Cloud over gold and silver

Just keep repeating that it doesn’t mean anything.

End-of-year position squaring seems to be hitting gold and silver bullion prices between the eyes.

Gold has dropped below $1,670 a troy ounce. Silver is barely over $31 a troy ounce.

Both prices are still above their 2012 starting points.

Gold ended 2011 at $1,565.80 a troy ounce. Silver’s 2011 finish was $27.87.

Perhaps interestly, silver is almost precisely trading at its ending price for the year 2010, which was $30.915.

The year 2011 was the exciting one as silver nearly reached $50 and gold set a new record of nearly $1,900 a troy ounce.

In 2012 trading no new high ground was broken by either metal.

Headline seekers are forecasting gold over $2,000 in 2013 if you like the bullish prognosticators and $1,200 if shockingly bearish forecasts are your cup of tea.

Either number is likely to get adrenaline pumping and blood pressure rising from excitement or fury.

But that all is part of the game.

Just don’t let the fluctuations at the end of December spoil the holiday season.

If you have conducted yourself prudently in 2012, these price swings will be of little consequence.

In Iola, the question today isn’t the price of gold or silver, but the number of inches of snow that are likely to accumulate before the snow stops falling and the wind stops blowing.

But snow events like end-of-year bullion trades are passing phenomena that cause quite a bit of stress before the sun comes out and life resumes as normal.

Buzz blogger Dave Harper is editor of the weekly newspaper "Numismatic News."