Ed Steer’s Gold & Silver Daily

Friday’s gold price action was very positive… but volume was very light. But, considering the fact that it was a holiday-shortened week… plus the last week of the month, quarter and year… it was an outstanding performance. I must admit that the strong price action was not entirely what I was expecting… but I wouldn’t be at all surprised if JPMorgan et al were in the market covering short positions. Gold closed at another new record high price. Part of the blue trace [from 6:00 p.m. Thursday night in New York] plus all of the red trace, is Friday’s price action.

Pretty much the same thing can be said of the silver market price action. Friday’s high price spike made it up to $30.98 spot… and silver closed at another 30-year high.

The world’s reserve currency fell about 70 basis points up until about 11:00 a.m. on Friday morning in New York… and gained back about 20 basis points before Friday’s close.

The gold stocks peaked at precisely 11:00 a.m. on Friday morning in New York… as most of gold’s gains were in by then. Although the gold price continued to inch higher from there, the gold stocks themselves began to inch lower… and the HUI finished up only 0.91%. Here’s the 5-day HUI chart.

The CME Delivery Report had all the delivery data for the First Day Notice for delivery into the January contract. In gold, JPMorgan was the big issuer with 174 contracts in its client account. The Bank of Nova Scotia was the big stopper/receiver with 190 contracts in its proprietary [house] account. In silver, 219 contracts were delivered… all out of JPMorgan’s client account. The Bank of Nova Scotia was the big stopper/receiver in its house account, with 200 contracts.

According to the preliminary volume report for Friday, virtually all of the outstanding contracts for delivery in January were posted on Friday for delivery on January 4th… so the rest of January should be pretty quiet delivery wise… unless someone needs large quantities of either gold or silver immediately.

There was activity in both GLD and SLV on the last day of 2010. The GLD ETF showed another decline. This time it was 107,373 ounces. The SLV ETF headed in the other direction… showing an increase of 586,295 troy ounces.

The U.S. Mint didn’t have any further sales to report in December, but there is a remote possibility that they will update their December sales either today or tomorrow. At the moment, gold eagles sales stand at 60,000 ounces for the month of December… and silver eagle sales totaled 1,772,000.

For the entire 2010 calendar year… 1,220,500 ounces of gold eagles were sold, along with 209,000 one-ounce 24K gold buffaloes. Silver eagle sales for year totaled 34,662,500… about 90% of all the silver mined in the U.S.A. during 2010.

While on the subject of the U.S. Mint… here’s a story that was sent to me by reader ‘Rocky R’ on the weekend. It’s a posting over at numismaster.com… and the headline reads “5-Ounce ATB Silver Bullion Finally Reaches Public“. As I expected, they’re a big hit… and good luck trying to get one… let alone a complete set, unless you want to pay $2,800 on eBay. The link to the story is here.

Over at the Comex-approved depositories, they reported receiving 142,069 ounces of silver [net] on Thursday. Friday’s data won’t be available until sometime this afternoon… and I’ll post the year end numbers on Tuesday