Daily Gold Update

Source: Bill Musgrave, American Gold Exchange

Austin— Gold extended its slide to nine sessions, slipping another 0.3% to close at $1,103.50 on follow-through from Monday's 2.2% plunge.

A so-called "bear raid" drove prices to five-year lows yesterday after a few large sellers dumped around 33 tonnes in Shanghai and New York in a matter of minutes. The fall was accelerated by automatic stop-loss selling and illiquidity in Asia markets because of holiday closures in Japan and elsewhere.

While weakened by recent bearish sentiment, gold briefly dipped below the psychologically important threshold of $1,100 today before bouncing back, buoyed by a sell-off in equities and a falling dollar. The Dow dropped nearly 200 points behind weak earnings in blue-chip tech firms like IBM. The dollar's 0.7% drop was largely attributed by profit-taking by forex traders.

The other precious metals were mixed, with platinum shedding 0.4 while silver added 0.2% and palladium jumped by 2.8%.

At the Comex close: August gold slipped $3.30 to $1,103.50; September silver added nearly 3 cents to $14.78; October platinum lost $4.30 to $984.30; and September palladium jumped $17.40 to $629.45 an ounce.