The Metals: Gold climbed to a new 2 month high at $1254.74 a little after 8:30AM EST before it dropped back down to as low as $1242.15 by late morning in New York, but it then bounced back higher into the close and ended with a loss of just 0.15%. Silver climbed to as high as $19.48 and fell to as low as $19.22 before it also bounced back higher and ended with a loss of just 0.05%. Euro gold fell to €973, platinum gained $10.50 to $1527, and copper climbed nearly 11 cents to about $3.47. Gold and silver equities fell roughly 1% by late morning and remained at about that level for the rest of the day. GoldSeek.com Celebrates 15 Year Anniversary PRWeb IMF's Gold Assets Fall 16.85 Tons in July as Russia Adds to its Holdings Bloomberg The Economy: Report For Reading Expected Previous ADP Employment Aug -10K 13K 37K Construction Spending July -1.0% -0.7% -0.8% ISM Index Aug 56.3 52.9 55.5 Fuld says government denied Lehman while helping Wall St Yahoo Regulators see Dodd-Frank help on systemic risk Reuters Tomorrow at 8:30AM EST brings Initial Jobless Claims for 8/28 expected at 475,000, second quarter Productivity expected at -1.7%, and Unit Labor Costs expected at 1.1%. At 10AM are Pending Home Sales for July expected at 0.0% and Factory Orders for July expected at 0.3%. The Markets: Oil rose on strong economic data from China and the US. The EIA reported that crude inventories rose 3.4 million barrels, gasoline inventories fell 200,000 barrels, and distillates fell 700,000 barrels. The U.S. dollar index and treasuries fell rather markedly after a much better than expected ISM Index reading in the US and a rising PMI in China raised optimism about the health of the global economy and sent the Dow, Nasdaq, and S&P over 2% higher. Among the big names making news in the market today were Borders, GM, Apple, Amazon, Heinz, Burger King, JPMorgan, and ING.

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