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Gold fell as low as $1,563 this morning, on top of yesterday’s sell-off, but has started to stabilize…as of 7:20 am Pacific, bullion is flat at $1,576…Silver has rebounded after dropping briefly below $27 an ounce…it’s now up 4 cents at $27.30…Copper is unchanged at $3.37…Crude Oil is 73 cents lower at $96.46 while the U.S. Dollar Index is off one-quarter of a point at 82.64…

Gold Views

UBS attributes much of yesterday’s weakness in Gold to sell stops triggered on Comex, but notes exchange-traded fund outflows are also occurring again…“Physical demand, out of Asia in particular, was quick to respond to the sub-$1,600 move”, UBS stated…“Our physical flows to India indicated above-average demand, indeed the strongest we’ve seen since early January…SGE (Shanghai Gold Exchange) volumes yesterday were also higher on the day at about 12 (metric) tons, although this hardly compares to the strong appetite seen in February…Overall, physical buying volumes so far have not been large enough to offset the selling…Some physical buyers are also likely sitting back to see if there’s more conviction to this move lower, opting to wait for prices to stabilize”…

Commerzbank, meanwhile, says “we do not anticipate that the current price weakness among precious metals will last for any length of time, and expect to see higher prices again in the near future…Commerzbank sees some positive influences for Gold, starting with March U.S. Mint sales of 62,000 ounces of Gold coins that is nearly the same as March of a year ago, when 62,500 were sold…“Year-on-year sales of U.S. Silver coins actually surged by 32% to 3.36 million ounces”, Commerzbank says…“In addition, the Istanbul Gold Exchange reported that Turkey had imported 18.26 tons of Gold in March, the highest amount for eight months…According to data released by the World Gold Council, Turkey was the world’s fourth-largest consumer of Gold in 2012…

In The Bearish Corner, Societe Generale:  “End Of The Gold Era”

The price of Gold has reached “bubble territory” and stands to fall 15% by year’s end, Societe Generale Head of Commodities Research Michael Haigh said yesterday on CNBC…”We’ve been bearish Gold for a couple of months now…Coincidentally, we put out our longer report today looking at the end of the Gold era right before we saw a 1.5% selloff…We see the trigger for the unfolding coming from the macro side…What’s considered to be the non-fundamentals for oil and grains and base metals are actually the fundamentals for Gold, so the trigger from the Gold decline we see is coming from the non-fundamental side, i.e., real interest rates rise, stronger dollar, moderate GDP growth, etc…So it’s a macro-driven downdraft that the other elements are going to react to…Haigh said that as economic data shows improvement, Gold as a shelter will suffer…

Credit Suisse Group AG Cuts Gold Forecast

Global government stimulus has cut the likelihood of further banking and liquidity crises and reduced the need for a protection of wealth, Credit Suisse Group AG wrote in a report today…the bank cut its 2013 Gold forecast by 9.2% to $1,580 and lowered its Silver estimate by 11% to $28.50…“Silver, although it has a much larger component of industrial demand, is likely to be weighed down by the slow slide we forecast in Gold”, Credit Suisse analysts wrote…

Of course there are very strong arguments against the idea that we’re at the “end of the Gold era” and we’ll update and review the bullish case for Gold in the days ahead…

Updated Copper Chart

Copper continues to be under pressure (now trading at an 8-month low) for simple demand/supply reasons…inventories monitored by the London Metal Exchange are the highest in nearly a decade since October, 2003…as one analyst stated, “Base metals are telling a story about global growth which is not reflected in U.S. equity markets, for example…there is limited physical demand and no shortage of supply…the rise in LME stocks is simply a reflection of this” (Guy Wolf, macro strategist at Marex Spectron Group in London)…

On the positive side, below is a 2.5-year weekly chart from John that shows Copper is deeply oversold at the moment and has support near current levels…RSI(2) is now at an even more extreme low than it was back in November and June of last year – just prior to significant moves to the upside…

Private U.S. Jobs Report Disappoints

Private-sector job creation in the U.S. was considerably less than expected in March, indicating that the labor market’s improvements could begin stalling…a joint report this morning from ADP and Moody’s Analytics showed 158,000 new positions, well below economists’ expectations of 200,000…the report serves as a precursor to Friday’s non-farm payrolls report, so the miss could cause economists to lower their projections…much of the job creation came from small businesses of less than 50 employees, which added 74,000 positions, while large companies added 47,000 and medium-sized firms hired 37,000…as has been the case throughout the economic recovery, the service sector led the recovery in jobs, adding 151,000…

Today’s Markets

The Dow has retreated 40 points through the first 50 minutes of trading today…the TSX is off 60 points while the Venture has lost another 7 points and is at 1062…Asian markets were mostly lower overnight, though Japan’s Nikkei average surged 359 points or 3% on expectations of aggressive monetary stimulus from the Bank of Japan’s highly anticipated policy meeting that ends tomorrow…European shares, meanwhile, are moderately lower in late trading overseas…the ECB holds its policy meeting tomorrow…

TomaGold Corp. (LOT, TSX-V) Chart Update

TomaGold (LOT, TSX-V) and Quinto Real Capital (QIT, TSX-V) have managed to hold up reasonably well as they continue drilling at Monster Lake in northwest Quebec where an important discovery was made in late February…where these stocks go from here will depend entirely on the next set of results which should come sometime this month after drilling resumed March 12…given current market conditions, the wisest strategy we believe is to wait for more results and re-asses the opportunity at that point…if the numbers exceed expectations, and there’s a gap-up after a halt, there still should be an opportunity to participate in another leg-up in this play…as always, perform your own due diligence…LOT is off a penny at 26 cents on light volume through the first 50 minutes of trading today…

Tinka Resources (TK, TSX-V) Update

Tinka Resources (TK, TSX-V), which we first brought to our readers’ attention early last fall when it was trading in the 60’s and 70’s, has impressively bucked the trend in junior resource stocks over the last six months as it continues to churn out positive results from its 100% owned Colquipucro project (Ag-Pb-Zn) in west-central Peru…however, some weakness has started to appear in the chart with a divergence between RSI and price, and a break below the upsloping channel appears increasingly likely as a possible correction sets in…as of 7:20 am Pacific, TK is unchanged at $1.11…

Note: John., Jon and Terry do not hold positions in LOT or TK.