Gold Ends Weds 0.5% Higher as Wall Street Stops to Watch Bernanke, Paulson Testimony

From Chris Mullen at GoldSeek.com...

Gold fell $6.40 to $879.60 in Asia on Wednesday and then rose nearly 2% to $901.75 early in New York.

Gold Prices fell back off for most of the rest of trade, but still ended with a gain of 0.45%.

Silver fell just slightly to $13.045 and rose over 4% to $13.63 before it also fell back off into the close, but it still ended with a gain of 2.22%.

The Gold Price in Euros rose to about €607, platinum gained $3.50 to $1207.50, and copper fell over 4 cents to about $3.12.

Gold and silver equities traded mostly slightly higher and ended with modest gains.

Oil rose in early trade but ultimately fell back off on worries over demand. US oil inventories fell 1.5 million barrels for last week, said Weds's weekly report, while gasoline inventories fell 5.9 million barrels, distillates fell 4.2 million barrels, and refineries ran at 66.7%.

The US Dollar index rose as the Bush administration's bailout plans remained mostly steady and the Euro fell on a drop in the September German Ifo Index.

The house financial services committee hosted Ben Bernanke of the US Fed and Henry Paulson of the Treasury. They said that a properly developed bail-out for Wall Street and foreign banks could increase the value of those distressed assets the government plans to buy with its $700 billion program.

Bernanke also argued that failure to act will result in job losses, increasing confidence the bill will pass Congress. Sales of existing homes fell again in August, according to new data.

Treasuries rose slightly after a record $34-billion auction of two-year notes. The two-year swap rate, meantime, rose over 160 points – which means in plain English that it is now very hard to borrow.

The Dow, Nasdaq, and S&P held near unchanged in low volume as views over the bailout plan did not change much and everyone seemed to be watching the Bernanke-Paulson testimony and not trading in order to react to any developments.

President Bush was set to address the nation about the bailout at 21:00 EST.

Thursday at 13:30 GMT brings Durable Goods Orders for August (expected at -1.3%) and Initial Jobless Claims for 9/20.

Then comes the New Home Sales report for August, expected at 518,000 annualized.