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Fascinating: Marshall Swing: Gold & Silver’s Day of Reckoning to Begin 9/23/15!
Posted on November 10, 2014 by The Doc
http://www.silverdoctors.com/marshall-swing-gold-silvers-day-of-reckoning-to-begin-92315/
Sold out... paper price depressed but ZERO USMint availability...
Powerful AND telling... found at Goldseek:
The Timing Is Curious
-- Posted Monday, 20 October 2014 | By Bill Holter
http://news.goldseek.com/GoldSeek/1413819395.php
We just finished a wildly volatile week in most all markets across the entire world. Stocks were dumped early and then pumped at the end of the week, interest rates were dumped until the end of the week and oil simply crashed and actually "sniffed" at a "7" handle. Greece came completely apart at the seams with their stock market and bond markets collapsing.
An obvious question would be "why". Why did all of this happen this week? An obvious answer which surely would be a contributor is the spread (or fear) of the Ebola virus. But this is truly a strange duck and one I'm not really sure what to make of. By now I am sure you saw the picture of the Ebola patient wrapped up in a Hazmat suit surrounded by three others in Hazmat suits and ... a guy with a clipboard? The "clipboard guy" apparently even flew with the patient as there were pictures of him again after the flight ...what's up with this? Even more strange, president Obama kissed the nurses who were caring for an Ebola patient? Is there an antidote? Is it a manmade virus? Is it real? Is it a "bio weapon" gone bad or "escaped" by "accident on purpose"?
There are all sorts of questions to this which we really don't have the answers to but suffice it to say, an Ebola pandemic (real or just perceived) would be enough to shut this country (and the financial world) down. It could be used as a scapegoat for crashing markets, financial closures, martial law and mass quarantining of population segments. If it is real, what a tragedy. If it is not, yet is used for "cover" and a "reason" for societal and financial collapse, what a travesty. As for Ebola arising just now, I say the "timing is curious" to say the least... especially since there are reports this is a manmade virus.
Another area of "timing" was the emergence of Fed Governor Bullard on Friday morning. If you recall, he was boisterous on October 9th when he said "we should be willing to remove some accommodation". Friday morning he flip flopped and said "a logical response at this point is to delay the end of QE". It is important to understand why he has said what he said and in particular "when". The markets and the dollar were rising and crushing emerging currencies and markets by Oct. 9th, Mr. Bullard stepped in and tried to jawbone some of the building froth from our markets. It only took a week later and some 1,500 Dow points for him to step out and reverse his words.
There are several problems here as I see it. First, the Fed is damned if they do and damned if they don't. The stock markets threw a taper tantrum and dropped nearly 10% in six or seven trading days. In order to placate the equity markets, QE cannot be shut down. On the other hand, the Fed cannot continue QE or begin another round because there simply are not enough Treasuries outstanding for them to purchase. Let me rephrase this, there are enough but whatever the Fed buys ...they are taking out of the collateral pool which then can no longer be lent against. This in effect actually lowers the amount of credit outstanding which "de"flates rather than "re"flates.
Another problem is the leverage that the Fed itself is taking on. Their capital is now levered at nearly 80 to 1. The big banks were levered nearly 30-35 to one back in 2008 and we all know how well that worked out. What will the Fed do? Lever themselves over 100 to 1 and blow their balance sheet up another $ trillion? I suppose they could try this but the markets at some point are going to call their bluff. The Fed has no margin for error now, a bigger balance sheet and higher leverage will only make the collapse when it comes that much more horrific. Do you believe there are any odds whatsoever that the Fed can ever even hint at the reality of higher rates? No matter who would like to deny this truth, "tapering is in fact tightening" and no amount of words can change this. Make no mistake, this is ultimately, and will also be seen as a "solvency" problem for the Fed itself. Going one step further, the Fed acted as a white knight back in 2008 and '09, they have now put themselves in a very poor position because they are now the ones in need of a white knight. Not only will they NOT be seen as the white knight, they very well could become the problem itself?
We also got news at the end of the week, India imported 100 tons of gold for the month of September ...this was about half of all gold mined for the month. There was also a report from Shanghai, they imported over 68 tons for the WEEK! If China were to import at this run rate, they would import 3,500 tons over the course of a year. This is an impossibility over the long run as the rest of the world only produces 2,200 tons. I bring this up because again, we have more evidence of demand completely dwarfing supply while price remains weak. "Apologize" however much or in whatever manner you'd like, physical demand is blowing out the actual supply while the price is being suppressed. I believe there is also a "timing issue" here, something behind the scenes is in a precarious state, the "alarm bell" must be silenced.
Last weekend in Washington, the G-20 held a finance minister and central banker meeting. Do you find it at all odd that immediately following this meeting the markets have become unstuck? What was discussed or decided behind these closed doors? The annual G-20 meeting will be held next month in Brisbane Australia, has or is something being decided? Is something "being" decided "for" the U.S. and her dollar? Curious timing?
One other area which received little to no press were events in France and also Italy. French bond yields diverged higher from the rest of the core Euro states and they basically have thumbed their noses at the deficit spending targets they were given. Italy did a currency swap earlier this year and an 8 billion euro trade deal with China this past week. Again, the timing is curious because Italy is one of the European weak sisters in need of assistance. Germany has her hands tied trying to support Greece from collapse ...so in comes China to help a struggling Italy. The fracturing of the Eurozone may be a result of the coming reset? Again, timing?
I bring this last paragraph forth because China has to this point only "courted" western business as opposed to going head to head with the U.S.. I received a note the other day which stated "China could make gasoline $100 per gallon any time of their choosing". I initially scratched my head on this one but after 10 seconds I "got it". China can pull the plug on the dollar any time they choose. Once this is done, hyperinflation will beset our nation and $100 per gallon may become a conservative number. The upcoming G-20 meeting will be of particular interest to me because I believe there will be (maybe already are?)decisions made "for" the U.S. as opposed to the traditional "by" the U.S.. I believe the problem is now seen globally to be the Federal Reserve, I also believe the world is working to "fix" the problem. More on this tomorrow.
Regards,
Bill Holter
We work with a convention of market "closes" that hardly applies in these days of 24-hour markets. How important is the Comex closing when you can still trade later all around the world? Today makes that plain. Gold's $1,205.30 close looks weak, but in fact it ran up to $1,223.60, the next resistance area, nearly $20 higher, AND above the $1,218.70 20 DMA. At 1745c, silver stands only ten cents from punching through the downtrend line, and only 30 cents from its 20 DMA. Indicators have all turned up, pointing to higher prices.
- commentary from Franklin Sanders
gold jinyu Oct. 7th gold price trend analysis
International gold price raised from a bottom line yesterday, made a sharp rebound from 1190 to 1200. At the end of U.S. trading time climbed to about 1206, continuous fall gathered support for gold’s rebound. In today’s Asian trading, gold raised slightly and based around 1204.
U.S. September conference board employment trends index is better than expected, yet fed's employment market index doesn’t reach monthly average, added by the correction of USDX, gold recovered its loss and climbed to 1200. The job market, on the other hand, is still pressuring gold. Currently gold daily chart based around 1200, pressure comes from 1209, support from 1195. find out more in hj9999.com
Harvey Organ: Shanghai Drained of Silver, Bullion Banks Are About to Attack the COMEX!
Yes, a bit... Cheap Gold Stocks’ Upleg Intact
Adam Hamilton - September 19, 2014
http://www.gold-eagle.com/article/cheap-gold-stocks’-upleg-intact
Aren't bonds a bit risky too? There's less confidence that municipalities can pay them off. Interest rates in Europe are approaching zero, with negative interest rates potentially on the horizon.
Own bonds and metals... I'm staying clear of stocks... Except to short...
Equities getting slammed today (09/25/2014)! Gold up slightly, bankers continuing their typical attack on silver.
Own them both, imo.
Markets headed for significant trouble... Look at the charts... Fugly!!!
Strange just got stranger as markets/metals/bonds DROP BIG!!!
Gold And Silver – Elite’s NWO Losing Traction. Expect [More] War
August 30th, 2014
Read more at http://investmentwatchblog.com/gold-and-silver-elites-nwo-losing-traction-expect-more-war/#L4kP5uscHWUKh8h4.99
by Michael Noonan
The lies and deceit coming from Western governments continue unabated, whether it is
[Pollyanna] economic news that is non-reflective of existing reality or more false flag “war”
news that is also non-reflective of existing reality. Whether it be Obama, Cameron, or
Merkel, supposed leaders of their countries but totally failing to provide leadership, each
can best be described as pimps for the banking elites.
No one, not even [non-existing] Weapons-of-Mass-Destruction Bush Jr, has been more
hell-bent on starting wars throughout the world than Nobel Peace Prize winner, [cough,
cough], Obama. Cameron has nothing positive to contribute, coming from a country that
produces nothing, just running on spent debt fumes. He just announced his idea of more
sanctions against Russia by kicking them out of the SWIFT program, the elite banker’s
Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication.
How have all of those other sanctions been working, David? There simply is no right way
for doing stupid things, but he and Obama continue to try to disprove stupidity with the
same proven results.
Merkel, the one who has the best opportunity to defy the elites and take Germany forward
into the new world’s developing economic order, primarily China and Russia, leaders of
BRICS and its fast-growing associated countries, [new members not currently allowed]
Instead, Merkel keeps Germany rooted as the step-child satellite country of the federal
United States.
It is not enough that the US refuses to return Germany’s gold, [long gone, anyway,
and Germany stopped asking]. It is not enough that the US, [thanks to the Snowden
revelations], spies on all Germans, especially corporate spying, and even Frau Merkel’s
cell phone. Pile on Germany’s lap-dog willingness to go along with the Obama-driven
sanctions, for which the US is at no immediate economic risk, and Germany now faces
the loss of 50,000 jobs, or more, while sliding backwards economically, etc, etc, etc.
We have viewed Germany as pivotal in swinging away from the destructive debt forces
of the West and align itself economically with the growing influences in the growing
Eurasian trading zone. While already with strong ties to China and Russia, Merkel
still plays games and thumbs her nose at Russia in order to appease Obama and his
doomed-to-fail, and failing sanctions.
No leadership, Merkel, just pimping yourself and dragging your country along to the beat
of the elites instead of staying sharply focused on Frankfort as a premier, as the premier
Yuan swap facility, to eclipse London as a world-important financial center, developing
even more and stronger ties to the obvious growth and development both China and
Russia not only represent but demonstrate. We thought you had more character. Instead,
you choose to hitch your fading star to the fast-faltering corporate United States.
Merkel says, “America cannot solve all the world’s problems anymore.” This is how out
of touch she is. America was never the world’s problem solver. America is the one that
created all the world’s problems. Maybe the fact that Germany is still an occupied country,
[occupied by US troops], is why Merkel acts the puppet.
Zero leadership across the board. Just lies and deceits to do the bidding of the elites.
What is the scope and aim of Cameron’s move to kick Russia out of the SWIFT program?
To put an economic squeeze on Russia. Will it work? To some extent, in the short-term.
Will there be repercussions? Does night follow day? Can Obama and Cameron do any
more than push Russia farther away from using the increasingly use-less “dollar?” It is
not as though Russia has clearly demonstrated its intent and shown its ability to stop
transactions using the fiat “dollar.”
The Obama administration’s CIA-led overthrow of an established government in Kiev
has been nothing more than a move to try to weaken Russia and prevent Putin from
having the world’s largest energy companies [Russian], supply natural gas and oil to
Europe and the Baltic countries.
Why was Obama so driven to start a war in Syria? Because Assad is such an evil
dictator? No, but because war in Syria would prevent the gas line from Russia reaching
Syria’s port to supply LNG to Europe. Obama wants Qatar to have its pipeline to be
used to supply Europe. All of this as a cover to keep Russia from becoming Europe’s
main supplier of energy. It was not about Assad, at all. Always follow the money.
As an incredibly unintended consequence of Obama’s false flag reasons for trying to
bring war on Syria, ISIS has mushroomed into an [anti]Islamic death machine.
It was Obama’s CIA that trained and supplied these anti-Assad forces as a means of
defeating Assad without direct US involvement. Do you hear Obama taking any
credit for being a critical catalyst for creating ISIS? Not a peep. All he can say is that
he “has no strategy for dealing with ISIS.” He does, however, have a strategy for
dealing with Russia and Ukraine.
Obama whines and complains about Russia amassing troops within its own borders,
near Ukraine. As an aside, what does anyone think Obama’s response would be to
Putin if Putin told Obama not to amass troops along the East or West Coast of the US?
What business does Obama have telling Putin where to put his troops within Russia’s
own borders? In fact, what business does Obama have involving the US in affairs
thousands of miles on the other side of the world in the first place?
Has any of the MSM [Main Stream Media], reported about the ethnic cleansing going
on by the Obama-installed Kiev government against innocent men, women and children?
None. All one hears is how evil Putin is, with no mention how Obama is conniving to
get Ukraine to become a part of NATO, further breaking every promise made since the
days of Gorbachev and Perestroika that NATO would not encroach any farther around
Russia. The only “Rules” that apply are the ones Russia is “accused” of breaking.
Cyprus, [the West attempting to steal Russian money parked in Cypriot banks], Syria,
Ukraine, all with a single purpose in mind: isolate and weaken Russia, and do everything
possible to disrupt Russia’s supply of LNG and oil to Europe. All to protect the destined-
to-fail fiat dollar, the elite’s primary stranglehold over the entire West.
Did we forget to mention that the first thing the CIA-led coup did in Ukraine was to steal
all the gold held in Kiev at 2 a.m. by heavily armed, anonymous black-garbed intruders?
Did we forget to mention that all of Libya’s gold was also looted in a similar fashion?
Side events to Ukraine and Syria, but related because it was all the bidding of the elites.
Why to expect [more] war? That is all the Rothschild banking establishment knows, and
truth be known, it has been extraordinarily effective. Next week, we will cover a brief
history, a track record of the Rothschild banking dynasty that has controlled all Western
countries for a few centuries.
Will it be a conventional war? No one knows, but that seems less likely in this day and age.
Instead, it may be more of the financially divide and conquer type of war that has been
waged over the past decade or more, where countries are forced to take on more and more
debt in return for giving up sovereignty to the unelected bureaucrats like van Rumple
and Draghi, lording over the paste and patch European Union, the elite’s answer for
accomplishing its objective of its New World Order where individual country sovereignty
does not exist. Make up your mind, Germany.
What does this have to do with gold and silver? Everything, as we have maintained over
the past several months. Unless and until you see the United States lose it fake “dollar”
control over the mostly Western world, nothing will change. Now that China and Russia
have all but abandoned use of the US “dollar” in its trade [thanks to Obama's sanctions],
and with a growing number of countries willing to go along with abandoning the dead-
weight fiat “dollar,” gold and silver will remain trapped in the elite’s manipulative web.
Is all of this Obama saber-rattling over Ukraine and adding new sanctions affecting the
PMs market? The charts say no. Regardless of what one thinks about the news or the
underlying bullish fundamentals for both gold and silver, if all one did is look at what
the charts are saying about those who are buying and selling PMs, one would have the
best and most accurate read for what is going on in real-time.
The monthly chart provides a broader context for developing market behavior, and it is
more controlling than the weekly and daily. We keep saying when price is in the middle
of a TR [Trading Range], the level of knowledge, as in what to do, is at its lowest because
price can move to either extreme of the TR and not mean anything. Trying to “outguess”
what the market will do while in the middle of a TR is a fool’s game.
The June rally is similar to the D/S bars [Demand overcoming Supply] mentioned in the
weekly and daily charts, and you can see how the attempts to correct lower in July and
August, the last two bars, are smaller and more labored. This tells us that selling is not
that strong.
The trading range for August, last bar, is small and unchanged from the July close. The
entire effort to go lower for August produced no net results. For price to turn around,
buyers will have to step up their activity and show some strength, totally absent for now.
The reason why you want to pay close attention to wide range bars and strong closes to
the upside, [and wide range bars and weak closes to the downside] is because the wide
range is almost always the result of strong hand activity. You want to observe how well,
or not, those buyers defend their position.
In a strong market, support will usually come at the upper end of the wide range bar. In
a weaker market, like gold, support may be found at or near the bottom of the wide range
D/S bar. This is how the developing market activity provides the most current clues as to
the market’s intent.
Daily activity is supportive of the weekly read. What is missing, and as would be expected
of a weak market, is a persistent show of buying strength. Prince remains in a down trend
channel, and it is in the middle of it. NMT, [Needs More Time].
Unless and until silver shows an ability to break out of its current pattern, who knows for
how much longer this sideways drifting can go? It does not pay to anticipate ahead of time
in which direction price will break out. The last 2 months were smaller ranges than the
June rally, 3rd bar from the end, and that tells us sellers are not that intent, or are simply
unable to move price lower. However, sellers remain in overall control.
Once again, the importance of paying close attention to a wide range, strong close bar, D/S
[arrow]. Since the swing high, the correction lower has been labored, taking much more
time to reach the D/S low as potential support, and price is holding that level. Price tried
to rally higher and failed, but it also failed to move lower, closing unchanged for the week.
The daily does not add much more. All that can be said is there exists the potential for a
rally based on the clustering of closes. That is not a strong endorsement because silver is
a weak market, and it will take much more than a clustering to turn price around.
The paper market offers little from the long side. However, given the near insanity that
heads of government are posturing their corporate governments, as opposed to actually
representing the desires and interests of those being governed, buying physical gold and
silver remains a high priority. It is so very true that being a year early is far better than
being a day late, for one day, price may simply open price multiples higher and never
afford another reasonable opportunity to buy.
ALL precious/semi-precious metals at or near fresh highs...
Metals on the move... $GOLD
You're in the $$$ now!!! $GOLD
Yeah, snagged some at 1288 and 1279 /GC (3 handles off the low!)
Wanting 1280 to hold, obviously. Targeting 1330-1360.
Caledonia Mining continues to raise production -
Mark Learmonth
http://www.commodity-tv.net/c/mid,21943,Mines_und_Money_London_2013/?v=252888
http://www.caledoniamining.com/present.php
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=96179044
Caledonia Mining Corporation (CAL)
Exchange: Toronto Stock Exchange
http://web.tmxmoney.com/quote.php?qm_symbol=CAL
German Gold Manipulation Blowback Escalates: Deutsche Bank Exits Gold Price Fixing
Tyler Durden's pictureSubmitted by Tyler Durden on 01/17/2014 21:31 -0500
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-01-17/german-gold-manipulation-blowback-escalates-deutsche-bank-exits-gold-price-fixing
The Race That Will Not End Well
By Michael Lombardi | Business 2 Community – Fri, Nov 22, 2013 2:56 PM EST
http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/advisor/race-not-end-well-195613587.html
Central banks around the global economy are involved in a race that will not end well. Of course, I’m talking about the race to the bottom of currency devaluation, which is being achieved through the printing of more and more paper money backed by nothing.
Almost weekly, I hear news about different central banks in the global economy cranking up the speed of their printing presses; they are fixated on printing money because these central banks believe they can solve their economic problems by printing. They are wrong!
Our own Federal Reserve is creating $85.0 billion a month in money with the hopes of bringing economic growth to the U.S. economy. But this strategy is failing the masses in America. Those who have benefited the most from this exercise have been big banks, Wall Street, and the rich. The poor and middle-class are in a worse situation now than in 2007!
But it’s not just the Federal Reserve that’s printing massive amounts of new money. Other central banks are doing the same under a fancy phrase: “quantitative easing.”
In its most recent monetary policy statement, the Bank of Japan reiterated it’s take on printing. It said the central bank will continue to work towards increasing the monetary base in the country by 60 trillion to 70 trillion yen per annum. The central bank will buy Japanese government bonds, exchange-traded funds (ETFs), and real estate investment trusts with the freshly printed money. (Source: Bank of Japan, November 21, 2013.) (Yes, the Bank of Japan is buying securities that trade on the stock market. As our next American financial crisis approaches, I wouldn’t be surprised to see the Fed do the same thing.)
The European Central Bank (ECB) just lowered its benchmark interest rate again and has hinted it might be taking its own quantitative easing action. (Only if eurozone member Germany would consent!)
We have seen the central bank of Switzerland and the Bank of England both participate in quantitative easing, and the central banks of emerging markets are doing the same! The central bank of India’s M1 money supply (total paper money notes and coins in circulation) has gone up 402% between the years 2000 and 2012. (Source: Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis web site, last accessed November 21, 2013.)
And the governor of the Reserve Bank of Australia, Glenn Stevens, said this week that “It [quantitative easing] remains part of the toolkit.” (Source: “RBA not ruling out intervention on $A,” The Australian, November 22, 2013.)
But despite this unprecedented world central bank race to create more paper money out of thin air, gold bullion prices decline. How can that be? Dear reader, my “job” in these pages is not to present a boring economic analysis on the “why,” but rather, my focus is on the “opportunities.” And when I see gold nearing $1,000 per ounce (after the Federal Reserve has created about $3.0 trillion in new money and continues to print more), I see gold as a bargain.
Yes, I’ve heard the talk about deflation hurting gold prices. But right now we are seeing a vast amount of monetary inflation (the creation of new money with no backing). Going back throughout history, I’ve never seen a time when monetary inflation hasn’t eventually caused price inflation.
Denver Gold Forum - PRESENTATION DETAILS
Presentation Details
09/23/2013
http://www.lsgold.com/files/doc_presentations/DenverGoldForum-2013-09-23.pdf
http://www.lsgold.com/Investor-Centre/Presentations/PresentationDetails/2013/Denver-Gold-Forum/default.aspx
http://www.lsgold.com
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=92271516
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=90941168
God Bless
Gold: “Taper This”
Tuesday September 17, 2013 11:48
http://www.kitco.com/ind/Tanashian/2013-09-17-Gold-Taper-This.html
Unmistakeable uptrend in the last 6 weeks or so... Up $62 last week.
Strong Contrarian Buy Signal on Gold Stocks
Friday July 19, 2013 15:51
http://www.kitco.com/ind/Trendsman/2013-07-19-Strong-Contrarian-Buy-Signal-on-Gold-Stocks.html
Long Rates Threaten Gold?
Friday July 05, 2013 12:39
http://www.kitco.com/ind/Hamilton/2013-07-05-Long-Rates-Threaten-Gold.html
As gold has plunged in the past couple months, yields on benchmark US 10-year Treasury Notes have soared. Many Wall Street analysts claim these rising long rates are very bearish for gold, and have exacerbated its recent weakness. Since the metal yields nothing, higher bond yields make investing in gold less attractive. This thesis certainly sounds logical, but do rising long rates really threaten gold?
Like any market theory, this one is best tested against the record of history and precedent. If rising or higher bond yields hammered gold prices in the past, then the gold bears’ warnings about their impact this time around are probably justified. And given the extraordinary surge in 10y Treasury yields in the past couple months, gold investors really need to consider how these yields affected gold historically.
Between early May and late June, 10y Treasury yields skyrocketed 56% higher from 1.66% to 2.59%! That is the biggest increase in this benchmark yield in such a short span in at least a half century, if not ever. Nothing even remotely close to this has ever been witnessed before per the Federal Reserve’s own data, which stretches all the way back to early 1962. We are in uncharted territory for long-rate surges.
And the Fed itself is the sole reason why 10y Treasury yields are soaring. Its latest debt-monetization campaign of pure inflation is widely known as Quantitative Easing 3. The $45b-per-month Treasury-buying portion of this was launched at the Federal Open Market Committee’s December meeting. Ever since, the Fed has been the biggest and dominant buyer of US Treasuries. No one else comes close.
The Fed literally creates brand-new fiat dollars out of thin air to purchase these Treasuries, which is pure inflation. All this artificial demand has naturally boosted the prices of Treasury bonds, and of course yields move inverse to bond prices. So when fears began emerging of the Fed’s massive QE3 buying starting to wind down, bond investors wisely dumped Treasuries ahead of the Fed’s price-collapsing exit.
The widespread belief that rising or higher Treasury yields are bearish for gold extends back to the early 1980s. After a popular-mania-driven parabolic explosion higher in late 1979, the last secular gold bull climaxed in January 1980. The day gold topped, 10y Treasury yields were running 11.0%! And they were heading higher still, reaching an unthinkable 15.8% in September 1981. Gold prices just collapsed.
But that doesn’t tell the whole story, correlation doesn’t necessarily imply causation. After soaring 182.6% higher in just 5 months leading into that parabolic climax, gold was due for a brutal bear no matter what long rates did. Provocatively between August 1976 and January 1980 when gold rocketed 731.7% higher, 10y Treasury yields relentlessly climbed 42.2% from 7.7% to 11.0%. Gold still exploded higher.
Despite the popular misconception, long rates are not always highly correlated with gold. And this too makes sense. Gold has never paid a yield, yet it has remained a popular investment for millennia. The investors buying gold are not looking for yields from that portion of their portfolio. They want proven protection from monetary inflation, financial insurance for unforeseen market events, and most of all capital gains.
The gold-has-no-yield-therefore-it-cannot-be-valued thesis is perpetually popular among gold bears, but it is a flimsy red-herring argument. While bond investors indeed buy bonds largely for yields, that has never been the case with most stock investors. Though there are elite blue-chip companies with high dividend yields, they are a tiny exception to the norm. The vast majority of stocks never pay any material dividends.
Investors happily buy technology stocks even though very few pay dividends. And the ones that do offer dividends almost always have trivial yields relative to their stock prices. Capital gains are the dominant reason investors invest outside of the bond world, and even inside it among professionals. Yields are nice, but certainly not necessary to stoke investment demand. Investors simply want to buy things that go up.
That is why gold has thrived many times in rising-yield environments. Like everything else, the gold price rises and falls based on supply and demand. And investors demand it when they believe it is going to rise, long rates are irrelevant. The vast majority of gold investors are not refugee bond investors looking for income and begrudgingly settling on zero-yielding gold. Those guys stay in bonds and high-dividend stocks.
And the other investors around the world who catapulted gold 638.2% higher between April 2001 and August 2011 didn’t buy this metal because low bond yields left them no choice. This first chart looks at benchmark 10-year Treasury yields and the gold price over the last dozen years of the latter’s secular bull. For nearly its entire bull run, gold thrived in long-yield environments much higher than today’s.
This chart really frustrates me. It would take an experienced Wall Street analyst about a minute to superimpose gold over long Treasury yields, and about 5 minutes to digest the resulting chart. This stuff is child’s play for honest students of the markets. Yet Wall Street analysts refuse to investigate. They keep repeating their tired mantra that rising bond yields hurt gold whether history proves that true or not.
Late last month the benchmark 10y Treasury yields indeed rocketed their fastest ever to 2.6%. And this was indeed much higher than their July 2012 all-time record low just above 1.4%. And yes, after averaging just 1.8% in 2012, 2.5%+ 10y Treasury yields are high relative to recent history. They are already wreaking havoc in other markets, including mortgages which are absolutely critical for US jobs growth.
But the recent super-low Treasury yields are a new phenomenon caused by the Fed’s wildly unprecedented quantitative-easing campaigns. What is now known as QE1 began in late 2008, and the Fed started buying Treasuries in early 2009. This continued through QE2 and now QE3. All this artificial demand drove up Treasury prices, forcing down their yields. Before that nearly the entirety of gold’s secular-bull gains occurred at way-higher yields.
After its stealthy birth in the depths of secular-bear despair in April 2001, gold achieved its first major high over 5 years later in May 2006. Over that 5.1-year span, this metal nearly tripled with a 180.6% gain. And during that time, the average yield in benchmark 10y Treasuries was over 4.4%! If far-higher long rates than recent history indeed discourage investors from buying gold, it never should have rallied in the early 2000s.
During the first 7 years of gold’s secular bull climaxing in March 2008, the metal nearly quadrupled with a 291.7% gain. Yet over that entire span, 10y Treasury yields averaged 4.5%. Gold investment demand was obviously quite independent of bond yields. Gold investors bought gold looking for capital gains in a secular-bull market, while bond investors bought bonds looking for recurring income through yields.
By December 2009 gold’s secular bull had been powering higher for nearly 9 years, and somehow managed to gain 373.5% across a once-in-a-century stock panic over a secular span where the 10y Treasury yield averaged 4.3%. Like everything else in the global financial markets, that epic fear superstorm led to wild gyrations in Treasury-bond prices and yields that ultimately dwarfed 2013’s.
And if Wall Street analysts are correct that rising long rates are bearish for gold, then falling long rates must be bullish for gold right? If yields fall low enough, then bond investors should get so discouraged that they say to hell with bonds and shift their capital into gold. The stock panic’s extreme volatility in 10y Treasuries offers a great laboratory to test this popular bearish notion. History shows it is simply false.
Between October and December 2008 as fear catapulted off the charts, investors flooded into bonds with a vengeance. This crushed 10y Treasury yields down 49% from 4.1% to 2.1% in just a couple months! Now with yields plunging to such dismal all-time record lows at the time, bond investors should have fled into gold per the Wall Street theory. Yet the gold price merely rallied 2.2% over this exceptional span.
And then between December 2008 and June 2009 as the global financial markets stabilized, investors aggressively sold Treasuries which forced the 10y yield up 91% to 4.0% in just under 6 months. Man, with stellar 4% yields available in “risk-free” US government debt who on earth would want to own gold? It yields nothing, zero, zilch, so it must be worthless. Yet the metal rallied 11.6% over this big and fast yield-spike span!
Gold continued way higher after that as the Fed’s highly-inflationary Treasury buying artificially forced bond yields lower. But over the entire 10.4-year span of gold’s secular bull to its latest August 2011 interim high, this metal soared 638.2% higher during a time where benchmark 10y Treasury yields averaged 4.1%. Thus gold’s entire secular bull happened when 10y Treasury yields were 2/3rds higher than today’s!
The Wall Street notion that higher bond yields sap gold investment demand, which I’ve probably heard a hundred times on CNBC in the last couple months, is a red herring. It is an argument that sounds logical on the surface, but is simply untrue. Rising long rates weren’t a threat to gold in its last secular bull, and they weren’t a threat to gold in this secular bull. Another case in point is crystal clear in the chart above.
Between June 2003 and June 2006, 10y Treasury yields soared 68% higher from 3.1% to 5.3%. Surely 5%+ yields would crush gold, right? All those deluded fools buying that anachronistic zero-yielding relic would see the error in their irrational ways and shift into good safe Treasuries. But that’s not what happened. Over that 3-year span, the gold price climbed 63.8% despite a steady rising-long-rate environment!
Wall Street claims rising long rates threaten gold not because it is true, but because they don’t like gold, never have, and don’t understand it. During that 10.4-year span where gold surged 638.2% higher in a mighty secular bull, the beloved flagship S&P 500 stock index fell 1.9%. It was languishing in a secular bear, a massive sideways grind. Despite this vast performance difference, Wall Street never warmed to gold.
They view gold as competing with stock markets rather than complementing them. They see higher gold prices as a barometer of higher inflation and greater uncertainty that will scare investors out of general stocks. And lower stock investment and stock trading means much lower incomes for the entire Wall Street industry. So for gold’s entire run higher, Wall Street either ignored or scoffed at gold’s massive bull.
Bearish theories were always advanced, no matter how far gold ran. But since it has suffered a normal correction that cascaded into a brutal plunge this year driven by a couple key unsustainable and waning anomalous factors I explain in depth in our new July newsletter, there is suddenly a huge market for gold bearishness. And the old gold perma-bears on Wall Street are of course happy to oblige, savaging gold.
Traders crave bearish gold theories today like this thoroughly-disproven bond-yield one because they want to rationalize 2013’s exceptional gold plunge. They want to believe it is fundamentally righteous instead of a short-lived extreme emotional anomaly driven by extreme fear that is already burning itself out. And just like after 2008’s extreme stock panic, a massive rebound upleg in gold is imminent as fear fades.
Rather amusingly, bond yields will likely play a role. But not how you’d expect. In the coming weeks, bond investors are going to get their Q2 financial statements and be shocked to see double-digit losses in their principal invested in supposedly risk-free and safe US Treasury funds. In just one quarter, all their yields earned in the past 4 or 5 years were totally wiped out! They will be dismayed, outraged, and scared.
No doubt some will decide 2%, 3%, or even 4% nominal yields (much lower after true inflation) aren’t worth the growing risks of staying invested in a generational bond bubble while the Federal Reserve contemplates scaling back its unprecedented Treasury buying. Some will likely decide to move some of their bond capital into gold. Sure there’s no yield, but gold is low and due to rise while bonds are high and due to fall.
So the surging long rates could actually increase gold investment demand! You’ll never hear that on CNBC, even though the capital losses in existing bond portfolios driven by rising yields have coincided with huge gold uplegs in the past decade. Interestingly the rates that affect gold most are not the long ones dominating headlines in the past month, but real rates. These are bond yields after inflation.
I wrote my first real rates and gold essay back in July 2001 when the metal traded at $270. I pointed out how bullish negative real rates were for gold, a hugely ridiculed contrarian position back then. My latest essay on this thread was published last November. So if you want to dig deeper, read that. But for today, just take my word for it after over a decade of study that negative real interest rates are very bullish for gold.
This final chart looks at negative real rates and gold. They are not based on 10y Treasury-note yields which require capital to be tied up for a decade, but 1-year Treasury-bill yields. From these inflation per the year-over-year change in the lowballed Consumer Price Index is subtracted. The result is real interest rates, and they have contributed considerably to the gigantic surge in gold investment demand globally since early 2001.
Forget about 2013’s epically anomalous gold selloff for a second, and look at how gold has fared over the past dozen years with low and negative real rates. In a negative-real-rate environment, bond investors actually lose purchasing power by owning bonds. The yields they earn are below the inflation rate, so they effectively pay for the privilege of lending their own money! Thus negative real rates drive bond investors into gold.
Sure gold has no yield. But it more than keeps pace with inflation over most reasonable timespans, so investors’ capital isn’t shrinking in real terms. And real rates have been overwhelmingly negative since December 2008 when Bernanke’s Fed embarked on its asinine anti-saver anti-economic-growth zero-interest-rate policy. The total failure of ZIRP is what led to the inflationary abomination of quantitative easing.
While the Fed has totally lost control of the long end of the yield curve in the past couple months, it still controls short rates with an iron fist. It directly sets the federal-funds rate, which banks use to lend to each other mostly overnight. And all short yields are keyed off of that. The shorter their maturity, the greater the Fed’s influence. And even out on 1-year Treasury bills, the federal-funds rate still utterly dominates.
In the FOMC’s latest meeting, it said it intends to keep ZIRP in place for “at least as long” as unemployment remains over 6.5% and inflation a year or two out is not expected to exceed 2.5%. Traders rightfully interpret this as meaning years into the future. As long as ZIRP is active, 1y Treasury yields are not going to rise much above current levels. And even lowballed CPI inflation isn’t likely to fall under 1%.
So negative real rates are not dependent on quantitative easing like long rates, but ZIRP. And the Fed is going to hold rates near zero for years to come. It can’t even reduce the pace of its balance-sheet expansion from all the QE debt monetization, let alone even start thinking about raising rates yet. As long as negative real rates persist, investment demand for gold is going to continue to grow on balance. It’s that simple.
So don’t worry about long rates and gold, one of Wall Street’s many anti-gold red-herring arguments. The real story on bonds and gold is real rates. And until the Fed musters the courage to catapult its federal-funds rate from zero to at least 1.5%, negative real rates are going to remain firmly entrenched. And they are wildly bullish for gold as the past dozen years have proven. 2013 was an anomaly that is already passing.
At Zeal we never accept any market argument without first investigating it ourselves. This has led us to a hardcore contrarian worldview. We buy low when others are afraid and sell high when others are brave. Thus we remain super-bullish on gold today despite the epic bearishness pervading it. Just like after 2008’s stock panic, the biggest uplegs ever seen are born out of the most extreme bearish sentiment.
Because of the extreme bearishness in gold, gold stocks have been pummeled to their most oversold and undervalued levels in the last dozen years if not ever. We’ve been buying them aggressively in our latest newsletters. And we continue to research them to uncover the fundamental elite.
The bottom line is rising long rates don’t threaten gold. Throughout its secular bull, gold has thrived while 10-year Treasury yields were higher or rising dramatically. Bond investors and gold investors are distinct groups with different goals. Gold investors aren’t looking for yield, they seek capital gains. And global gold investment demand grows for many reasons whether long rates happen to be rising or falling.
You can actually make the case that the severe capital losses in bonds driven by fast-rising yields are bullish for gold. There is no sense parking capital in bonds when they are being sold off aggressively, leaving gold much more attractive. And as long as real interest rates remain negative, which will persist for as long as the Fed holds rates artificially low near zero, gold investment demand will continue growing.
By Adam Hamilton, CPA
http://www.ZealLLC.com
Bottom action maybe...
One week price drop of $100.30... biggest I've ever seen...
Gold price jumps after Fed eases QE fears
Frik Els | January 30, 2013
http://www.mining.com/gold-price-jumps-after-fed-eases-qe-fears-81276/
Silver and gold starting to decouple in price... silver is stronger...
GOLDEN STAR RESOURC (BATS: GSS) fiat$1.730 -0.040 (-2.26%)
Realtime Price / Updated: 3:45 PM EST, Jan 4, 2013 /
http://markets.wnd.com/worldnetdaily./quote?Symbol=899%3A688905
A comparison of managements performance a must -
its often repeat itself -
E.g.,
Major Gold producer GSS EPS -$0.05 P/E N/A
vs. ex.
Penny Gold producer CALVF EPS $0.02 P/E 5.00
NO DEBT - dd....
http://markets.wnd.com/worldnetdaily./quote?Symbol=130%3A680485
http://shortsqueeze.com/?symbol=GSS&submit=Short+Quote%99
USA / USGIF Silver & Gold - Debt Collapse -
Gold & Silver gone bonkers today/Dollar over the cliff...
Gold futures market heading for crisis
by Alasdair Macleod - http://www.FinanceAndEconomics.org
Published : December 11th, 2012
http://www.24hgold.com/english/news-gold-silver-gold-futures-market-heading-for-crisis.aspx?article=4154222960G10020&redirect=false&contributor=Alasdair+MacLeod
I thought I had a good idea what disasters we might face in 2013, and then I saw the most recent US Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s Bank Participation Report for gold and silver. On the basis of recent BPRs these markets are heading for a crisis, which is generally unexpected. I shall break the reader in gently by looking at gold first.
The first chart below shows US banks’ net short exposure to gold up to December 4. Between February and August the US banks managed to reduce their net shorts from 104,717 to 57,689 contracts against a background of a declining gold price. This is logical, to be expected and sensible position management. However, when the gold price turned up after the August BPR, net shorts rapidly rose to new highs, and over the last month unexpectedly increased again while the gold price actually declined. This is a sign that the US banks, of which only five made returns for December, are having difficulty keeping a lid on the market that emotionally at best is neutral, but most probably somewhat oversold. This differs from an over-bought market with potential profit-takers to shake out, as was the case when gold traded at $1,900 per ounce and the same banks were able to bring the gold price back under control.
The next chart is of Non-US banks’ net shorts, which tells a very different story. From October 2011 these banks increased their short positions, with a sudden jump between August and October, before sharply reducing their net positions to 44,707 contracts this month. It appears that some of the shorts have ended up on the US banks’ books, pushing their shorts to uncomfortable levels as shown in the first chart.
The jump in these net shorts between August and October was comprised of sharp rises in both longs and shorts involving swap dealers and the other commercials. Longs more than tripled from 9,199 to 34,881 and shorts rose even more from 49,772 to 113,445 on a rising gold price. The likely explanation is that buyers materialised through some of these non-US banks, who hedged by buying futures contracts. A dealer or dealers at one or more other non-US banks saw the price go against their shorts and tried to kill it by massive intervention. Subsequently, when the US banks sold the market down from the October rally these non-US banks took the opportunity to reduce their shorts to more normal levels.
This information is particularly revealing, given that the Commitment of Traders Report shows a substantial reduction in the Commercials’ net position by 34,551 contracts for the week to the same date as the BPR, giving an impression of a market being brought back under control. The BPR suggests otherwise.
Silver
While there is a large stock of gold that can theoretically become available at higher prices, the same cannot be said for silver. We shall look at the position of the US banks first. The first silver chart shows that even though silver is trading well below its 2011 highs, US banks’ net shorts are substantially higher than might be expected. The long figure is down to only 625 contracts, while the shorts are 40,198, so these less-than-four-banks that reported last week have a net short exposure of nearly 200,000,000 ounces, or twice the estimated annual supply of silver available to investors after industrial demand is allowed for.
The final chart shows the non-US banks’ net shorts. Unlike their exposure to gold, these banks are in the same deep trouble as the US banks, having made the mistake of turning a broadly level book as recently as the August BPR into a record net short position on the August-October price rise. This is a vicious bear squeeze on them, which added to the US banks’ position amounts to a total short of 290,000,000 ounces. This figure compares with net shorts of only 120,000,000 ounces when the price was successfully taken down from its all-time highs early last year.
Conclusion
The silver does not exist to cover these short positions, and it will take very little further buying to set off a crisis in this important market. In the case of gold, there have always been central banks with physical bullion available to ease market shortages, but so far as we are aware the strategic silver stockpiles of previous decades are exhausted. There is therefore no price at which these shorts can be closed.
Bank positions in both silver and gold seem to have been adversely affected by “events unknown” from the August BPR onwards. All attempts by the banking community to regain control of these important markets appear to have failed.
Since the date of the latest BPR (December 4), there have been three serious attempts to reduce these short positions and each time the same $32.60 level has held firm. This suggests that a buyer or buyers larger than the banks are prepared to take them on by buying the dips. This price action supports anecdotal evidence that physical bullion in important markets such as London is in short supply.
On this evidence, and assuming the trend continues, there will shortly come a time where NYMEX will be forced to declare force majeure in this market, which they can do under their rule book. The consequences of this extreme action could well be destabilising not only for the price and demand for silver but also disruptive for gold.
Therefore, we must add the breakdown of precious metals markets to the list of systemic dangers we face in the New Year.
Thanks to Alasdair Macleod from http://www.goldmoney.com
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Amsterdamgold.com
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Centennial Precious Metals
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CMI Gold & Silver
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Jaxville Gold and Silver Trading Co.
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Jaggards Pty Ltd. (Established 1963)
Bullion and Rare Coin Dealers
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JH Mint
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Liberty Coin Service
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Michael Riedel, Proprietor
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Northwest Territorial Mint
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Royal Crown Precious Metals Ltd.
Suite 1500, HSBC Building
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Andreas Runge, President
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445 Montgomery St.
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1002 43rd St. SW
Fargo, North Dakota 58103
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JIM WILLIE: CENTRAL BANK GOLD REHYPOTHECATION SCANDAL TO TAKE GOLD TO $5,000/OZ
NOVEMBER 22, 2012
By Jim Willie, http://www.GoldenJackass.com
http://www.silverdoctors.com/jim-willie-central-bank-gold-rehypothecation-scandal-to-take-gold-to-5000oz/
-The battle is on for delivery and verification for official gold accounts
-Evidence grows that much of it is gone, and when demanded, replaced with urgency
-It is soon to transform into a global gold war
-The German Govt gold demand to the London and NY City bankers represents a big escalation in the gold war
-The central bank coordinated QE to Infinity has brought questions of gold account location and integrity
-The Allocated Gold Account scandal is a natural event to follow the LIBOR banker scandal
-QE3 will assure a gold rise past the $2000 mark, but the new scandal will take the gold price to $5000
-The powerful gold factors are aligned and in place, led by permanent ZIRP and unlimited QE
A nasty Golden Harp could soon have its cords plucked, with the resonance working to shake loose the bankster cover of improper illicit duplicitous and probably highly illegal usage of Allocated Gold Accounts. When diverse scattered accounts are pilfered and depleted without authorization in Switzerland, resulting in several multi-$billion class action lawsuits in Zurich, all kept dutifully out of the news, that is one thing. But when a few key official government gold accounts are ransacked in systematic fashion from established trusted locations, defying and betraying the trust of the German Govt and other national governments, that is quite another. To be sure, the system can tolerate ransacking and replacing with scurried harried efforts the Venezuelan gold account like in 2011. The media told the story with creativity and aplomb, avoiding the truth, inventing a tale, but finding a credible pile of dung to feed the public, which swallowed it whole. The global monetary war has been raging for four years, ever since the Lehman Brothers firm was targeted and destroyed with planning and motivated execution, for the benefit of Goldman Sachs full CDS redemptions and exploit by JPMorgan in war chest reload under cover of bankruptcy court orders. The media prefers regularly to refer to the global financial crisis incorrectly and improperly. A crisis passes after a year or so. This war lingers like WWI and WW2 and Vietnam, with a clear emerging agenda to defend the USDollar regime from global isolation shun, to conceal the USTreasury Bond support mechanisms in derivatives, to avoid the US banking system from grotesque insolvency but kept afloat by grand money laundering channels, and to motivate an endless war to secure resource thefts and control that center on oil fields and the poppy fields. Witness the slow gradual inexorable collapse of the global monetary and financial system.
This is a global monetary war as last hurrah for the longest running fiat paper currency regime in modern history, which has run from 1971. The current dying regime has been held up by pressure to maintain USDollar support and not diversify away from it. It has been held up by amplified usage of derivative support in the form of Interest Rate Swap contracts, thereby keeping USTBond yields ultra-low in the face of chronic $1.3 trillion USGovt deficits, and creating an illusion of a flight to safe haven. It has been held up diverse comical USFed support in the form of a cornucopia of liquidity programs, to supply the big US banks with never ending bond redemption and carry trade aid. The current dying USDollar regime has culminated in an admitted permanent monetary policy identified by a toxic 0% official rate and the emerging reality of limitless bond monetization. It has been held up profound distortion of economic statistics, which have become almost laughable in the abuse.
To call this a financial crisis is like calling Hurricane Sandy just a bad storm, or calling a devastating drought just a dry spell, or calling raging cancer just a growth aberration, or calling a rape violation just an unfortunate encounter, or calling a death sequence just a passing, or calling a business bankruptcy just a bad skein on its account, or calling a home foreclosure just an opportunity to clean house. The nation and the world are undergoing a death sequence for the USDollar regime, and a vigorous corrupt defense to extend its life, in order to maintain power, to continue gigantic thefts, to perpetuate gigantic bond frauds, and to enable foreign account thefts of the traditional type and related to gold. The hidden motive in the Libyan overthrow of Qaddafi was to steal his 144 tons of gold held in London. The banksters needed it. The action and the reporting of the events were typical distractions laced with fiction.
HORRENDOUS STORM DAMAGE
The nation is heavily distracted by the Hurricane Sandy, its wind, its water, the resulting floods, the resulting electrical power outage, and ruined businesses, the controversies over flood damage versus wind rain and storm damage for insurance coverage. Look for Sandy to surpass Katrina in its total storm damage, which was $105 billion in 2005. Basic research indicates Sandy and Katrina had much in common, as the mad scientists attempt to play god. The efforts to produce a mild winter a year ago might have had a sling shot effect of generating a potent drought. The path was open for a unique storm, called once in a century, for the NorthEast. My memory is clear of the last hurricane to hit the region, which was Julia. The Jackass taped windows in the Boston area all for naught, since the 50-60 mph winds were nothing but a nuisance and cause for numerous downed trees on power lines. This storm is for the history books, perhaps retaliation by Mother Nature for messing in her kitchen, maybe worse. She always reaps her wrath and delivers her vengeance. The High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program has a shady sinister tone, but it is beyond the scope of the Hat Trick Letter. What Mengele was to medicine, HAARP is to meteorology. What Fort Dietrich is to viral weaponry, it is to weather control and seismic generations. What Monsanto is to modified genetic foods, it is to weather developments. The public seems laughably ignorant of devices to produce earthquakes and to amplify then steer storms, with nuclear power packs. Tesla notes and dreams have indeed come to life. Some personal contacts have close colleagues who actually worked on the project for the Boyz.
The delusional dopey derelict US economists have surfaced with their errant vacant viewpoints of a reconstruction benefit boost to the USEconomy. If only all could break windows and direct garden hoses in living rooms, the national economy could recover quickly. The key news item is that finally the New York Stock Exchange was finally shut down for two days due to uncontrollable liquidity and its widespread damage, due to a Hurricane Sandy Weill margin call on systemic failure. No amount of high frequency flashes to dry out the systems could succeed. No amount of plunge protection teams could open the drains beneath the damage. No amount of derivative exercises could bring workers to the trading pits.
The storm damage is estimated at $20 to $25 billion, again in a process divorced from the real world. Recall the Fannie Mae bailout estimates for $50 to $100 billion at first. Recall that the Iraqi War costs were $200 to $400 billion at first. The Jackass cited cost forecasts multiples higher, all accurate. Quick footnote on storm aftermath. Think Desert Storm, or Desert Shield, or whatever mucky name they offer. The yellow painted bricks taken from the Iraqi central bank were really gold bricks, stolen, then covered by a lame news network story gobbled up by the incredibly braindead public. In a few weeks, some concocted story might emerge about how the New York Fed was without electrical power, its vault systems left unsecure.
The Hurricane Sandy storm damage will reach far past the $100 billion level, probably closer to $200 billion. The center of the impact was the NorthEast, the most densely populated area of the country. Already 20% of the entire US population has been affected, with almost 7 million homes without power. Insurance firms will be depleted, at a time when their income has been hampered by the ultra-low USTBond yields, coupled with mortgage bond losses. The USFed will receive a big boost in destroying final demand, as the central bank has conducted a hidden agenda to keep commodity prices down by harming the general economy and thus reducing final demand. They will next enjoy hypocrisy of high order, as the economy pauses, then energizes with rebuilding and cleanup. The central bankers will talk of a boost and stimulus. The price of lumber and cement might become a problem later on. Time to fix the broken windows and mop up the flooded living rooms. It is all good, as people are back to work, the economic recovery enhanced.
GOLD WAR STAGE SET
Back to the topic today. The global monetary war has escalated. It began with a profound bond fraud backed by mortgages, often with duplicate usage of income streams. It extended to sovereign bond wreckage, from deep government deficits, from wasteful bank aid to ward off insolvency, and lost trust of heretofore sacrosanct bonds. The war continues. It extended to the desperation by big Western banks to redeem their bonds by USFed and EuroCB largesse, even if illegal, even if unsterilized, even if the averted liquidations wreck the national economies, even if the actions directly result in a higher cost structure, even if bank runs are inevitable. It extended to destabilize further the fragile Middle East nations already beset by rising food prices, so that the departing leaders could either leave with gold wealth (see Tunisia) or have their foreign accounts stolen (see Libya). Tiny Ghana demanded its gold return from London, but suddenly its leader showed up dead. Syria does not have oil wealth, but it does possess valuable ports (see Russian naval port in Tartus). The global monetary war extended to collateral grabs and seizures, like in Greece, but with an entire table full of similar attachments being done in Italy, Spain, France, Portugal, and elsewhere, mostly in deep secrecy. It extended to exert extreme pressures on the European Commission to bend the rules, and to European Central Bank to bend the rules, and on the German High Court to bend the rules. The banker elite require rule changes in order to perpetuate the redemption of their busted portfolios at public expense from additional government deficits. One must be a billionaire to receive public aid, as the commoners need not apply.
THE GOLD WAR BEGINS
The absence of solutions offered has forced the major central banks into heretic caustic and destructive policies that are stuck in place. The nations involved are all uniformly subjected to the 0% corner, with their monetary spew reaching all corners of the world. The US Federal Reserve leads the way in justifying the highly destructive ZIRP and QE, the powerful 0% free money clarion call joined by endless bond monetization to pay for the wide stream of federal deficits. The Weimar America has produced a Pied Piper effect among the major central banks, coerced by a powerful Competing Currency War factor, where all must join or see their currencies rise to dangerous levels, sufficient to render deep economic damage in the vaunted export trade. The USFed in effect attacks the successful coveted export trades by monetary recklessness. The impact from the Global QE to Infinity, which the Jackass made reference to in 2011 long before other analysts, is to cause a defense from currency debasement. Wealth is under heavy attack. The impact has caused an undercurrent by the US and UK bankers in pursuit of gold supply to satisfy demands, like from Venezuela. The principal sources of gold continue to be the Bank of England, the Bank For Intl Settlements, and the Roman catacombs. The elite are having their gold vaults raided, done as loans to the major central banks and bullion bank centers. Resentment builds.
Alternative supply sources have been urgently needed, thus the project in Libya. Thus the MFGlobal thefts. The list goes on, but the need is rising far faster than the channels can be supplied. Desperation has set in with the major bullion bankers and their clever craftsmen who manage markets with leverage, derivatives, and propaganda. The Gold War is escalating, as the insolvent bankrupt and desperate Western bankers are resorting to whatever means to locate gold assets. They have a two-fold double whammy at work. They must find new gold supply in order to shore up their own insolvent systems based upon gigantic flawed paper structures built atop debt structures. They must also find new gold supply in order to satisfy gold demands within the LBMA and COMEX, or else face market defaults that expose the acute shortage of Gold & Silver. The MFGlobal theft of private accounts was a direct assault and crime scene designed to satisfy a Silver market demand delivery schedule. Investors awaiting silver delivery had their accounts stolen. While permitted by regulators and the courts, the warning was given for a call to arms to protect and preserve true wealth held in gold accounts. It must be located and secured before it is stolen by the London and New York bankers.
OFFICIAL GOLD REQUESTS AS ESCALATION
The bond fraud and gold market fraud and futures brokerage fraud and central bank bond monetizations, and desperate reactions to insolvent broken national banking systems, and continued flow of government red ink in deficits, all these activities have motivated nations to check their gold bank accounts. What they see scares them witless, but it pushes them into action. The demand by Chavez in Venezuela over a year ago served as a stark wakeup call. Imagine mature experienced savvy German bank officials observing a socialist backwater Latino renegade like Chavez leading the way in defense from Western banker corruption and colossal thefts. Finally, the Germans are taking action. They tried in September to view their gold account in the New York Fed, but were turned away with insults and disdain. Word has come that the shun event in the Big Apple was probably the fifth time in the last few years that a German delegation has been turned away. The situation is as complex as it is dicey. The Germans under the Deutsche Bank flagship had been a principal accomplice and cooperative partner in the great gold game, where as a large collusive group they leased national gold, dumped it on the market, supported their paper currencies, while the banking elite speculated and profited in the $trillions on leveraged bets that were basic betrayals of their nation. The Jackass prefers the words financial treason. To use the metaphor, the Golden Harp will be busy causing deep damage to the global financial structures, from its broken bond foundation to its uncollateralized major currencies. The Golden Harp will act as a great destroyer from the financial tectonic plates that stand as the faulty bond foundation, to the stormy ether in which the baseless currencies float in infinite volumes.
Some historical research reveals that the infamous Brown Folly had a basis in aiding Deutsche Bank. The Bank of England was directed to sell a huge lot of its national gold treasure between 1999 and 2002 to mark the Gold market bottom. It was not sold, but rather handed to D-Bank in order to satisfy a big margin call. They aided both D-Bank and Goldman Sachs, each heavily short and at risk. The Gordon Brown action was done with two unusual signpost markings. The sale was announced in advance, thus permitting front running by London and New York bank buddies. It was done in auction, to assure the lowest possible price. The actions set the low. But the actions bailed out D-Bank secretly. The aid to GSax was one of a string of ugly pearls, which the arrogant elite firm never seems to mind and never bothers to cover up too effectively. They benefited from the TARP Funds as #1 son in the family. They did work feverishly in 2009 to conceal their Unix box for tapping into the NYSE for peeking at trades, front running them, and skimming pennies on billions of trades. They enlisted the help of the FBI to arrest the Russian rogue, painting him as a villain, even prosecuting him, despite the clear legal violations from the GSax tool. He tried to show the world what scum GSax was, how they were common criminals in white collar crime. Back to Germany.
In the summer 2012 months, a significant sequence of events took place. The CEO Josef Ackerman was ousted finally. Few realized that his removal was a key event in the change of tide against the Western banker elite. The story went largely unreported. As leader of D-Bank during many years of solid cooperation with London and New York banker games and gimmicks, he knew too much. My best info source reported last spring that several Interpol agents and high level investigators occupied Ackerman’s office while he was present. They obtained files, downloaded documents, and had their way. The shocked CEO made a phone call to an attorney, and was frustrated at the lack of pull. He made another phone call to a ranking judge, but again was frustrated at the lack of pull. He was told that the raid was done from a higher level than the German Govt. The Jackass was told that the raid was the work of a powerful new sheriff in town, with Eastern entity connections, hell-bent on justice, with a no nonsense attitude, with staggering wealth at their disposal.
The global monetary war extended in March, April, May, and June to a profound powerful run of gold bullion by Eastern entities against London banks. Margin calls of unusual type prevailed, where cash cannot satisfy the margin calls, where wrecked leveraged bets on currencies and bonds demand action taken to fortify the margin. In all, approximately 6000 metric tons have departed London bank vaults since March, all headed East, in the biggest raids in modern history. The US press, London press, and Western European press have been silent. The silent spring reminds one of the missing bird chatter from DDT decades ago, chronicled by Rachel Carson. The toxic paper has a chemical parallel. These London trades have been the object of Jackass study for a couple months. My firm belief, backed up by hints of confirmation from sources, indicates the Eastern pressures on London banks could involved enormous amounts of Official Gold Accounts and private Allocated Gold Accounts, improperly used (rifled, pilfered, stolen) for the original margin placement. Satisfy the margin call with like kind asset. Conceal the gold account seizures, but in the process the owners recall their gold bullion in huge volumes, with deals cut and secrecy maintained. The London bankers find their nether onions caught in a powerful vise, and the Easterners are hardly in the mood to relieve the pressure.
GERMAN AND DUTCH DEMANDS
The German Govt demands a full accounting of its official gold accounts held in foreign lands. They demand a careful accounting that involves inspections, weighing, assurance of gold proof, and examination of markings, perhaps even some testing of bar cores. They demand an accounting that cites locations and storage. They demand a full complete audit. The distrust is thick. James Turk, founder of Gold Money, believes the German gold is all gone, used up in the two decades of gold games that defended the fiat paper currency regime. He lives and works in London, has ties there, and probably is privy to the grapevines. The order is part of a compromise between the German central bank and the Audit Court, which has called on the Bundesbank to take stock of its gold holdings outside Germany, saying it has never verified their existence. Apparently, no longer will the word of the New York Fed or the Bank of England be sufficient. They have been caught lying too often. They have been implicated in deep bank corruption too often. They are being depleted of their gold, in regular shipments to cover the demands, the evidence for which is detailed in the October Hat Trick Letter. Call it backlash from the Quantitative Easing and infinite endless unlimited bond monetization that is an absolute guarantee of systemic currency ruin. Call it a backlash from the sequence of rogue bond redemption plans declared by King Draghi at the Euro Central Bank. The Western Governments are scurrying to locate their Gold reserves, realizing that Gold is the only wealth asset they possess, except for the buildings and edifices that house their depleted gutted central banks.
My firm belief is that the Gold Wars have reached a new level, where Germany will be disappointed when it learns the gold is gone. To be sure, big distractions and absurd excuses will be offered. The pressure is on. The Dutch have joined the movement in making demands on London and New York. The call to the corrupt fortress is plain: WHERE IS OUR GOLD?? Maybe like with Jericho, after several calls the walls will fall. The irony is thick, since for 20 years the Western leaders have proclaimed gold as a barbarous relic that pays no yield, a dead asset. So the Germans with Dutch echo want a full accounting of their prized so-called dead asset, which in the end will provide salvation when the new monetary system is put in place. That system is ready, with full trade settlement foundation. It awaits the monetary system full collapse.
The outcome will be shown soon enough. The London and New York bankers improperly used the German gold, and official gold from numerous accounts like from France and Spain, from Venezuela to Mexico, to enforce the Strong Dollar Policy and to defend against its collapse. The Mexicans this month performed a formal genuflection before the London Banker Kings, announcing no need to repatriate their gold, as full confidence was expressed. What lackeys, likely offered a bone somewhere. Allocated Gold Accounts have been pilfered with governments as the owners. They will be angry. They must walk a fine line to express outrage but to protect from revelations pointing to their own complicity and benign neglect. The flagship bank of Germany which bears the national name has been deeply involved. In recent months, D-Bank has been cooperating with the Interpol and Intl Court of Hague in pursuing the banker corruption and high crimes against currency, wealth, savings, and humanity. Delicate deals have been struck with D-Bank. It will be interesting to observe how the German demands for gold account audit are met, and how the German Govt reacts to delays and coverup. My belief is that the D-Bank flip was key to the breaking of the LIBOR bank scandal.
GOLD PRICE REACTION
The Allocated Gold Account scandal is at the doorstep. The German Govt demand for full accounting of its foreign gold account is the knock at the door. They were shown extreme disrespect by the New York Fed in September. The recent demand is the consequence, in a ramped up escalation of the conflict, better described as gold war. My best gold trader source has assured that the eruption of the Allocated Gold Account scandal will come in the wake of the LIBOR scandal. They are related links in the exposure of big bank corruption. The LIBOR scandal began the process of investigation, discovery, and action, if not prosecution. Word repeats from key sources that the biggest banker criminals will never see justice. They will just vanish. An important consequence of the LIBOR followup is the lack of trust between bankers. They are all under investigation for collusion, and therefore must be silent as each is subject to indictment and lawsuit damages. The discovery process is unique, as the investigations can legally pursue and request documents, conversations, emails, and testimony that was previously not available. The strong crowbar is being used widely by strong arms and hands, with formidable bodyguards behind them. The Allocated Gold Account scandal is at the doorstep, possibly to break open by German demands.
The official in major nations are catching on. Expect more national government officials to make demands of London and New York. They suspect their national accounts are stolen, replaced by gold paper certificates, kind of an IOU left behind by the thief with defiant signature. Now a new twist. Romania has joined, as they recently demanded a full audit of their national gold account held by the Kremlin. The irony and contrast is due next. Expect the Kremlin to comply with the request from Bucharest. Their responsible response will put additional pressure on the corrupt Anglo banking centers, the site which the Jackass has long described as the center of the financial crime syndicate. The contrast will be embarrassing to the Western financial centers and their leaders, the dons to syndicate power.
The Gold price is sure to respond to the realization that the London and New York bank vaults do not contain the official gold on account. Supply is not in existence, sure to have an effect on price, as demand escalates globally. The trust has been violated. The anger will be acute. The global reaction will be recognition that the Western Governments do not possess the gold they claim to reinforce the integrity and value of their entire monetary systems. What faith remains in the fiat paper system will vanish quickly. Not only are the various sovereign bonds nearly worthless, but the collateral understood to reinforce their value is gone. The monetary system deserves to be foreclosed upon. The global currency system with the USDollar at its center deserves to be removed, replaced, and reconstructed.
Recall Jim Sinclair and his numerous calls between years 2005 and 2007 for a $1560 Gold price. Many called him crazy, but he was proved correct. The critics to the Gold Sound Money Movement still do not show respect. Rather they are loaded with contempt, clinging to failed Keynesian principles and empty beliefs that central banks can install solutions. They are best qualified to manage their gold thefts, manage the heavy narco money laundering, manage the multi-$trillion grants to banker colleagues, manage the bond shell games, and clean up after the mortgage bond frauds. Those are their best work accomplishments. The Gold bull market is entering an important second gear after a long year of consolidation. The feckless idiots who claim the Gold Bull is done seem the most ignorant in the financial classroom, the dumbest and most deficient in mental processes.
The Gold bull market has several primary cylinders.
1) Negative real rate of interest. With official interest rates stuck under 1% by all major central banks, the actual interest rate after subtracting price inflation is deeply negative. This factor has been and will continue to serve as the most important among many factors. It is the gigantic blind spot among gold critics. The long-term USTreasurys offer a mere 2% or 3% at most, far below the prevailing price inflation in the real world. Effective returns are thus negative. Investment in Gold as a hedge against the absent compensation for the erosion of money, it just makes sense.
2) Bond monetization. With unlimited bond purchases from QE1, then QE2, then Operation Twist, now QE3, and on and on until QE175, the debasement of currency is entrenched, absolute, and shocking. The movement is joined by the Euro Central Bank, the Bank of England, the Swiss National Bank, and the Bank of Japan. The debasement of money is powerful and without abatement. Investment in Gold as a hedge against the reckless production of bond supply, it just makes sense.
3) Unsterilized bond purchases. The QE3 admission of associated bond sales was a story not adequately told. In fact, it was a story told by omission. In the past, especially with the deceptive Operation Twist, the bond purchases were often made with funds derived from other bond sales. Like sell short-term USTBills in order to have funds to buy long-term USTBonds. The QE3 details indicate that Weimar Amerika has arrived, with extraordinary bond purchases using printed money. The debasement of money has turned nuclear. Investment in Gold as a hedge against the unchecked debasement of money, it just makes sense.
4) Permanence of QE. In the summer months of 2009, the Jackass was vocal and adamant, claiming that the Exit Strategy was a ruse, an impossible door to depart from the drastic desperate duplicitous central bank monetary policy. My stated forecast was that the ZIRP would remain and become permanent, and that QE would come in force. The buyers of USTBonds are long gone, except for other central banks playing the Competing Currency War games. The USFed under Bernanke announced last month that ZIRP would be extended until the end of year 2015. This is an admission that it is permanent. Every three to four months, they assure another year of permanence. The debasement of money has become a permanent fixture in a broken buggy. Investment in Gold as a hedge against the permanent debasement of money, it just makes sense.
GOLD BULL BILLBOARDS
The Quantitative Easing coupled with Zero Percent Interest Policy are dual firing chambers of a central bank shotgun aimed at destroying money. They will destroy wealth. They will destroy economies. They will destroy banking systems. They have already destroyed the central bank franchise system and bank integrity. Their actions will lead to a global rebellion against the USDollar, a movement well along. They will assure a USDollar isolation. They will bring about a replacement trade settlement system, which is actually almost in place. When combined with flat-footed Iran sanctions, the movement has accelerated to find USDollar alternatives in trade, and to diversify away from US$-based assets held in reserve.
More importantly, the QE and ZIRP assure the Gold price will rise past the $2000 mark, and that the Silver price will rise past the $60 mark. That is the direct eventual unavoidable effect of QE & ZIRP, the signal flares of central bank failure and monetary system ruin. Their permanent monetary easing is incredibly bullish for the Gold price, a guarantee of an endless bull market. As long as the bond monetization continues with the 0% official rate, the Gold bull market will be equally enduring and endless. It is that simple!!
The QE & ZIRP assure the breakout to new highs. However, the Allocated Gold Account scandal will assure the Gold price reaches $5000 and the Silver price reaches $200. The scandal has begun. The stage is set. The official Gold Accounts from foreign nations have been taken. Choose your word: improperly used, illicitly seized, illegally stolen, desperately hypothecated. The point is that national gold treasures held in London and New York have vanished over the last 20 years, a process begun with the Clinton-Rubin Admin, continued with the Bush-Paulson Admin, defended by the Obama-Geithner Admin. The names of the administrations must include the Goldman Sachs representative in charge of the USDept Treasury, the guy with the stealing rights, as my friend in Reno colorfully calls it.
The Most Important Chart for an Investor in Gold, and it Remains Bullish
Friday November 23, 2012 2:10 PM
http://www.kitco.com/reports/KitcoNews20121123JW_technical.html
If you are a gold market bull, and especially if you are a longer-term "buy and hold" investor, then the monthly continuation bar chart on nearby Comex gold futures is just what you want to be seeing. Gold prices have been in an accelerating uptrend for 11 years, since the 2001 low of $255 an ounce, basis nearby Comex futures. If you are a trader or investor, "the trend is your friend." The longer-term price trend in gold remains up, and there are no significant technical clues to suggest the uptrend will end any time soon. Thus, the path of least resistance for gold prices in the coming months will likely remain sideways to higher. I would not be surprised to see nearby gold futures prices push above $2,000.00 an ounce in 2013.
Monthly Charts Clarify Prognosis For Gold & Silver
Jordan Roy-Byrne, CMT (Certified Market Technician)
21 November 2012
http://www.thedailygold.com
http://www.gold-eagle.com/editorials_12/roy-byrne112112.html
We've been surprised at the recent action in the precious metals complex. During the recent correction the shares were showing quite a bit more strength than the metals. Then the shares took a dive below support yet the metals maintained their recent lows! How do we interpret this wild volatility in the relationship between the shares and the metals? Quite often we look at daily and weekly charts. Now is the time to take a look at the monthly charts which can help us get a better read on the larger trends at hand.
The monthly chart of Gold shows the yellow metal in a very healthy consolidation between $1550 and $1800. Gold's current retreat from $1800 has lasted two months. Back in 2009, Gold brokeout to a new all-time high in the seventh month of its consolidation. Presently, Gold's bollinger band width is at a multi-year low and its three-month volume average is at a two year low. Also, the RSI has bottomed and made a higher low. Even if Gold touched $1600, it would remain in healthy position for a breakout in 2013.
Gold's companion Silver is currently trading in a tighter consolidation with $35 as resistance and $27 as support. Note that Silver has tested and held above $27 six times in the last fifteen months. Silver also held above the rising 40-month moving average which supported the market in 2009 and 2010. The RSI has also made a higher low and volume has trended down during the past seven months.
Meanwhile, the gold stocks (HUI) look weaker than the metals. Momentum hasn't confirmed its bottom as the market is in a clear range from 400 (support) and 525 (resistance). Note the current 11% decline in the HUI for the month while Gold and Silver are still in positive territory. Nevertheless, if and when the HUI prints a monthly close above 525, this chart would like quite bullish and general sentiment would certainly pick up.
The evidence argues that the bottoms remain well intact and the metals are consolidating before the next breakout which entails Gold breaking $1800 and Silver $35. However, these breakouts are by no means imminent. Since we are dealing with monthly charts that means potentially three or four more months of consolidation. Furthermore, sentiment data such as the COT structure and public opinion polls need some improvement before the market could sustain a breakout. Thus, more consolidation could be the order of the day for the metals.
Continued consolidation in the metals also helps explain recent weakness in the HUI, which is simply testing the lower half of its own consolidation. The shares see the weakness in the overall market and perhaps sense that an immediate breakout in the metals is unlikely Furthermore, while central banks have put themselves in position to act they haven't actually done anything yet. When the market senses their action it will likely mark a final low within this consolidation.
The good news is the metals remain in fine shape and so to do most of the mining equities we follow. If we are indeed correct that the metals and shares will remain range bound then your task is simple. Prepare yourself for further consolidation by having your buy list ready and then be ready to act when the time comes. A wise friend once told me that in a bull market the goal is to accumulate positions at the lowest prices possible. With mining equities trading well off their highs, now is the time to do your research and find the companies that will lead the next leg higher and outperform the gold stock sector.
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If you'd be interested in professional guidance in uncovering the producers and explorers poised for big gains then we invite you to learn more about our service.
Good Luck!
Jordan Roy-Byrne, CMT
Jordan@TheDailyGold.com
A link some may find helpful:
http://goldinvestingnews.com/
Gold shall crash so sayith the lord.
This price of 1776 shall stand no more. For now is our Independance day from the tyrany of high gold prices.
Lawrence Roulston Spots Gold Juniors with Bright Futures
Thursday August 23, 2012 11:09
http://www.kitco.com/ind/GoldReport/20120823.html
Source: Peter Byrne of The Gold Report (8/22/12)
http://www.theaureport.com/pub/na/14178
In the topsy-turvy gold equities market, it can be difficult to spot junior mining firms capable of delivering a substantial pay-off. In this exclusive interview with The Gold Report, top market analyst and Resource Opportunities newsletter editor Lawrence Roulston discusses how to identify undervalued firms from Africa to British Columbia that have high-quality assets, access to development cash, solid management teams and bright futures.
The Gold Report: You recently observed that there's $9 trillion of gold stashed away worldwide. Does this mean that short-term gold traders are setting the market price for gold?
Lawrence Roulston: Most of the gold in the world is held for the long term. Only a small portion of total gold holdings is actively traded. Short-term price fluctuations are largely the result of traders reacting to news. A long-term chart of the gold price tells the real story. Gold is trending higher and there are short-term fluctuations, but the long-term direction is obvious.
The important message is that the long-term outlook for gold remains extremely bullish. The gold producers have an ongoing need to replace reserves, and they want to grow their businesses. That's the basis for viewing the exploration and development companies. You're going to beat yourself up trying to figure out what the next short-term move is going to be in the gold price, but if you take this long-term uptrend seriously and look at the companies developing deposits that are likely to be taken over by the larger companies, that's a much better way to play the gold market.
TGR: In February, you told The Gold Report that for gold shares, "the worst is over." Do you still feel that way? Are there signs that a bottom for equities has been reached?
LR: That call was premature. There was a brief rally. It turned around when the gold price dropped. The U.S. dollar replaced gold as a safe haven as people fled from the uncertainty in Europe. At that time, I differentiated between the resource markets overall and the higher-quality junior companies. The message still applies. Better-quality companies with good assets, cash on hand and strong management are building strong bases in their share prices at this time. Some of these companies have come down to the bottom and are trading at cash value. There is not a lot of downside once they're trading at cash value.
We are in the midst of the summer doldrums. People aren't really paying attention to the junior markets. That's going to change in September when people come back from holidays. Investors are going to recognize that companies with good assets are trading for cash value or near that level, and that there is more upside potential than there is downside risk.
The big factor that is really going to drive the markets is takeovers. We're seeing it now, and that's going to make savvy investors pay attention.
TGR: What specific political and economic trends are affecting the price of bullion and the price of gold equities?
LR: Short-term prices are impacted by news headlines, but headlines are not all that accurate. We hear constantly about the slowdown in China. In reality, China is the largest consumer of metal and its economy is growing at better than 7% a year. That's less than the 8–9% growth of recent periods, but it's still a phenomenal pace of growth for the second largest economy in the world.
TGR: What about the so-called euro dilemma?
LR: The situation in Europe is the most significant element impacting investor sentiment. Markets have pretty much discounted a complete collapse of the euro. Personally, I don't think we're going to see a complete collapse of the euro. I think a more practical outlook is that the powers in Europe are moving ever closer toward a wide-open monetary easing in the same way that the Americans used monetary policy to overcome the 2008 global financial crisis. And it worked very effectively in the U.S. The American economy is not booming yet, but it has certainly rebounded from a recession to a period of slow growth.
TGR: What would be the effect of quantitative easing in Europe on gold investors?
LR: Over time, it will be very positive for hard assets in general, and especially for gold, but also positive for the whole range of commodities. Monetary easing depresses the value of currencies. It's inflationary. Hard assets like gold and other metals are going to effectively hold their value in real terms as the value of currencies decline. In the long term, the easing could be very bullish for commodities in general.
TGR: Given that now is a good time to bargain hunt for junior mining stocks, what standards should investors use when evaluating whether a particular junior has a solid chance at making it through the next year or so and emerging as a contender?
LR: The biggest payoff for a junior exploration company comes with a new discovery. The value of a quality asset increases as the owner expands and upgrades the resource by conducting engineering studies and moving toward production. Companies with solid mining assets and good management teams that are advancing toward production provide the best balance.
It's hard for companies to raise money. Financings can be dilutive to the point where a company may never recover. But enterprises with cash in hand are in strong positions. And companies with good assets and strong management can still raise money. To be a winner, a project has to have size and it has to have grade. It has to be well located with regard to infrastructure and jurisdiction. Now, having said that, the number of good jurisdictions is shrinking. It's getting harder and harder to find good-quality assets in favorable jurisdictions.
TGR: Is that good or bad for the junior investor?
LR: Long term, it's good. The value of the good-quality assets will appreciate. In decades gone by, there was a surplus of good-quality metal deposits available for development. When metal prices rose, a lot of new deposits came onstream and knocked back the metal prices. We saw that cycle repeated several times over the last few decades. But the situation has dramatically changed; there is no longer a surplus of good-quality assets. Finding large, high-grade deposits is getting harder. That means that when a company makes a discovery, the discovery is more likely to yield a high value for shareholders.
TGR: Looking at the relative share prices of junior companies over a two-year window, we see some that are still holding value, despite some downturn in share price. Do you consider this type of comparison to be an indicator of company strength for the long term?
LR: Yes. There are several ways to explain undervaluation of high quality firms. Some individual investors are terrified and are selling across the board; they want out of all equities. Another huge component in the selling is investment funds, hedge funds and other institutional-type investors who came into the resource sector not really knowing what they were doing. Now they are looking to get whatever they can get for their positions. Consequently, sophisticated investors are picking up great bargains. That companies are still holding value indicates that they have tangible assets and solid management.
TGR: I wonder about Africa, which has a host of political and infrastructure obstacles. Have juniors in Africa ever drawn your attention?
LR: When you look at countries within Africa that have various levels of political risk, it comes down to a tradeoff between risk and potential reward. There are some places in Africa that I wouldn't touch under any circumstances, but there are other places that are quite attractive in terms of their level of geopolitical risk, are extremely prospective geologically and, therefore, provide an excellent balance of risk and potential reward.
TGR: What other regions would fit those criteria?
LR: West Africa in general is very positive. Ghana is a good place to be. Ghana and many other countries over the past couple of years have bumped up its rates of taxation and royalties on the mining industry in response to high metal prices. That's turned off a lot of investors, not so much about the level that the royalties and taxes are at this time, but the political situation creates uncertainty as to what it is going to do next. We saw the same thing in Mongolia, which bumped up taxes, said it was satisfied with that, then came back a year or two later and said, "no, we want more." That's really the biggest problem right now, the uncertainty of what's coming next.
TGR: For the retail investor, what are some of the major metrics that an investor could look at to tell the difference between a good-quality company and one that's maybe not so good in today's market?
LR: You have to realize that most of the junior exploration companies have the best intentions in the world of making a discovery next week or next month. They're good geologists, they're well intentioned, but if they're not successful at making a new discovery, they're not going to deliver a lot of value to shareholders. Some of them will make discoveries, and they will provide enormous payoffs for shareholders. But, unless they make a discovery, there may not be a lot of value in the vast majority of the companies in this sector.
I like to focus on firms that have a tangible asset in hand. They have made a discovery or they've reinvigorated a discovery that was made at some point in the past. So they have something tangible, and they're adding value to it. It's important to realize that the mining industry has changed dramatically over the past couple of decades. There were discoveries made in the 1980s, 1990s and even the early part of the 2000s that didn't make economic sense at that time. The grade was too low or it was too remote. And of course the metal prices at that time were very much lower than they are today. With higher metal prices and with changing metrics in a number of areas, discoveries from way back are now extremely valuable and, in fact, are some of the best deposits available to the mining industry.
TGR: Before we conclude, is there another area you would recommend?
LR: British Columbia is really coming back into the forefront. Not a lot of investors have appreciated the significance of what's happening in British Columbia.
TGR: Well, it has infrastructure. It is politically stable. There are a fair amount of new discoveries going on.
LR: It's one of the most highly prospective geologic areas. It has had a lot of work done in the past, and there are many companies that are now building on that historic work. In fact, I'm working now on a special issue of a newsletter devoted to British Columbia.
TGR: In terms of new extraction techniques?
LR: In terms of companies that are building on work that was conducted in the province in the past. Until recently, it was perceived as having no value, but this might end up being one of the most significant porphyry copper-gold prospects anywhere. There are a lot of situations like this in British Columbia. The province was explored pretty thoroughly in the 1970s and 1980s but at that time, the grades that the enterprises were coming up with weren't high enough to be economic in the context of metal prices. But now the gold price in the last decade is six times higher and the copper price is six times higher. Situations that had little value a decade ago are now highly prospective.
TGR: Do you have any parting words?
LR: A lot of people recognize the long-term fundamentals in gold and the mining industry in general, but they are terrified about the situation in Europe and they're standing back. They're waiting for a signal that the markets are at the bottom. Nobody is going to ring a bell to announce that the market is at the bottom. We saw in the early part of 2009 how quickly the markets could rebound. Within a couple of weeks, the Toronto Stock Exchange Venture Index was up 50% and went on to triple over the next two years.
TGR: We could be in a similar situation.
LR: I believe we are. The really important point is that the high-quality companies are already seeing strong bases building in their share prices and many of them, in fact, are beginning to trend upward. If people wait until there's a signal that the markets are on the way up, it's going to be too late to get a position in the good-quality companies.
TGR: Thank you very much for your time. It's been a pleasure talking to you.
Lawrence Roulston, editor of Resource Opportunities, is a geologist with engineering and business training and more than 25 years of hands-on experience in the resource industry. After completing his studies at the University of British Columbia in 1975, Roulston worked as an analyst for Cominco Ltd. and for a mid-size Calgary oil group for several years. In 1984 he became the CFO for a group of mineral exploration companies. He was also vice president in an investment management firm focused on the resource industry. From 1994 to 1997, Roulston was CEO and director of a mineral exploration company. Since then, he has been a resource industry consultant and independent mining analyst. Roulston's years of hands-on experience and extensive personal contacts in the industry provide unique insights that have generated an impressive track record for Resource Opportunities.
For more, see the link above...
Gold Bulls Strongest in Nine Months as Hoard Builds: Commodities
By Nicholas Larkin - Aug 23, 2012 10:26 PM ET
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-08-23/gold-bulls-strongest-in-nine-months-as-hoard-builds-commodities.html
Gold traders are the most bullish in nine months after investors’ bullion holdings expanded to a record on mounting speculation that central banks will do more to bolster economic growth.
Twenty-nine of 35 analysts surveyed by Bloomberg expect prices to rise next week and three were bearish. A further three were neutral, making the proportion of bulls the highest since Nov. 11. Investors bought 51.7 metric tons valued at $2.77 billion through gold-backed exchange-traded products this month, the most since November, overtaking France as the world’s fourth-largest hoard when compared with national reserves.
Data released yesterday showed Chinese manufacturing at its weakest since November, signaling the nation may need more action to rebound from six quarters of slowing growth. European leaders are still struggling to contain the debt crisis. Minutes of the Federal Reserve’s most recent meeting showed many policy makers favor more stimulus. Gold rose 70 percent as the Fed bought $2.3 trillion of debt in two rounds of quantitative easing from December 2008 through June 2011.
“Additional stimulus is inevitable, the question is how it comes,” said Charles Morris, who oversees about $2.5 billion of assets at HSBC Global Asset Management in London. “There’s no doubt about it, this is gold’s moment. All the long-term trend signals suggest that gold is in a very strong bull market.”
Gold’s Rally
Gold rose 6.8 percent to $1,669.30 an ounce in London this year, reaching a four-month high yesterday and extending 11 consecutive annual gains. The Standard & Poor’s GSCI gauge of 24 commodities advanced 4.6 percent and the MSCI All-Country World Index of equities added 8 percent. Treasuries returned 2 percent, a Bank of America Corp. index shows.
Gold ETP holdings overtook France’s reserves on Aug. 21 after rising 90.4 tons this year to 2,447.1 tons, data compiled by Bloomberg show. Only the U.S., Germany and Italy hold more, International Monetary Fund data show. The IMF itself holds 2,814 tons of bullion, placing it between Germany and Italy.
Billionaire John Paulson raised his stake in the SPDR Gold Trust, the biggest gold ETP, by 26 percent in the second quarter and George Soros more than doubled his holdings, U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filings showed Aug. 14. Investors will buy 150 tons through ETPs this year and next, Barclays Plc estimates.
Fed Meeting
Fed policy makers said further action would probably be needed “fairly soon” without evidence of a “substantial and sustainable” improvement in the recovery, according to minutes of the July 31-Aug. 1 meeting released Aug. 22. They next meet Sept. 12-13. Monetary easing can devalue currencies and accelerate inflation, boosting the allure of gold, which generally earns investors returns only through price gains.
Gold closed above its 200-day moving average on Aug. 22 for the first time since March, and that may be a “shot in the arm” for prices to rally toward $1,700, CMC Markets U.K. Plc said in a report that day. The metal held above the measure from the beginning of 2009 through the end of last year, a period in which it reached a record $1,921.15 in September.
Other technical indicators signal the rally could stall. Bullion’s 14-day relative-strength index (MXWD) was at 71.4 today, above the level of 70 that indicates to some analysts who study such charts that a drop in prices may be imminent.
Hedge Funds
The increase in prices and ETP holdings has yet to be reflected in speculative wagers in U.S. futures markets. Hedge funds and other money managers cut bets on a rally by 58 percent since the end of February, U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission data show. The net-long position fell 4 percent in the week to Aug. 14 and is near the lowest since 2008.
Physical demand is slowing elsewhere, with sales of American Eagle gold coins by the U.S. Mint dropping 49 percent to 30,500 ounces last month, the lowest since April. The mint sold 21,500 ounces so far in August, data on its website show.
Gold imports in India, last year’s biggest buyer, are set to fall as much as 50 percent in the September to December period from a year earlier, Prithviraj Kothari, president of the Bombay Bullion Association, said Aug. 21. Local prices reached a record today, data compiled by Bloomberg show. That may crimp demand at a time when a below-average monsoon in the country threatens rural incomes.
Wedding Demand
Bullion should be supported toward the end of this year and the beginning of 2013 on rising seasonal wedding and festival demand in Asia, Ronald Stoeferle, a commodity analyst at Erste Group Bank AG in Vienna, said in a report e-mailed Aug. 22.
Republican drafters of their party’s 2012 platform called for the creation of a commission to “consider the feasibility” of returning the U.S. dollar to the gold standard “to set a fixed value” for the currency, according to a 60-page draft of political positions and principles that will be submitted for adoption when the Republican National Convention begins Aug. 27 in Tampa, Florida.
In other commodities, 11 of 22 traders and analysts surveyed by Bloomberg expect copper to gain next week and five predicted a drop. The metal for delivery in three months, the London Metal Exchange’s benchmark contract, added 0.6 percent to $7,644 a ton this year.
Five of 10 people surveyed said raw sugar will decline next week and four expect an increase. The commodity slid 16 percent to 19.63 cents a pound since the start of January on ICE Futures U.S. in New York.
Corn Outlook
Thirteen of 23 people surveyed anticipate higher corn prices next week and five were bearish, while 17 of 23 said soybeans will increase and three predicted declines. Corn jumped 27 percent to $8.2125 a bushel in Chicago this year and reached a record $8.49 on Aug. 10 as the worst U.S. drought in half a century damaged crops. Soybeans set an all-time high yesterday and are up 43 percent this year at $17.3125 a bushel.
The S&P GSCI gauge of raw materials entered a bull market on Aug. 21, climbing more than 20 percent from this year’s lowest close on June 21. The global economy will expand 3.5 percent this year and 3.9 percent in 2013, the IMF estimates. Developing nations will grow 5.6 percent in 2012, it predicts.
“In the short-term, it would be difficult to see considerably higher commodity prices without quantitative easing from central banks,” said Daniel Briesemann, an analyst at Commerzbank AG in Frankfurt. “In the long term, I don’t think that commodities need quantitative easing measures, as they can rise without it. The economy should recover and demand in emerging markets is still relatively robust.”
- Gold survey results: Bullish: 29 Bearish: 3 Hold: 3 Copper survey results: Bullish: 11 Bearish: 5 Hold: 6 Corn survey results: Bullish: 13 Bearish: 5 Hold: 5 Soybean survey results: Bullish: 17 Bearish: 3 Hold: 3 Raw sugar survey results: Bullish: 4 Bearish: 5 Hold: 1 White sugar survey results: Bullish: 4 Bearish: 4 Hold: 2 White sugar premium results: Widen: 2 Narrow: 4 Neutral: 4 To contact the reporter on this story: Nicholas Larkin in London at nlarkin1@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Claudia Carpenter at ccarpenter2@bloomberg.net
Gold Rises After FOMC Minutes Show Discussion About More Monetary Easing
22 August 2012, 2:54 p.m.
By Debbie Carlson and Allen Sykora
Of Kitco News
http://www.kitco.com/
http://www.kitco.com/reports/KitcoNews20120822JW_pm.html
(Kitco News) - Gold prices rose in afternoon trading following the minutes from the most recent Federal Open Market Committee meeting that showed a discussion of additional monetary-policy accommodation.
December gold futures on the Comex division of the New York Mercantile Exchange were trading around $1,652.60 an ounce at 2:45 p.m. EDT on Thursday in the thinly traded afternoon session. December gold had settled the day session at $1,640.50.
One minute ahead of the release of the minutes, Comex December gold trading was weaker for the day at $1,638.90 an ounce. But the market quickly added roughly $15 to a new high of $1,654.80 that was the contract’s strongest level since early June.
According to the meeting minutes, the members of the FOMC have taken a step closer to a third round of quantitative easing, or bond-buying purchases to lower long-term interest rates. The Fed signaled that members were concerned about economic growth.
“Many members judged that additional monetary accommodation would likely be warranted fairly soon unless incoming information pointed to a substantial and sustainable strengthening in the pace of the economic recovery,” according to the minutes.
After the actual meeting on Aug. 1, the FOMC statement said the Fed would “provide additional accommodation as needed.”
Gold bulls were encouraged when the minutes showed FOMC policy-setters had a discussion on whether to undertake QE3, said Frank Lesh, broker and futures analyst with FuturePath Trading. “The expectations for QE3 are alive and well,” Lesh said.
Still, the language was not explicit in suggesting that more stimulus was the way to go.
“The Fed is walking its verbiage tightrope again,” said Sterling Smith, futures specialist, commodity research at Citibank Institutional Client Group.
Since that meeting, some economic data has improved, such as the July payrolls and higher retail sales, although Smith said that data might not make a difference in the Fed’s view just yet.
One of the tools under consideration was a change in the date for how long the Fed plans to keep its federal funds target at 0% and 0.25%, along with a statement that said a “highly accommodative stance” would be kept even if the U.S. economy started to pick up.
Market participants have been hoping for some sort of stimulus or quantitative easing from the Fed but thus far have been disappointed.
Smith said the Fed might wait to see what happens with food and energy costs. With both stronger, “that might make people nervous,” he said.
Further, there’s the risk of embarking on another stimulus, but having it offset if food and energy costs continue to rise, he said. “Monetary policy is not a panacea,” Smith said.
With the release of the minutes, the markets will now focus on next week’s Jackson Hole, Wyo., Fed symposium to see whether Chairman Ben Bernanke will give any clues about QE3. It was at this confab two years ago that Bernanke signaled the second round of easing which gave rise to a massive asset market rally across the board.
Smith said he doesn’t expect Bernanke to say anything “shockingly” different than what’s been said before. “The Fed has vowed to stay apolitical and we’re just about to head into the heart of the (presidential) campaign so that might have a chilling effect on any commentary,” he said.
Lesh noted market participants will still have to wait a while before any actual accommodation, since the next policy meeting is not until mid-September.
“So you’ve got almost a month to stew about whether you’re going to get any more or not,” Lesh said. “Clearly the Fed won’t move until they get the next set of employment data. But it (the minutes) keeps the hope alive. But you have to hold that hope for a month.”
Meanwhile, Lesh pointed out, the market is also on the lookout for further possible stimulus measures from the People’s Bank of China and European Central Bank. This means potential for three of the largest central banks in the world to provide accommodation. “That’s what gold wants to hear,” Lesh said.
Follow me on Twitter! If you want to keep up with metals news and features, then follow me on Twitter. It's free, too. My account is @dcarlsonkitco .
By Debbie Carlson and Allen Sykora of Kitco News; dcarlson@kitco.com and asykora@kitco.com
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