Gold held in positive territory until the second hour of New York trading on Wednesday, but it nosedived to below $840 by mid-morning, then saw a mild rally back to $850 killed off at the noon hour, after which it was nearly all downhill to a finish at $842.00/oz., down $21.50. Overnight, gold has been flat.

Just after the Comex open, platinum surged to the $1,000 mark for the first time since mid-October, but it failed to hold there, bouncing around during the rest of the trading day and ending at $967/oz., up $6. Overnight, platinum has been pushing higher.

Silver peaked near $11.60 just after New York opened, hit a waterfall decline that beat it back to $10.90 at mid-morning, but then perked up a bit to close at $11.02/oz., down 42 cents. Overnight, silver is trending lower. (Click here for charts)

While platinum managed to finish in the green, both gold and silver took a pounding, as a slipping dollar failed to provide enough support to counteract plunging oil prices and a weak equities market.

Speculators were betting that the economic stimuli on the way will brighten the picture for platinum, despite the truly awful sales numbers coming out of the auto industry with somber regularity.

“The more-industrial metals have been beaten up, and they’re going to benefit from the infrastructure plan,” said Frank McGhee, of Integrated Brokerage Services in Chicago. “Platinum got down to even with gold, and that’s historically cheap.”

It’s a theory that doesn’t seem to be applying to silver, which also has a strong industrial sales component. Or perhaps silver has begun to recast itself as almost entirely an investment metal. We shall see.

In any case, Dan Norcini, writing on jsmineset.com, had some harsh words, laying off the day’s action to hedge and index funds that “trade” by “throwing money en masse into whatever markets their algorithms tell them to or withdrawing it all at once should the same computer command them to do so the very next day.”

Norcini goes on to sneer that “we now have the Pac-Man crowd and the Mortal Kombat generation who are manning the trading desks at these firms. Maybe they are looking for the combination of the right keys to press to produce a power move that will allow them to gobble up all the competition. Nothing else can explain this display of such ineptness and clumsiness.”

Fortunately, Norcini says, and we agree, “if you really know the fundamentals of a market and if those fundamentals are bullish, then you can take advantage of the short-sighted stupidity of the funds as their actions present opportunity for traders of convictions who are also well-capitalized.”

Source: Gold, Silver Sharply Lower