The results of the government’s bank stress tests were released yesterday (Thursday), and the U.S. Federal Reserve has directed 10 banks to raise an aggregate $70 billion-plus in capital.

The base metals were all flashing green on Friday. Copper moved higher in the pre-dawn hours, went flat until late morning, then shot up again to finish barely off its intraday highs at $2.0954/lb., up 7¼ cents.

Why wait for Tim Geithner’s rigged stress test results for banks when the underground can help you separate the winners from the losers? Thanks to research carried out by Money Morning’s Martin Hutchinson, we can pre-empt the Treasury Department and reveal which are the strongest banks are which are most poisonous.

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.

Gold was up early in the overseas markets, fell off into mid-morning in New York, rallied back to peak at $890 just before the end of the Comex, then declined again through the Globex, finishing at $880.00/oz., down $1.10. Overnight, gold is slightly higher.

President Barack Obama convened a “who’s who” of executives from the nation’s largest banks Friday to mend fences with Wall Street and drum up support for his plans to stabilize the financial system.

Although we’re still in the middle of the worst financial crisis in decades, a few select banks are positioned to make a boatload of profits. And if you pick the right ones, gains of 100% or more are easily within reach.

In gold trading on Tuesday, it was all downhill right from the Sydney open…with the real price drop occurring shortly after the Comex open…same as most other days. The bottom for the day occurred shortly after electronic trading began in the New York afternoon. As a matter of fact, the gold chart from Tuesday looks suspiciously like the gold chart from Monday.

Last weekend, Global Finance published its list of the World’s 50 Safest Banks – a list that the publication has run for 17 years.

In sports, championship-caliber teams all have at least one characteristic in common: They’re able to focus on the fundamentals.