We offer our latest analysis on the precious metals market.

After two weeks of consolidation, precious metals finally awoke from their slumber over the past few days. Gold, silver and palladium spiked to the top of their recent ranges, while platinum broke out to fresh multi-month highs.

A strike at the world’s largest platinum mine, Rustenburg in South Africa, has led to the loss of more than 80,000 troy ounces of the metal over the past month. The mine’s operator, Impala Platinum, said resumption of full production will take weeks, at least. 

Analysts warn that the situation could get uglier if labor unrest spreads to other companies.

South Africa’s total output was 4,775,000 troy ounces in 2011, which represented 75 percent of global output. 

Prices for platinum have surged in recent sessions, now trading at a five-month high. The metal is quickly closing in on parity with gold prices. 

After the recent breakout, prices have a clear path toward the multi-year high above $1900, leaving substantial upside from here.

While gold also has been performing well, the gold/platinum ratio has been quickly falling amid platinum’s outperformance. It was last trading near 1.02 after peaking above 1.15 late last year.

Over the past three decades, the ratio has been significantly below 1. Thus, continued platinum outperformance over gold would not be surprising as the ratio declines further.

Even so, the outlook for gold is bullish as well. The yellow metal moved up to the top of its recent range this past week and looks poised to move toward the next level of resistance at $1800

GOLD

…..read more on Gold, Silver, Palladium, US Dollar and view 25 charts HERE

Update: Mark Leibovit’s pre-opening Gold Comment for 02/22/12. GOLD – ACTION ALERT – BUY
Metals took off for the same reason stocks rallied. Platinum saw a new recovery high of 1646 along with Palladium which traded at 717. Silver touched 34.58, just four cents under its February 34.62 peak. Gold fell a tad short too touching 1761.50 versus its February 3 peak at 1764.20. The burden of proof is on the bulls here, but ‘seasonality’ for gold is beginning to run out. I would still like to see silver push back toward my projected 30-31 pullback zone. Afterwards, my target is first 37 on its way to 42-43. Gold targets to the mid 1800s and perhaps back to its record 1922 high, but I was thinking we should first see more of a pullback, perhaps into the 1600s. So far, this market has said it has other plans. Stay tuned.

A Prime Opportunity to Buy Gold Stocks is Imminent

The price action of the past six trading days made it clear that contrary to our previous thinking the XAU did not break out to the upside late last month. A definitive upside breakout and confirmation that the intermediate-term correction ended in late December will require a daily close above 205. (last nights close 198.20)

By its nature, confirmation of an important low will usually be belated and will therefore usually not coincide with a good short-term buying opportunity. In general, buying should be done in response to pronounced weakness, not strength. For example, it made more sense to buy near the start of trading on Thursday 16th February, with the gold stock indices having just fallen for 9 days in a row and looking like they were about to extend the losing streak to 10 days, than to buy at the end of January with the XAU appearing to have just broken out to the upside.

It’s possible that the gold-stock indices bottomed on the morning of 16th February, but at this stage the price action is non-committal. If a short-term bottom had been put in place last Thursday it would have been normal for there to be some follow-through to the upside on Friday, so the fact that Friday was another down-day leaves open the possibility that the indices will make new multi-week lows this week.

If a break to new multi-week lows occurs this week it will create an opportunity for under-exposed speculators to do some buying. It won’t, in our opinion, signal that major additional weakness lies ahead. There is a realistic possibility that the HUI and the XAU will test their late-December lows before the end of this month, but very little chance that they will do worse than that before commencing their next tradable rallies.

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