Goldman at it again.

Good morning and welcome to another Wonderful Wednesday! The Marmalade greets me this morning with their 1969 hit, “Reflections of My Life.”

The New York Spot Prices pulled back hard yesterday with Gold closing down $9.70 settling in at $1,284.80, Silver was down $0.21 to $17.00, while Platinum gained $3.00 to close at $933. Palladium gained $7.00 reaching $970.00, but Rhodium was the big winner gaining $60.00 with a closing price of $1,300.00. This sure looked like the work of the “Bullion Bank Boyz.”In overnight trading, Gold has continued its downward trend losing an additional $5.50, Silver is down $0.08, and Platinum has lost another $10.00. Well, yesterday I was concerned that we may lose every bit that we gained last week. This morning, we’re $3 shy of that number.

In world financial news, stocks continue to reach new highs and currencies are moving in extremely tight ranges as the Dow climbed above 23,000 for the first time. The dollar continues to strengthen with the speculation of the next Federal Reserve Chairperson and anticipation of someone more hawkish than Janet Yellen.

My regular readers remember that I pointed out in my October 3rd blog that Goldman Sachs is one of the elite Bullion Banks. Those institutions that actually store physical gold for clients. Well yesterday, I’m sure much to Ben Bernanke’s chagrin, Goldman Sachs reported that gold has the key characteristics of money of fear and wealth being the core drivers of bullion.

“Precious metals remain a relevant asset class in modern portfolios, despite their lack of yield,” analysts including Jeffrey Currie and Michael Hinds wrote. “They are neither a historic accident nor a relic.” Looking at properties such as durability and intrinsic value, they are still relevant even with new materials discovered and new assets emerging, such as cryptocurrencies, they said.

Investors boost the amount of gold in their portfolio as uncertainty increases, making fear the key medium to short-run driver, Goldman said. Wealth is the long-term driver, especially in emerging markets such as China, where growing income levels over the next few decades will support prices, it said in a report.

The report barely touched on what I consider a key point, noting that “Investors have become more conscious of the physical versus futures market distinction.” From my perspective, this is huge and should help to support prices thr

ough simple economics of supply and demand. However, and this is a HUGE however, is just a week ago it was reported that Goldman said, “Gold has had a solid 2017, but it looks like things could be about to change. (Remember that as a Bullion Bank, Goldman controls not only a lot of physical gold in allocated accounts but 15,000 times that in unallocated or paper gold.) This statement has me somewhat perplexed. Goldman stated that “As for how far the precious metal can fall from here, we could see a retest of the late 2016 lows near $1,100, which would make for a drop of more than 13% from current levels.”

I’ll be watching the markets like a hawk today and update this with any news first thing tomorrow morning.

Well, I’ll let that be it for today. Go out there and make a difference! See ya’ll later!

*Disclaimer: Precious Metal Musings™ is written for entertainment and news purposes only and should not be used in making purchases and/or sales of precious metals.