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It’s a quiet day in the markets ahead of Christmas tomorrow…as of 7:30 am Pacific, Gold is up $3 an ounce at $1,660…Silver is 13 cents higher at $30.08…Copper is off a penny at $3.54…Crude Oil is down 23 cents at $88.43 while the U.S. Dollar Index is off slightly at 79.56…

Due to the Christmas holidays, we’re now on an abbreviated schedule at BMR through December 31…we’ll have postings each market day as usual, but they’ll be shorter…our Week In Review And A Look Ahead returns December 29…

Updated Gold Chart

Gold has been knocked around this month by uncertainty over “fiscal cliff” negotiations and year-end liquidation and “window dressing”, but the big picture remains very bullish with Gold on the verge of its 12th consecutive yearly gain…Washington may indeed temporarily go over the “cliff”, which in reality more resembles a slope than a cliff, but a deal very early in the New Year under a new Congress that reconvenes January 3 seems very likely…the end result, in our view, will be more of the same – a country that doesn’t take its debt problem seriously and continues to kick that can down the road at every opportunity…this is bullish for Gold long-term, and so too of course is the Fed’s expanding balance sheet and the fact that central banks around the world continue to add to their Gold holdings…

John’s latest Gold Chart (6-month daily) shows Gold bouncing out of the RSI(14) oversold range at the moment with strong Fibonacci support at $1,648…this chart suggests that over the short-term, at least, Gold is likely to continue trading within this downsloping channel between just under $1,640 and slightly above $1,700…

Peter Schiff, the perpetual bullion bull and sworn enemy of central bankers everywhere, told CNBC’s “Futures Now” this past week that Gold’s recent sell-off is only temporary and that investors should be “patient enough to ride this thing out”…Gold, he said, is one of the few avenues available to investors as a store of value in a world where major central banks are determined to fight economic weakness with ultra-accommodative monetary policy…

“What are you going to do?…you’re going to hold dollars at 0% percent with (Fed Chairman) Ben Bernanke promising to print until infinity?,” the fierce Fed critic asked…”there’s no currency that you can hold and be confident in its future purchasing power…but you can hold Gold, you can hold Silver”…

Schiff added that people “could make a lot of money in Gold and Gold stocks if they are patient…but unfortunately there’s money on Wall Street that’s not patient, and I advise other people who understand the fundamentals” to stay put, he said…

Gold Standard Deviation Chart Puts Long-Term Picture In Perspective

Below is a revealing chart from www.usfunds.com that shows how Gold is in the “Buy Zone” at the moment based on a year-over-year rolling return percentage change in standard deviation terms from 2002 onward…the current pattern, actually, is very similar to the early 2009 period…

Gold Stocks In The Year Following A U.S. Presidential Election

Below is an interesting chart (source: Bloomberg, from www.usfunds.com) that tracks Gold stocks (in this case the XAU) in the year following a U.S. Presidential election…going back to 1985, the XAU historically has increased substantially in post-election federal years, rising 23.4% on average…

Today’s Markets

It’s a shortened day on North American markets which close at 10:00 am Pacific…as of 7:30 am Pacific, the Dow is down 28 points while the TSX is off 17 points…the Venture Exchange, which has held up impressively well this month, is ahead 2 points at 1180 through the first hour of trading…

We wish all of our readers a very Merry Christmas…BMR Morning Musings returns Thursday, December 27…