Thursday 10 April 2008

Pt and Pd up on SA power shortages. 2008-01-26

Saturday 26th January 2008: 10.01 p.m.

Well, it's been a more interesting week in the markets this week. There were major downturns on the stock markets worldwide on Monday while the Americans were on a day's holiday for Martin Luther King Day, on Tuesday the Dow opened something like 400-500 points down or the Dow futures showed that this was going to happen. Bernanke and the Fed made a sudden announcement of a 3/4 point cut ininterest rates with more likely to come at their scheduled meeting next week, the markets rallied somewhat and some ended up for the week. So we came within a whisker of the stock market rout mentioned here last week, were it not for the 3/4 point rate cut from the Fed. The markwets generally rallied after the rate cut news and some ended up a little on the week after a wild volatile ride.

Gold had taken a bit of a hit over the last couple of weeks but ended the week with a spot market price run to $923.73 and settling at $910.50 by Friday's close. The new high beats the high of $916.10 of a few weeks ago on the spot market.

While chaos ruled in the stock markets, the yellow metal had risen convincingly past $900.

The runup in precious metals, particularly the spectacular rises in Platinum and Rhodium were helped by power problems at South Africa's mines. See this article.

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