Gold was flat until New York opened on Thursday, bumped up about $8 in the first hour, then sold off until after noon, bottoming at $802 before turning things around again and rallying strongly into the Globex, then slipped a little to finish at $816.70/oz., up $6.60. Overnight, gold is sharply higher.

Platinum was modestly down all day, but did manage to bounce decisively off the $900 mark, regaining some of the lost ground, and ended at $919/oz., down $10. Overnight, platinum has pushed higher.

Silver had a very erratic day that followed gold very closely, but with more striking peaks and valleys that ultimately resulted in little change, as it closed at $10.58/oz., up just 3 cents. Overnight, silver is trending higher. (Click here for charts)

It was a day without any major moves in the precious metals, as gold managed to hold onto a modest gain, platinum eased a bit, and silver was nearly unchanged. But investors couldn’t have been too disappointed, what with the dollar gaining slightly on the euro and crude prolonging its slide.

The Hightower Report saw some good things in silver’s performance, writing: “The silver market was mostly under pressure until mid session when the March contract saw the beginning of a very impressive recovery effort. Apparently the silver market was able to break the tight track with the energy complex as the energy complex remained weak while the silver market was able to bounce. All things considered the action in the silver market on Thursday was impressive considering the overt weakness of the US numbers and the initial sharp slide in equity prices.”

Ira Epstein, the president of Ira Epstein & Co. in Chicago, is not very optimistic, writing that, “There is no inflation yet for gold to hang its hat on.”

Epstein went on to say that, “Until inflation shows signs of surfacing, gold has a better chance of holding value off of shocks to world economic woes than inflation … That will change if the stimulus package and other moves world governments are initiating take hold. Inflation will return in a serious way but that time is not now.”

But can it be far off?

Since the second quarter of 2007, banks worldwide have posted more than $1 trillion in losses and writedowns related to investments in sub-prime mortgages. The U.S. government’s response, as of November, has been to pledge $8.5 trillion to rescue financial companies and help the country recover from a recession. If that isn’t inflation, what is?

Source: Precious Metals Little Changed