Gold sinks as traders unwind options contracts

Gold prices slipped to start the week, pressured lower by traders who made bets the precious metal would fall.

Gold for February delivery fell $3.70 to settle Monday at $1,652.90 an ounce. Gold prices have dropped 1.3 percent so far this year.

Options on the New York Mercantile Exchange’s Comex exchange expire Monday. Many of the traders who had previously placed bets that gold would fall through options contracts known as ‘‘puts’’ are closing out those bets and taking their winnings off the table. That can knock prices lower.

With the exception of copper, other metals were also lower:

— Silver for March delivery fell 42.6 cents to $30.78.

— Platinum for April delivery fell $32.70 to $1,662.20.

— Palladium for March delivery fell 45 cents to $740.55 an ounce.

In grain futures, corn for March delivery rose 8.50 cents to settle at $7.29 a bushel Monday. Corn prices have surged 4 percent so far this year. A government report out earlier this month showed that farmers harvested much less corn last year than anticipated. It also revealed that the country’s stockpile of corn, used as food for cattle and other farm animals, dropped to the lowest level in nine years as of Dec. 1.
http://www.boston.com/business/markets/2013/01/28/gold-sinks-traders-unwind-option-contracts/kjWOa7C9l7DCedLv8Ub89M/story.html

HSBC Purchases $876 Million Worth of Silver

HSBC Purchases $876 Million Worth of Silver Capital Gold Group is a BBB Accredited Business. Listeners are welcome to receive a free precious metals guide by going tohttp://www.startwithgold.com/gold-guide/ or call 1(800)510-9594. If you'd like to listen to the rest of the show, visit StartWithGold.com to subscribe to the podcast. Silver has now rallied for 7 days due to the flood of inflows into silver backed ETF's and investment demand for coins and bars internationally. Analysts polled by Reuters expect silver to rise in 2013. This has helped silver prices rally over 6% so far this year and 4.5% last week alone. The close above $32/oz yesterday was bullish technically and could lead to silver testing the next level of resistance which is at $34/oz. The U.S. Mint has sold out of 2013 American Eagle silver coins and will resume sales the week of January 28 when the US Mint said inventory would be replenished.

Upcoming Debt Ceiling & China Gold Demand Explodes

Topics Include: Short term analysis, upcoming debt ceiling negotiations and China's unprecedented gold demand The IMF World Gold Council recently came out with a report showing how in November, China imported 90.8 tones of gold. That was double the 47 tonnes the imported the previous month in October bringing their annual import amount to over 800 tones, double what they imported in 2011. To put this in perspective, the 800 tones of gold imported in 2012 will exceed all of the official holdings of China. Also, during 2012 the Chinese bought $39 billion of gold while they bought under $10 billion of worthless U.S.