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Gold has traded between $1,240 and $1,253 so far today…as of 7:15 am Pacific, bullion is up $9 an ounce at $1,254…Silver is 33 cents higher at $20.09…Copper is up 2 pennies at $3.20…Crude Oil has gained $1 a barrel to $93.30 while the U.S. Dollar Index is off slightly at 80.54…

UBS analyst Joni Teves notes, “This week, participants in China have become a bit more active: trading volumes over the last few days have averaged over 20 tonnes, the first time in about two months. Premiums also picked up slightly, although still below the year-to-date average of around $16 for the more liquid Au9999 contract,” she said…

Estimates are that an average of about 35 tonnes of recycled Gold – triple the normal amount – is now entering the market in India…“The import policy is not favourable, which has resulted in high premiums. Most consumers are looking to exchange old for new,” said Haresh Soni, chairman of All India Gems and Jewellery Federation, which groups more than 300,000 jewellers…the Indian government will welcome the increased recycling of Gold as it tries to rein in the current account deficit to an acceptable range of 3.6% to 3.8% of GDP, from 4.9% in the June quarter, and is unlikely to reverse its recent measures anytime soon…

Meanwhile, India’s economy grew by 4.8% in the third quarter year-on-year, narrowly beating analysts’ forecasts…economists polled by Reuters had estimated the BRIC country grew by 4.6% between July and September…India’s growth has disappointed in recent quarters, with growth decelerating from above 9% in 2010 to as low as 4.4% in the second quarter 2013 – lagging far behind economic rival China, which has maintained growth rates above 7% this year…

Today’s Markets

North America

U.S. equity markets are open for just half a half a day today, closing at 10:00 am Pacific after yesterday’s Thanksgiving holiday…Wal-Mart and Target are reporting blow-out sales on this Black Friday…the Dow has hit a new record high this morning, up 63 points as of 7:00 am Pacific…the TSX has added 88 points while the Venture is 2 points higher at 929…strong support at 925 has held this week…

Asia

Japan’s Nikkei average fell 65 points overnight to close at 15662, but it still posted its best November performance ever with a whopping gain of 9.3%…Japan’s core consumer price index inflation, which excludes fresh food but includes energy, hit 0.9% in October, up from 0.7% the previous month and in line with economists’ expectations…excluding both fresh food and energy, it reached 0.3%, the highest reading since 1998, indicating that rising energy costs alone were not the sole factor in inflationary pressures…this suggests the country is on track to hit the 2% inflation target set almost a year ago and that monetary easing efforts are beginning to bear fruit…separately, industrial output also increased in October – by 0.5% – for a second straight month…

China’s Shanghai Composite was relatively unchanged overnight, adding a point to close at 2221…investors were cautious ahead of Sunday’s release of November’s official manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI)…a Reuters poll expects the index to ease to 51.1 from October’s 18-month high of 51.4…

Europe

European shares are up modestly in late trading today…euro zone unemployment eased off record highs in October, official data showed this morning, a modest improvement in line with other recent data, but youth jobless numbers edged up…unemployment in the 17-nation single currency bloc fell to 12.1% in October from 12.2% in September, the Eurostat statistics agency said…also, the annual rate of inflation picked up in November, to 0.9% from 0.7%, although it remained well below the European Central bank’s (ECB’s) target level…

Barisan Gold Corp. (BG, TSX-V) Update

After Barian Gold’s (BG, TSX-V) recent run-up to a high of 32 cents, John’s charts suggested waiting for a retracement into the upper teens (15 to 20 cents) which would be the ideal “sweet spot” accumulation zone…indeed, the Fib. targets were bang-on – BG retraced to an intra-day low of 17 cents November 19, and yesterday the stock jumped 7.5 cents to close at 31 cents on total volume (all exchanges) of 1.6 million shares, and it’s surging higher this morning…as we wrote earlier, we’re not too keen on Indonesia, where Barisan recently drilled a whopper of a hole (904 m grading 0.50% Cu Eq, including a zone of 1% CuEq over 262 m), but we can’t help but think speculation (and potential additional results) could drive BG significantly higher before year-end as drilling continues at the Upper Tengkereng prospect…the company has not yet drilled down to the potassic zone and associated bornite mineralization of the Upper Tengkereng porphyry system where higher grades are usually intersected, so this has a chance of getting a lot more interesting in the weeks ahead…

Below is an updated BG chart…Fib. analysis has been very accurate so far with regard to BG’s technicals – hopefully that will continue…the fundamentals on the ground are supportive…as of 7:15 am Pacific, BG is up 13.5 cents at 44.5 cents…the next Fib. target is 49 cents…this will continue to be volatile…as always, perform your own due diligence…

Alberta Oilsands Inc. (AOS, TSX-V)

It has been a while since we’ve mentioned Alberta Oilsands (AOS, TSX-V), but the company got some attention in the market yesterday when it announced it has submitted its application to the government of Alberta for compensation amounting to $56 million under the province’s Mineral Rights Compensation Regulation stipulation…the claim submission is a result of the province’s oil sands division advising the company that certain of its Clearwater oil sands leases within the Fort McMurray urban development subregion will be cancelled…it’ll be interesting to see how this plays out, but we certainly wouldn’t be betting the farm on AOS receiving all that it has asked for…AOS climbed as high as 13.5 cents intra-day yesterday on the news but finished unchanged at 11.5 cents on increased volume of 3.4 million shares (all exchanges)…the company has over 200 million shares outstanding and reported working capital of about $3 million in its latest financials (June 30)…strong technical support at 9 cents as per John’s 20-month weekly chart…AOS is up half a penny at 12 cents as of 7:15 am Pacific…

Wanted Technologies (WAN, TSX-V) Updated Chart

Certain tech plays have been performing well on the Venture recently – Wanted Technologies (WAN, TSX-V) is one of them, and this company is actually making money…in our last update, we suggested the rising 20-day moving average (SMA) can be expected to provide strong support and that was indeed a good accumulation area recently as WAN fell as low as $1.04 intra-day November 19 before reversing…yesterday, it jumped 9 cents to close at $1.21…

WANTED is headquartered in Quebec City with subsidiary offices in New York…it provides real-time business intelligence for the talent marketplace, and it’s also the exclusive data provider for the Conference Board’s Help-Wanted OnLine Data Series™, the monthly economic indicator of hiring demand in the United States…only 24 million shares outstanding…

Below is a 2.5-year weekly chart from John…overbought conditions on the daily chart have unwound considerably but could persist for a while yet on the weekly chart…interesting story here – as always, perform your own due diligence…as of 7:15 am Pacific, WAN is up 2 cents at $1.23…

Note: John holds a share position in BG.