Gold Drops 1.3%, Silver Drops 2%, as Dollar Slips, Stocks Rise with Euro

From Chris Mullen at GoldSeek.com...

Gold Prices rose as much as $6.14 to $1127.94 an ounce in London on Wednesday, before falling to see a slight loss at $1118.85 by 10:00am in New York.

Rising back towards that earlier high, Gold Prices then plummeted, dropping as low as $1103.45 shortly after noon and ended with a loss of 1.3%.

The Gold Price in Euros fell to €812 an ounce.

Silver saw a slight loss at $17.26 in Asia before it rose to see a gain of $0.30 as high as $17.63 by late morning in New York. But silver prices also fell back off into the close, and ended with a loss of 2.0%

Platinum lost $7.50 to $1582, and copper fell over 4 cents to about $3.36.

Gold Mining and silver equities saw about 1% gains by late morning, but they then fell back off for most of the rest of trade and ended with roughly 1.5% losses.

Oil was mixed and ended higher as the Opec oil cartel raised its 2010 demand forecast, but that was offset by the Energy Information Administration's reporting an unexpected build in US crude inventory stockpiles for last week, up 1.4 million barrels.

The US Dollar index reversed early gains and ended lower as the Euro rose on strong manufacturing data from France and Italy.

Treasuries fell as the Dow, Nasdaq, and S&P found slight gains on continued hopes for improving earnings.

Washington's spending over-ran tax receipts by $220.9 billion last month, the Treasury said. New data also showed Wholesale US Inventories shrinking 0.2% in Jan., extending Dec.'s reduction and defying analyst forecasts of a slight build.

Thursday at 08:30 EST brings Initial US Jobless Claims for last week, expected at 460,000, plus the Trade Balance for January, expected to show a $41.0 billion deficit.

Looking to Buy Gold today? Cut out the middleman, and slash your costs, by using BullionVault...