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$.

Both gold and silver got sold off gently in Far East trading on Wednesday. This slight downward trend lasted until shortly after 12:00 noon in London…and shortly before the Comex opened in New York. From there, rallies in both metals got hit hard the moment that the gold price broke through $960 and silver broke through $15 respectively. Strangely enough, this occurred about 12:05 Eastern time in both metals. From there, the selling pressure was on…and as of this writing, gold has given back $15…and silver about 35 cents. Silver’s chart is particularly interesting, as it was obvious that sellers had virtually vanished and the price was going parabolic before JPMorgan (NYSE:JPM) showed up.

From the beginning of Globex trading in New York on Tuesday night, right up until the Comex open on Wednesday morning, gold quietly added about seven bucks to its price. At 8:30 in New York, there was a sell-off…and at exactly 9:00 a.m. the gold price began a move that tacked on about $12. The high-water market for the day was at the London p.m. fix an hour later [10:00 a.m. in New York...3 p.m. in London]. From there it traded sideways for the rest of the day. According to the usual N.Y. commentator…”estimated volume was a heavy 141,356 lots, with a 28.6% increase in the last half hour. The wary will note that world gold essentially moved sideways after…

The low for gold was at the Sydney open, and from there it rose slowly and steadily through Far East, London and Comex trading in New York. The high came in electronic trading about an hour after the Comex close. Gold managed to make it to $928…but was not allowed a sniff of $930 yesterday. Maybe today.

Gold was basically comatose all through Far East and European trading…with what activity there was, beginning [as is mostly the case] once floor trading began on the Comex in New York. Volume was decent in both metals, and both gold and silver’s attempts to go vertical shortly before the London close got firmly stopped in their tracks. The usual New York gold commentator noted that a very large 80,482 gold contracts had traded by 11:00 a.m….with a total of 110,979 for the entire day.

Despite things looking decidedly negative in Far East and London trading yesterday, the bottom in the gold price [such as it was] came at the beginning of Comex trading at 8:30 a.m. New York time yesterday morning. So the sell-off I was so concerned about in yesterday’s rant didn’t amount to a hill of beans, because by the time the smoke had cleared, the gold price was virtually unchanged from Tuesday. Let’s see what happens today.

Gold tacked on about $10 in early Wednesday morning trading in the Far East. But shortly before London began trading, all the those gains began to disappeared. The low for the day was shortly after Comex floor trading started. From there, a spirited rally began, which went vertical right after London closed for the day…but [as always] there was someone standing there with a hammer to make sure that the rally went no further.

Tuesday trading in gold turned into a pretty big bear raid. As I mentioned briefly in my rant yesterday…starting shortly after Sydney opened on Tuesday morning…someone bombed the bullion market with a big sell order. The word ‘big’ is relative in this case. In the extremely thin trading that characterizes Far East gold and silver activity…a 1,000 contract sell order would hammer the market…and that’s pretty much what happened in gold. Ditto for silver.

Andrew Gordon says major investors are being forced to liquidate assets to raise cash meet margin calls.