If you looked at the precious complex this morning and said

If you looked at the precious complex this morning and said “Hey, something’s wrong with the prices” you probably weren’t alone. Unfortunately (or fortunately depending on which side of the trade you were on) the prices were correct. Gold shed more than 6% overnight and touched a low of $1385. Silver took nearly an 11% hit when it ventured as low as $22.92 and both platinum and palladium lost more than 3%. And while many would like to point to one particular catalyst for the sharp correction, it was more of a combination of factors that was just too much for the precious complex to bear. The Fed meeting minutes, the potential sale of €400 million in gold by Cyprus, Wall St. banks lowering gold forecasts and a red-hot equities markets would seemingly have been enough to pressure the metals sharply lower but they held. That is until Friday, when ECB President Mario Draghi commented that profits from any Cyprus gold sale would have to be used for the country’s bailout “Shortfall”. The speculation that such an event could set a precedent for other EU nations, that may find themselves in need of a bailout, quickly sent gold bugs heading for the exits. Then came economic data from the world’s #2 economy, China, that triggered a broader commodity market sell-off overnight. China reported the economy grew by just 7.7% to start 2013, down from 7.9% at the end of 2012. Industrial production also slowed to a rate of 8.9% missing estimates of 10%. The precious metals are slightly off their lows to start the morning but look to remain under a great deal of pressure. Good luck today!