That's how much physical gold the US Mint alone sold on Wednesday, as gold fell to $1,350. For the month, 147,000 ounces (4.5 tons) have been removed from the mint at a 20% discount to last year's $1,650 average price. Don't worry about the mint – they have an average purchase price of about $90 and the US has 8,000 tons of it sitting around so, if someone wants to buy $200M worth in a month – that's fine with us but consider that the guy(s) buying 4.5 tons of gold for $200M might not be stupid.
We were discussing a great article in the Daily Bell (thanks Scott) that summed up my take on the recent gold move quite succinctly:
Following the wikipedia.org definition, the PSYOPS war on gold is intended to influence the target audience's value system, belief system, emotions, motives, reasoning and behavior. I would add, especially this last, which is what directly affects the price of gold.
The latest stage of the war began many weeks ago, with regular takedowns of the price of gold in waterfall fashion, at set times of the day. More recently, there appeared a series of planned announcements of oncoming doom from individuals prominent in finance and from bank analysts. The scenario painted for gold was one of a sky darkened by approaching thunderstorms.
The purpose of the 4-12 PSYOPS was to instill fear in the minds of the "target audience" – investors in gold. If you shoot a crow, and hang it up in your field, the crows – your "target audience" – will avoid the field. The same principle applies to investors in gold.
The identity of the target audience of the PSYOPS War on Gold is clearly revealed in the front-page article of the Financial Times, American edition, on Tuesday April
…
This article will become free after 48 hours (see below for free content). To read the rest of this article now, along with Phil's live intra-day comments, live trading ideas, Phil's market calls, additional member comments, and other members-only features - Subscribe to Phil's Stock World by clicking here.
