Gold & Silver Slide as Stocks Bounce, Dollar Falls, on Bernanke's 2010 Forecast

From Chris Mullen at GoldSeek.com...

Gold and silver traded slightly lower in Asia and London on Tuesday before they rose at the New York opening.

Both Gold Bullion and silver then tumbled, gold falling as low as $959.00 before closing with a loss of 2.4% for the session. Silver fell as low as $13.69 per ounce, ending with a loss of 3.5%.

The Dow, Nasdaq, and S&P meantime rose over 3% despite a slew of horrible earnings reports as Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke was able to instill some confidence in the markets with his testimony before the Senate Banking Committee, stating that the recession may end in 2009 and a rebound in economic activity may come as early as 2010.

Oil rose back near $40 on more evidence of OPEC output cuts and hope that demand may finally start to come back.

The US Dollar index rose alongside gold in early New York trade as the Yen fell markedly on worries over a severe economic downturn in Japan. But the Dollar turned lower in late trade as more poor economic data came in, and the index ended slightly lower on the day as traders appeared to be putting some of their large amounts of cash to work.

The Gold Price in Euros fell to about €757 an ounce, platinum lost $31.50 to $1041, and copper gained roughly 5 cents to about $1.48.

Gold Mining and silver equities fell over 7% by late morning and remained near their lows for the rest of the day.

Gold and silver both continued to slip in after-hours US "access" trade, moving towards the Australian start-to-Wednesday at $963 and $13.80 an ounce respectively.

Treasuries rose for most of trade after more poor economic data and strong demand for a fresh auction of $40 billion of two-year notes, but they fell back off by the close as traders appeared to be moving some money into the stock market.

After Tuesday saw the S&P/CS Home Price Index for Dec. show an 18.6% drop from the end of 2007, Wednesday at 10:00 EST brings the Existing US Home Sales report for January, expected at 4,810,000 annualized

Ben Bernanke continues his Monetary Policy Report to the House Financial Services Committee.