bucks to its price from the beginning of Wednesday morning trading in the Far East…right up until 1:00 p.m. in the London afternoon…which was 8:00 a.m. in New York. At that point, gold tacked on $8 in less than 30 minutes…sat there until lunchtime…then tacked on another $8 in less than 15 minutes. Then one of the usual not-for-profit sellers showed up and that was it for the day. Gold did manage to poke its nose above $940 again…and finally closed above the $940 mark at $940.30.

Does this price have any significance? Who knows, but I can easily tell that ‘da boyz’ have been defending this price with great enthusiasm since June 15th…as the daily market action has been so obvious lately…confirmed by the graph below.

Silver didn’t show up for this party, but

In early Tuesday trading in the Far East, gold didn’t do much of anything until shortly before 11:00 a.m. in the morning in Hong Kong. From that point, gold got sold off about $8 in an hour. Not a lot, but a pretty big move for the usually quiet Far East market. As it turned out, that was the low for world gold for the day. A quick retest of that price at 3:00 p.m. in Hong Kong…and gold was on its way higher…and the US$ much lower. This lasted through London trading, but ran into the usual brick wall at the Comex open in New York. Once the London p.m. gold fix was in at 3:00 p.m. [10:00 a.m. in New York]…down went the price.

This didn’t last long, and minutes before London closed for the day, a rally began that lasted almost until the end of Comex trading…and

In very early Tuesday morning trading in the Far East [still Monday evening in New York]…gold and silver saw their lows of the day. However, by the time that the Comex was open about 14 hours later, gold was up twelve bucks. But that was its high of the day, as the price was taken down immediately…and by the time that the Comex closed, eight dollars of that gain had been given back. Tuesday was a nothing day, really. The gold charts make it look worse than it really was…as most of gold’s move on Tuesday [and Monday, for that matter] can be chalked up to the gyrations of the US$.

However you will carefully note that although the dollar did a round trip in value between early Monday morning and Tuesday afternoon…neither gold nor silver were allowed to get a sniff of their Monday highs that occurred in early Far