Gold was flat until just before the London open on Thursday, then commenced a long, slow slide that continued until the noon hour in New York, with a bottom at $926 before some uninspired late day buying pushed it to a finish at $928.80/oz., down $11.50. For the week, gold lost 1%.
Platinum tightly rangebound all day, bouncing between $1180 and $1190, finally coming to rest at $1183/oz., down $16. For the week, platinum dropped 1.2%.

Silver was virtually unchanged two hours into London trading, but fell off into the first hour in New York, briefly dipping below $13.30 before inching back over it and going flat as a pancake the rest of the day to close at $13.35/oz., down 35 cents. For the week, silver skidded 5.1%. (Click here for charts)

The precious metals ended the abbreviated holiday week by stepping back in their recent one-step-forward, one-step-back pattern, with all three taking a licking out behind the woodshed.

If anything, it was probably surprising that they didn’t slide more in a day of grim economic news, a rising dollar, and falling oil prices. But they likely benefited from the early departure of some traders getting a jump on the long weekend.

How do you keep any kind of perspective in this yo-yo market? The irrepressible Dan Norcini, writing on jsmineset.com, comments:

“There is really not much to say about any of this – deflation is battling inflation and until one side gets a clear advantage and dethrones the thinking in the other camp, we are going to see no trends, no orderly markets, no sanity and nothing but idiotic volatility and casino-like markets.

“The markets have been completely taken over by the day trading, one minute bar chart geeks who wouldn’t know a pork belly from a brisket cut or a grain of wheat from a cocoa pod but who are enamored with lots of squiggly lines and dream of coming back from their bathroom break and discovering that they have traded in and out of the same market 15 times during that period and made $100,000 on each turn.

“The rest of us normal people who actually have lives to lead and families to raise, etc. are better served keeping a longer term perspective and understanding that the Dollar’s days of supremacy are forever over and that the rise of the BRIC nations means that America is beginning to go the same path as the once mighty and proud British Empire. Its leaders too spent it into oblivion and destroyed its currency in the process.”

Indeed they have, and gold will one of the few things that ultimately benefits.

Source: Precious Metals Pounded Again