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Gold is looking solid so far today and is up $4 an ounce to $1,767 as of 5:50 am Pacific…Silver, which seems to have found support at its 20-day moving average (SMA), is up 14 cents at $34.12…Copper is up 4 pennies at $3.73…Crude Oil has gained $1.28 to $92.53 while the U.S. Dollar Index is off one-fifth of a point to 79.84 after again encountering resistance overnight just above 80…

U.S. Silver Output Down 12% In July

U.S. mined Silver output was down 12% in July from the same month a year ago, according to figures released by the U.S. Geological Survey…total July production this year was 2,588,140 ounces…Silver holdings in exchange-traded products (ETP’s) reached their highest level in 14 months in mid-July, and provided a short-term boost to silver prices, the agency stated…physical holdings in major Silver ETP’s increased to levels last seen in May, 2011…

U.S. Jobless Claims Drop To Lowest Level In Four Years

Weekly jobless claims fell to their lowest level in four years, while the U.S. trade deficit widened and import prices rose more than expected, according to economic numbers released at 5:30 am Pacific…the number of Americans seeking unemployment aid plummeted to 339,000 last week, the lowest level in more than four years…the sharp drop offered a hopeful sign that the job market could pick up…the Labor Department said weekly applications fell by 30,000 to the lowest level since February, 2008…the four-week average, a less volatile measure, dropped by 11,500 to 364,000, a six-month low…

Romney Narrows Gap In Presidential Race

Mitt Romney’s strong performance in the first presidential election debate has drawn him closer in the race for the White House against President Barack Obama, according to new NBC News/Wall Street Journal polls of three swing states…in Virginia, Romney leads Obama by 48% to 47% among likely voters…before last week’s debate, Obama held a slim 2% lead…in Florida, the Democratic incumbent leads his Republican challenger by 48% to 47% among likely voters…that 1% margin was unchanged since before the debate…and in Ohio, Romney has trimmed 2% off Obama’s pre-debate lead…Obama holds a 51 to 45% edge among likely voters in that state…all three surveys were conducted for NBC/WSJ by the Marist College Institute of Public Opinion with margins for error of 3.1 percentage points…

Today’s Markets

Asian markets were mixed overnight with China’s Shanghai Composite pulling back modestly (down 17 points to 2103) after several days of strong gains…European shares are stronger this morning while stock index futures in New York as of 6:00 am Pacific are pointing toward a positive open on Wall Street…

Stay Focused On The Big Picture

John has charts this morning on both the Venture Exchange and the TSX Gold Index which should put any nervous nellies at ease after a bit of a rough first half of a shortened trading week…the Venture has fallen 43 points or 3.2% the last 2 sessions while the Gold Index recovered slightly yesterday after falling 14 points or 4% the previous two days…there are so many arguments in favor of the position that the Venture and precious metal stocks in general are in a major new primary uptrend at the moment that should only accelerate over the coming months…so in our view, minor pullbacks along the way – a couple of steps down the ladder after a few steps up – are great bargain-hunting opportunities in quality situations if you accept that big picture view…there are always plenty of doubters in the very early stages of a new bull market which we contend is what the CDNX is currently in, and that’s entirely normal and healthy…the number of bulls will gradually increase as time wears on and the bull market ultimately gets exhausted when virtually everyone is bullish…

First, let’s take a look at the TSX Gold Index which, in this 6-month daily chart from John, is trading in a horizontal channel and has just bounced off previous RSI support at 50…the recent overbought condition has cleansed itself, and the Index has a very strong support band between 332 and 335…

Venture Exchange

The Venture’s biggest challenge at the moment is overcoming a resistance band between 1350 and 1365, so the market has stepped back slightly to rebuild the energy to do that…the Venture has closed below its 20-day SMA for the first time since early August which is unsettling to some, but from 1250 to 1300 there’s a ton of support based on Fibonacci numbers and rising 50 and 100-day SMA’s…in fact, right now, you’ll notice in John’s 3-month chart below that the RSI(14) is now at previous support after spending much of last month in overbought territory…the consolidation channel is very much intact…

Comstock Metals (CSL, TSX-V)

It was a bad overall market day for Comstock Metals (CSL, TSX-V) to come out with news yesterday, and the stock got sold off sharply despite the fact the company released decent preliminary Gold assay results from two of the first eight holes completed at its QV Project in the Yukon (results from check assays and metallic fire assays have not yet been received)…QV12-001 returned 82 metres (from a depth of 20 to 102 metres) grading 1.02 g/t Au, while QV-002 intercepted 52.4 metres near-surface grading 1.28 g/t Au…this is an encouraging early-stage discovery…all eight holes at QV intersected thick zones of quartz-sericite-carbonate altered gneiss and feldspar porphyry dikes with quartz vein stockworks, breccias, disseminated and vein controlled pyrite, and visible Gold…”The broad, near-surface Gold zones, along with a shallow dip of 30 degree to the northwest, make an ideal open-pittable mining scenario at the VG zone,” stated company President and CEO Rasool Mohammad…”We are also very encouraged by our high-grade Gold zones in the broader low-grade near-surface mineralization, indicating underground mining potential as well”…CSL slid 12.5 cents yesterday to close at 36.5 cents…

AuricoGold Inc. (AUQ, TSX)

AuricoGold Inc. (AUQ, TSX) is a compelling situation to look at, for those interested in producers, after the company announced a $750 million cash deal Tuesday to sell some of its assets in Mexico…the stock jumped $1.34 yesterday on the news to close at $7.60…below is a 2.5-year weekly chart from John that shows an important bottom was put in on this stock in early September at $5.20 per share…

Note: John, Jon and Terry do not hold positions in AUQ.

IIROC Studying High Frequency Trading

The Globe and Mail reports in today’s edition that the Investment Industry Regulatory Organization of Canada (IIROC) is involved in an intensive study to see how markets are being influenced by high frequency trading, which could be positive news for retail investors especially…the Globe’s Noreen Rasbach wrote that what the study has looked at so far is the prevalence of this activity – 42% of all trades in the Canadian market and 32% of the value traded…”High-frequency traders can see things a millisecond ahead of the rest of us, but a millisecond is worth a fortune,” stated University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management professor Eric Kirzner…Kirzner says high frequency traders “can see what slow moving traders are doing and move ahead of them”…Baskin Financial Services President David Baskin says, “This is sort of a ‘tragedy of the commons’ situation where the high frequency traders have found a way to exploit the market in the short run, but run the risk in the long run of spoiling the markets for everyone”…the Globe describes Baskin as an unabashed critic of the practice…proponents say high frequency trading is actually helping the markets by improving liquidity…