Stocks continued lower, putting in their worst week since May 2012.

Oil cracked into the $50's. We paid 2.25 per gallon for regular gasoline yesterday. Supply has been healthy, but demand has been off. So this is a mixed bag. We need to keep an eye on retail sales and wages.

I have a suspicion that a lot of the stock selling is part of an end of year portfolio cleansing. We will know more if we see how it goes next week.

This is an FOMC week coming up, and I have included the economic calendar for the entire week below.

I posted an excerpt of an interview with Russian economist Mikhail Khazin last night, and included a notice from TF Metals about the CME adding ‘trading collars' to the precious metals, with some fairly broad limits to protect against volatility.    If we start seeing $100 swings in gold and $3 in silver, I suspect it might be a slightly different ball game. 

I strongly suggest you read about this as Mr. Khazin suggest a reason why this action by the CME might be happening here.

There was late breaking news on Bloomberg that Austria is considering repatriating their gold.   It will be interesting if this move to secure gold supplies becomes a trend.

Next year might be rather eventful in the precious metals.  I am not sure how much action we will see for the rest of December.  The Comex warehouse action was very boring yesterday.  As Mr. Khazin said, Russia and China will not attempt to take on the gold cartel on their own turf in paper gold, given their access to leverage and hot money.  Rather, the play is to keep buying bullion on the world markets, and wait for the paper chase to run up hard into the reality of a lack of physical supply.

Or as I have often suggested, they will continue to drain off the physical supply, and at some point, will ask the pyramid of rehypothecated paper bullion dealers to ‘stand and deliver.'

And I am dreaming of a real ‘white Christmas.'