National Gold News

Is the U.S. economy about to experience a major downturn? Unfortunately, there are a whole bunch of signs that economic activity in the United States is really slowing down right now. Freight volumes and freight expenditures are way down, consumer confidence has declined sharply, major retail chains all over America are closing hundreds of stores, and the “sequester” threatens to give the American people their first significant opportunity to experience what “austerity” tastes like. Gas prices are going up rapidly, corporate insiders are dumping massive amounts of stock and there are high profile corporate bankruptcies in the news almost every single day now.

JPMorgan’s Chief U.S. Equity Strategist Tom Lee says it’s time to move to the sidelines following the biggest sell-off in the stock market this year that has taken place over the past two days.

Lee is known as typically bullish on equities – and he remains positive over a longer time frame – but for now, he tells clients in a note, “it is challenging to see the elements to support a big lift in equity prices from these levels. Thus, we recommend investors turn cautious and defer incremental purchases.”

The CME raising margins for Silver Futures to such a degree that relative to market price, futures multiplier, and physical demand by consumers is just too high has basically killed the silver market.

Throw in the fact that many brokerages have even higher margins than the exchange margins, and outside of a fed announcement, the silver market has all but dried up, when compared to the much more active physical market for silver.

On Wednesday, Goldman Sachs upped the ante on its call that 2013 will mark the end of a long-running bull market in gold by introducing a new forecast: the bank’s commodity strategists see the shiny yellow metal falling to $1200 per ounce by 2018.