30 Quotes by John Read

We believe that new-year allocations towards commodities will keep platinum and palladium firm in the near term and see platinum at $1,100/oz and palladium at $300/oz over one month, although we suspect that profit taking will set in at some stage and see both metals lower to $1,050/oz and $270/oz in three months.

We believe that investors are likely to interpret this ... as being positive for the gold market as it will raise speculation that China will increase its gold holdings.

We believe that gold is attempting to find a range with the recent extremes of $535 and $555 likely to confine the metal for a while.

Silver's recent rally appears to have been driven by intensifying speculation that the proposed ETF will soon gain approval from the SEC, although we have seen no indications on the possible timing.

Silver is benefiting from pre-positioning ahead of the expected launch of an exchange-traded fund in silver.

Of course, gold can go higher on investment and speculative demand, but there seems no clear motivation for new money to be committed to gold at this time.

Base and precious metals are considerably above what we consider to be fair value - based on fundamental supply and demand factors - but events of the past two years have demonstrated that investment and speculative flows are very capable of lifting prices well beyond fundamental fair value.

We suspect that technical buying of gold and silver on COMEX (New York) will be triggered by a positive announcement of the silver ETF.

Gold looks set to be supported and set to move higher as we approach the anniversary of the 9/11 attack on the U.S. and the expectations of an attack on Iraq intensify.