David Fuller's view Perils of "bad data spike" and overnight trading, particularly when one gold contract (August) faced its first delivery notice today, plus some voodoo surrounding the US debt ceiling debate and vote. First, on Friday evening I noticed that my breakeven stops in gold (weekly & daily) had been triggered. As a consequence, my account showed that I had been stopped out at $1623.3 and $1619.4, against my purchases on $1621.3 and $1617.4, on 25th July. However, there was a telephone symbol showing for gold on my online IG Index account during normal trading hours, so I knew something had gone wrong. I also noticed that Bloomberg's gold prices had not reached my slightly in-the-money stop levels above. When I phoned IG Index, which provides a very good service in my view, I was told that there had been a "bad data spike" on gold and that they were sorting it out and that my positions would be reinstated.

They were, after I had posted Fullermoney and gone home, although what I had not appreciated was that they were reinstated at the mistakenly stopped out prices of $1623.3 and $1619.4, also mentioned above, with stops at these same prices. Had I checked my online account over the weekend I would have noticed this, although it had not occurred to me to do so. This morning, I noticed that my December gold longs had been stopped out at the not very favourable price of $1617 on 31st August (apparently gold trading starts on Sunday evening). I queried this with my account manager, who I trust, and was told that the COMEX price for December gold had opened at $1622.2 and gapped straight down to $1608.2. Bloomberg also confirms this. Apparently plenty of other people had similarly tight stops, which is not surprising.

Net it all out and I had a slight loss on these four trades, which is annoying although not unfair in my view, under the circumstances.

I faired somewhat better with silver (weekly & daily), where a stop was triggered at $39.723 in early trading on 31st August, against my purchase at $39.640 on 28th July.

Prices above include all spread-bet dealing costs.

I maintain that precious metal are buys on easing, of which we have seen little for gold and silver recently but both remain slightly overbought, technically, after last month's persistent gains.