saveyourassetsfirst3 |
- 3 Precious Stocks Cramer Says To Buy
- 3 Stocks Insiders Are Buying But You Should Not
- Sirius' Unexplained Drop Fuels The Long/Short Debate
- 8 Stocks Trading At Their Prices 20-Years Ago
- Prophets Of Doom: 12 Insider Quotes About The Nearing Economic Crisis
- Futures furphies
- Links 10/2/11
- The Supply of Oxen at the IMF
- Meltdown: The Men Who Crashed The World
- Why Investors Should Buy Gold Now
- WATCH: Brien Lundin on Gold Fundamentals
- WATCH: David Morgan on Silver's Future
- If it walks like a duck, and talks like a duck, is the COT report a duck?
- Here's a a 1/10th Golden Dragon for ya - 1/10 Troy TON, that is!
- A few coin pictures
- The Good Delivery Rules for Gold and Silver Bars
- WATCH: James Turk talks with Dimitri Speck
- Don't Worry, Gold's Correction Is 'About Over' - Pierre Lassonde
- Don't worry, gold's correction is 'about over' Lassonde tells King World News
| 3 Precious Stocks Cramer Says To Buy Posted: 02 Oct 2011 03:19 AM PDT It is not obvious that Jim Cramer has a mixed opinion on the macro front and an aggressive buying strategy on the stock-picking front. Bottom-up investors might wonder why Cramer recently posted this on twitter: Cramer said to his viewers that that every investor should own some gold. The rationale was that precious metals are a hedge against global economic chaos, and in high demand from both emerging markets and central banks. Cramer thought that due to its scarcity, is a reason investors should own gold. SPDR Gold Trust ETF (GLD) SPDR gold is an exchange-traded fund that would give investors exposure to the precious metal. Last trading at $158.06, the ETF has a market capitalization of $65.36 billion. It is down 14.95% from its high reached at the start of September, but up 24.84% from its 52-week low. Comment s: The correlation between gold and the S&P 500 is positive for the month. In fact, gold is down 12% while the S&P 500 is down 4% in that same period. The problem with gold is that when stocks sell-off, fund managers must sell their winning holdings to maintain losing positions and to meet redemption requests. Individual investors are more likely to sell their winning positions (gold) and to hold on to their losses. After all, a loss is not a real one until the position is sold. click on image to enlarge Cramer's bullish call on gold is still a macro play. Being a successful macro investor is both very difficult and rare. To make a bullish position on gold profitable, investors will need to monitor the actions of the European Central Bank and the stance by Germany on Greece. Higher bank stability in Europe will ultimately support higher gold prices. This needs to be accompanied by a falling demand for US dollar as the safe-haven currency For investors looking at gold miners, Cramer is cautious with them. Investors face company-specific risks. Cramer recommends the following two gold producers: Goldcorp Inc. (GG) With a market capitalization of $36.86 billion, Goldcorp trades with a P/E of 18.58. Shares, most recently traded at $45.64, tested the $45-level several times this year. Barrick Gold Corporation (ABX) Trading at a higher market capitalization than Goldcorp at $46.60 billion, Barrick trades at a P/E of 12.43. Also testing the $45-level, Barrick is less expensive than Goldcorp for a reason: the company recently revealed a massive increase in production and exploration costs for its mines. Even though Barrick has a low production cost per-ounce, Barrick faces massive inflationary pressure. Global deflation would help alleviate these costs. Comments: Complete Story » |
| 3 Stocks Insiders Are Buying But You Should Not Posted: 02 Oct 2011 01:20 AM PDT By Dividend Screen: Insider trades are unfair, illegal and they damage the whole financial system. The good thing for a normal investor is that insider trades must be published, and they have a signal effect. They indicate that insiders, those who probably know the company best, are confident or skeptical about the future success. This sentiment could be used for the own asset allocation. I screened the latest insider transactions from last month and aggregated the sales and buys of each company. Here are my 3 top stocks that were sold by insiders. 1. Dollar General (DG) is acting within the discount and variety stores industry. The company has a market capitalization of $12.9 billion, generates revenues in an amount of $13.8 billion and a net income of $653.7 million. It follows Price/Earnings ratio is 20.0, Price/Sales 0.9 and Price/Book ratio 3.0. The stock was sold in an amount of $2.6 billion. 2. Complete Story » |
| Sirius' Unexplained Drop Fuels The Long/Short Debate Posted: 02 Oct 2011 01:20 AM PDT By VFC: The third quarter certainly ended with a thud, with the DOW dropping well over two hundred points amidst fears of the economic collapse of multiple European Union States and plenty of uncertainty on the American continent as well. SiriusXM (SIRI) was not spared from the chaos. Last Thursday saw SIRI shares drop by ten percent on significant volume - significant even for the heavily-traded SIRI - and Friday's close of $1.50 was well off the 52-week high. Even as the entire market has faltered, this volatile action with SIRI shares has spurred debate between the longs and shorts as to which way the company - and its share price - is headed. The shorts believe that SiriusXM's day is done, as the iPod, Pandora and a plethora of other options become available to fill up the 'AUX' option on car dashboards. This group also believe that the global economic slow Complete Story » |
| 8 Stocks Trading At Their Prices 20-Years Ago Posted: 02 Oct 2011 01:11 AM PDT By Plan B Economics: With the double-collapse of the stock market over the last decade, many stocks are trading at low prices. While many stocks are trading at steep discounts to their 52 week highs and 200 day moving averages, I did some digging to find a group of stocks trading at multi-year lows. The stocks in the graphs below are trading near where they traded up to 20 years ago. The price data in the graphs is adjusted for stock splits and dividends, to give a more accurate picture of stock price movement over time (many stock charts don't do this). Some of these stocks may be value traps, but judging by the growth in earnings before interest and taxes [EBIT] during the same period, some of these stocks deserve a second look. 1. Citigroup (C): 1994 EBIT: $3.4b; 2010 EBIT: $40b 2. Ford (F): 1997 EBIT: $21.4b; 2010 EBIT $13.5b 3. Morgan Complete Story » |
| Prophets Of Doom: 12 Insider Quotes About The Nearing Economic Crisis Posted: 02 Oct 2011 01:06 AM PDT By Michael T. Snyder: We are getting so close to a financial collapse in Europe that you can almost hear the debt bubbles popping. All across the western world, governments and major banks are rapidly becoming insolvent. So far, the powers that be are keeping all of the balls in the air by throwing around lots of bailout money. But now the political will for more bailouts is drying up and the number of troubled entities seems to grow by the day. Right now the western world is facing a debt crisis that is absolutely unprecedented in world history. Europe has had a tremendously difficult time just trying to keep Greece afloat, and several much larger European countries are now on the verge of a major financial crisis. In addition, there are a growing number of very large financial institutions all over the western world that are also rapidly approaching a day of reckoning. Complete Story » |
| Posted: 01 Oct 2011 11:28 PM PDT Wikipedia: A furphy, also commonly spelled furfie, is Australian slang for a rumour, or an erroneous or improbable story. In Gold Stocks: Ready, Set, by Eric Sprott and David Baker say that "While the futures market is comfortably forecasting a continuation of today's levels, the majority of sell-side analysts refuse to update their gold price estimates to reflect its recent strength." It is futures 101 that futures prices are not a forecast by the market, they are just a mathematic derivation from the spot price, interest rates, freight and storage costs, with gold interest rates and dollar interest rates being key components. Backwardation is when gold interest rates are higher than cash rates. Contango is the reverse. Either way, the futures price isn't forecasting anything. See this blog post for more on backwardation. In that same article, Sprott raised the "excessive turnover" meme which Eric seems to be running recently - he must think he is on a winner with this. I dealt with it in this post and to that I'd like to add another counterpoint. First, the quote: "In the LBMA market, for example, market participants traded an average 19.6 million ounces of gold PER DAY in July 2011. Keep in mind that the total gold mine production in 2010, globally, was approximately 86.5 million ounces. ... so the LBMA is essentially trading a year's worth of production in less than a week" I think it is misleading to relate turnover only to new mine production. This assumes that there is no sales by any of the investors who hold above ground gold. Eric should at least be including privately held gold stocks of 30,000t, or 965 million ounces. Adding that to the 86.5moz then the 19.6 moz represents the "LBMA" turning over the stock once every 54 days, or 7 times a year. Not as dramatic, is it. If we included the 30,000t or so of central bank holdings then it is even less so. But don't fear Eric, help is at hand. The funny thing about the "large turnover is bad" idea is that in most markets this is seen as a good thing, as it indicates the particular market is liquid. On this line of thought, note that the recent Loco London Liquidity Survey was undertaken by the LBMA at the request of the World Gold Council "in order to strengthen its argument that the gold market is sufficiently deep and liquid to justify gold's characterisation as both high quality and liquid." with the objective of getting gold included in the Basel liquidity buffers for banks. What did their survey show? "The average daily trading volume in the London market in this period was 173,713,000 ounces or $240.8 billion." I can see Eric getting his calculator out now and dividing 86.5 by 173.7 and getting really excited. When you hear that the "paper" markets turn over annual mine production every 12 hours, remember you heard it here first. The other thing I find interesting is the different way Sprott pitches this meme. For the gold/silver bugs we get: "... I think all the paper markets are a joke. As you are probably aware, we trade a billion ounces of silver a day. A billion ounces. The world produces 900 million a year." (link) But in the Markets at a Glance article with Sprott branding on it for a more wider market it is less breathless and a bit more sophisticated: "When price discovery is dictated by levered paper contracts with no physical backing, it's extremely easy and relatively inexpensive to jostle the spot price around." Interestingly, the LBMA survey revealed that 90% of trading was spot, not forwards (sort of the over the counter markets version of futures), which equals 156moz. COMEX average daily trading during August was 278,000 contracts, or 27.8moz. 156 versus 27.8 - who do you thinks jostles who? Continuing on with futures, we get this from Patrick A. Heller: "Increases in margin requirements make sense as prices are rising, as that helps keep the market in order, but it does not make sense when prices are falling." Now this is a very common misunderstanding. Margin increases (or decreases) are to do with volatility of the price, not the direction of the price. Dan Norcini explains it well: When you get a market like silver that drops 15% in ONE DAY, you are going to get margin hikes. The reason - the very integrity of the Clearinghouse comes into play. Silver closed down $6.48 today. In a single session, one long contract in this market cost the buyer a paper loss of $32,400! That is enormous. If you consider the fact that the previous old margin was $21,600, that was wiped out and then some. During the clearing or settlement process, the winners get paid (have their accounts credited) by debiting the loser's accounts. If the losers do not have sufficient funds in their accounts, the whole process breaks down. Zero Hedge has really went downhill in the past few years and this post by them I found very funny and symptomatic of the sort of readers they are now attracting: We are only putting this up because we have been flooded with emails about an event which for some reason readers believe is relevant. The event in question is that according to its website, the London Gold Exchange ("LGE" or the "Joke") has closed. The one thing we would like to say about this is that the LGE is nether an exchange, nor does it trade gold. You have only yourself to blame Tyler. While he didn't meant he post to be ironic, I read it that way. Yes, Tyler, your readers can't tell between real gold news and rubbish, but guess what, neither can you, IMHO. To close, I'll quote myself from Ed Steer's Gold & Silver Daily on the recent sell off in precious metals: Here's an interesting comment that I got from my friend Bron Suchecki over at The Perth Mint yesterday. I'd sent him an e-mail on the weekend asking him how sales were both on Friday...and their Monday, which started Sunday night here in North America. This was the reply that I got... "The Perth Mint has been very busy this Monday morning with a lot of buying [but also some selling], however buying is outweighing selling by a fair margin [pun intended]...and the decrease in the AUD/USD has taken some sting out of the drop for Aussie investors. I see this sell-off driven by leveraged "weak hand" money. In contrast, average investors [the real smart money] are looking at this as an opportunity to buy in or top up at cheaper prices. These buyers are "strong hands" and have been the ones who have been driving the trend all these years."  |
| Posted: 01 Oct 2011 08:53 PM PDT Diamond-Crusted Vertu Phone Defies Slump Bloomberg Stuck in Bed for 19 Months, at Hospital's Expense New York Times You Love Your iPhone. Literally. New York Times. I am the proud owner of a stupid phone. I did love and still miss my NeXT computer. Since I really don't like cell phones, I fancy I will be immune to iPhone romantic enslavement when I finally break down and get one. Citigroup questions if US spectrum shortage exists Network World Battered by Economic Crisis, Greeks Turn to Barter Networks New York Times. The black economy goes even further underground. Currency Revulsion Ed Harrison We're kicking ass! Limbaugh and the talkers are running scared! Daily Kos This economic collapse is a 'crisis of bigness' Guardian With nets, spray and force, police crack down on march The Villager (hat tip Buzz Potamkin). On last weekend's march, but provides some useful detail. Bully for BofA: New Debit Card Fees! Adam Levitin, Credit Slips If Millennials Do Worse Than Their Parents, It Will Be Because Bill Gates' Kids Have All the Money Dean Baker Why Isn't the Unemployment Crisis a National Emergency? Mark Thoma Personal Income Declines -0.1%, Real Consumer Spending Flatlines for August 2011 Economic Populist Top Prosecutor Stands Out by Pushing Back New York Times Fantastic Objects, Excited Stories and Dreadful Politics Huffington Post (hat tip Rob Parenteau) Antidote du jour (hat tip reader James B). This is a Nicobar pigeon, which is enough to make me rethink my views on pigeons:
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| Posted: 01 Oct 2011 04:00 PM PDT Gold University |
| Meltdown: The Men Who Crashed The World Posted: 01 Oct 2011 03:33 PM PDT Below parts 1, 2 & 3 of the must watch four part "Meltdown" series from Al Jazeera looking at the key events that brought the world to the edge 3 years ago. Part One Part Two Part Three
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| Why Investors Should Buy Gold Now Posted: 01 Oct 2011 01:41 PM PDT In a recent interview with Eric King, Michael Pento stated: "In fact, every base metal price has experienced a sharp contraction in the past two months. Not only base metals but energy prices and equity shares have pulled back significantly of late too. The message from the markets is clear; the global economy is slowing sharply. "However, this does not mean that gold must necessarily fall in sympathy. Looking back to the credit crisis, all metals prices fell in the fall of 2008, including gold. That's because Bernanke did not lower interest rates or increase his balance sheet from April 30th thru October 8th. But once the Fed stepped into action in the fall of that year, gold rallied significantly"
"Investors must understand that global central banks will do everything in their power to avoid reality and try to keep the credit bubble from bursting on both sides of the Atlantic. That's why taking advantage of this recent pull back in gold may be the smartest move." Read more @ King World News |
| WATCH: Brien Lundin on Gold Fundamentals Posted: 01 Oct 2011 01:30 PM PDT From The Korelin Economics Report:
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| WATCH: David Morgan on Silver's Future Posted: 01 Oct 2011 01:29 PM PDT From The Korelin Economics Report:
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| If it walks like a duck, and talks like a duck, is the COT report a duck? Posted: 01 Oct 2011 12:36 PM PDT This report comes to you on the eve of what I suspect is the last day on this blogspot as we are off to the www.silvergoldsilver.com site. After mulling over the COT report, and then making many many phone calls, something is not sitting right with me. Lets first post up the COT report, I have copied it straight over from Harveys Blog (click here for more):   There are a few things that are not lining up for me. You know me, I could sit here and cheerlead this to death right now, but thats not my place. Do I think silver will get to $500? Yes. By next week? No. So dont shoot the blog that calls it the way we see it when we talk a negative piece. Whats strikingly weird is Fridays PM trades. Gold was okay late into the bell, but silver was not. The weird part is that the big boys most certainly get the COT report before its printed. Dont think for one second they dont. This is the scary part. Such a 'bullish' COT report for both metals, some would argue the best COT report to memory. So why the weak Friday close? Equities bring the PM's down with them late in the day? If you go back and do some research, after such bullish COT reports we usually catch a major bid. This is my disconnect. My second disconnect was the amount of contracts covered by the Morgue et al. And in order for this amount to be covered, you need and equal amount to be sold (captain obvious). This takes me back to 2008. On boring days on the desk, we would pick on an illiquid stock, a few people would short it while we bought it, then we would switch rolls. Washing was common, the regulators didnt give a shit because we gave the ECN's so many liquidity credits and no one was getting hurt. When the warnings would come in, no one cared...seriously they had bigger problems as these were the days leading up to the 2008 clusterfuck. Que todays COT report. I have a suspicion that, although it looks like the Morgue et al. is covering that massive pile of shorts, its their own selling they are covering. Most of the paper selling happened in illiquid markets. Not sure if this many contracts could be filled they way they were. Mark my word: if Gold and silver correct down from here, the COT report from here on out is null and void. If we go up here and never look back, you can call this a call a complete miss. Somethings not right with this duck.  |
| Here's a a 1/10th Golden Dragon for ya - 1/10 Troy TON, that is! Posted: 01 Oct 2011 11:56 AM PDT China opens the annual Golden Week. Translation: Big gold bars appear within a shopping centre in Jiangsu Nanjing Xinjiekou, equipped with two guns for security protection. According to field staff, this "Bullion King" 99.999 kg total weight, at present only one, and purity, weight record. (That's one-tenth of a tonne, or 3,215 troy ounces - and five-9 pure too) :love30::elefant::elefant::elefant: Go see the REST of the pics! Where's Tom D when they need him!:biggrin: http://fofoa.blogspot.com/2011/10/oc...pen-forum.html) Woohoo! R.:biggrin: |
| Posted: 01 Oct 2011 09:41 AM PDT            |
| The Good Delivery Rules for Gold and Silver Bars Posted: 01 Oct 2011 09:10 AM PDT LBMA |
| WATCH: James Turk talks with Dimitri Speck Posted: 01 Oct 2011 04:54 AM PDT Dimitri Speck, Author of Geheime Goldpolitik, and James Turk, Director of the GoldMoney Foundation, talk about Dimitri's book "Secret Gold Policy". They talk about the 400$/oz gold price cap in the 1990s. They talk about more recent central bank gold buying, especially in Asia, and how European central banks have stopped selling and leasing gold. Dimitri explains that central banks are now net buyers of gold but the amounts remain very small. Dimitri explains that the real problem is the huge size of the credit bubble. James explains that since we cannot rely on central banks to do the right thing we should all become our own central bank by owning gold. |
| Don't Worry, Gold's Correction Is 'About Over' - Pierre Lassonde Posted: 01 Oct 2011 12:19 AM PDT ¤ Yesterday in Gold and SilverAs I mentioned in 'The Wrap' in Friday's column, the gold price had a nice rally in early morning trading in the Far East, until precisely 10:00 a.m. Hong Kong time, before a thoughtful not-for-profit seller showed up. That was the high of the day...and after that, the gold price spent the rest of the Friday trading session within ten bucks of $1,620 spot. An attempt at a rally that began the moment that London closed at precisely 11:00 a.m. Eastern time, wasn't allowed to go anywhere. Gold closed in New York at $1,624.80 spot...up $8.90 on the day. Net volume, which has been on the decline every day this week, was only 146,000 contracts.
It should come as no surprise that silver's high of the day was also at 10:00 a.m. Hong Kong time. The silver price then spent the rest of Friday trading in a one dollar trading range between $31 and $30 spot...closing at the bottom of the range at $29.97 spot...down 70 cents on the day, giving back everything it gained on Thursday. Net volume in silver was in the 38,000 contract range.
Here's the 5-day U.S. dollar chart for entertainment purposes only. As you can see, the currency spent the first half of the week digging itself a 140+ basis point hole...and the latter half of the week filling it up again. What a wonderful reserve currency!
For the second day in a row, the gold stocks followed the gold price around like a shadow...and despite the fact that the general equity markets finished in the toilet, the HUI hung on for a gain of 0.43% on the day. And, for the second week in a row, the 5-day HUI chart is missing Monday's data...but the trend looks pretty clear, as I believe that an important bottom has been put in.
Six of the seven stocks in Nick Laird's Silver Sentiment Index finished in the red on Friday, so it's no surprise that the index finished down 2.54% on the day.
(Click on image to enlarge) The CE Daily Delivery Report for the second delivery day in the October delivery month was busy as well. There were 2,602 gold and 4 silver contracts posted for delivery on Tuesday. The lion's share of the deliveries in gold [2,529 contracts] were from JPMorgan's house [insider trading] account. The big receiver/stopper was JPMorgan in its client account...1,824 contracts...and Merrill was very distant second with 526 contracts to be received on Tuesday. The action is worth a quick look...and the link is here. There were no reported changes in GLD...but over at SLV, an authorized participant withdrew 1,654,936 troy ounces. There was another big sales report from the U.S. Mint to cap off the month. They reported selling another 4,500 ounces of gold eagles...500 one-ounce 24K gold buffaloes...and 460,000 silver eagles. Baring any further update on Monday, total sales for September are as follows: 91,000 ounces of gold eagles...13,000 one-ounce 24K gold buffaloes...and a whopping 4,460,500 silver eagles, which is the second largest sales month for silver eagles in all of 2011...to date. Year-to-date, the U.S. Mint has used 843,500 ounces of gold in their gold eagle program...132,500 ounces of gold in their 24K gold buffalo program...and an eye-opening 33,411,500 silver eagles. Before we put September mint sales in the history books, reader Ron Copley from Carmel, Indiana has provided September sales for other U.S. Mint products that are made of silver. Here's his e-mail to me last night. Ed, here is the September summary for the 5-ounce America the Beautiful bullion coin program, as well as the figures for the Proof and Uncirculated silver Eagles. Lower silver prices have hurt direct sales from the Mint to collectors since the Mint's pricing is not updated in real time to reflect the lower prevailing silver price, and therefore their pricing is [at] quite a premium to the silver content. ATB 5-ounce coin sales were suspended on the Mint's website earlier this week so they can be re-priced. The root cause of the problem is the Mint's restrictive pricing model which requires them to post updates for certain products in the Federal Register before they can be offered online. It sure would be nice if Congress would permit them to price their products in real time, based on a premium to the spot price, like most bullion dealers. For the month of September, the mint used 75,830 ounces of silver in the ATB program...and the 'proof' and 'uncirculated' one-ounce silver coin sales in September were 25,770 and 194,000 respectively. Year-to-date these three silver bullion coins have consumed 2,908,436 troy ounces of silver...so you can add that consumption to silver eagle sales. The Comex-approved depositories did not receive any silver on Thursday...but shipped 482,339 troy ounces out the door. The link to that action is here. Well, the Commitment of Traders Report lived up to its advanced billing...especially in silver. In silver, the bullion banks decreased their net short position by an incredible 16,446 contracts...which is 82.2 million ounces. I've never seen a 1-week change this large in silver, ever! The net short position in the Commercial category declined to 121.3 million ounces. It's been many years since the Commercial net short position has been this low. The '4 or less' bullion banks are now short 159.7 million ounces...and the '5 through 8' Commercial traders are short 42.9 million ounces. So these eight traders combined are short 202.6 million ounces of silver, which is 167% of the entire Commercial net short position. If these eight Commercial traders disappeared, the remaining Commercial traders [Ted Butler's raptors...all 34 of them] are massively long the silver market, just like everyone else. In gold, the Commercial net short position declined by 30,945 contracts...or 3.1 million ounces...and is now down to 16.7 million ounces. Like silver, it's been many years since the Commercial net short position in gold has been this low. The '4 or less' Commercial traders are short 15.3 million ounces...and the '5 through 8' Commercial traders are short 4.1 million ounces. These eight Commercial traders [almost all of them bullion banks] are short 19.4 million ounces of gold, which represents 116% of the Commercial net short position. Just like in silver, if these eight traders vanished, the remaining 41 traders in the Commercial category are net long the gold market. What's even more incredible is the fact that since the Tuesday cut-off, there has been a further 20,000 contract decline in gold open interest, just on Wednesday and Thursday alone...plus further declines in silver open interest as well. I'm only guessing here, but I'd say that the true COT numbers are actually much better than yesterday's report indicate. But, as Ted Butler has been hammering away to me on the phone all this week, the fact is that the real reason the price declined was because of paper trading on the Comex...and it had nothing whatsoever to do with real-world supply and demand fundamentals. Eight [and probably much fewer] traders in gold and silver control the price of both these metals...and that's flat-out illegal. They hold a short-side corner on these two markets. The tail is wagging the dog, as there is no true price-discovery mechanism allowed to operate in these markets. Can you imagine how fast the CME and CFTC would react if eight or fewer traders had a long-side corner on any commodity??? Ask the Hunt brothers and you'll find out...and they didn't even get close to the position sizes that JPMorgan et al, hold. Then there's the Sumitomo copper case...but I don't have time to get into that here. I haven't posted Nick Laird's Days of World Production to Cover Short Positions graph in quite some time, so here it is now. Please note the red bars in particular. These are the '4 or less' traders in every commodity that's traded on the Comex futures market. Note how the biggest ones are in the precious metals...silver and gold in particular. It would take 82 days of total world silver production for the '4 or less' Commercial shorts to cover their short positions. In gold it's 67 days. All this data was extracted from yesterday's Commitment of Traders Report...and then converted into days of world production for each commodity.
(Click on image to enlarge) My bullion dealer had a couple of surprises this past week. The first thing was that 100-ounce silver bar delivery times went from one month to two months. I would suspect the rest of his product line in silver will have increased delivery times in pretty short order as well. The second big surprise was that one-ounce gold bars are no longer available...and none of his suppliers are even taking orders at the moment. That has never happened before in the history of his company. Here's a freshly-updated graph that Nick Laird sent me yesterday. The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency issued their June derivatives report for all U.S. banks this past week. Here are the OTC derivatives in precious metals for the largest fifty U.S. banks...and only three of them hold precious metals derivatives. You can see why JPMorgan and HSBC USA have been at the top of my hit list for years.
(Click on image to enlarge) Since it's Saturday, I get the chance to empty out my in-box. Fortunately, I don't have that many stories to post, so reading or listening to what I do have shouldn't be too arduous. We're long past the blood-out-of-a-stone point now. We're also past the fat and the muscle tissue...and cutting into the bone. Gold Price Slump Stokes Jewelry, Investment Demand in India. Gold is STILL a buy. Gold's plunge was 'engineered' by central banks: Gerald Celente. GM Is Watching You… ¤ Critical ReadsSubscribeThis economic collapse is a 'crisis of bigness'Leopold Kohr warned 50 years ago that the gigantist global system would grow until it imploded. We should have listened. Living through a collapse is a curious experience. Perhaps the most curious part is that nobody wants to admit it's a collapse. The results of half a century of debt-fuelled "growth" are becoming impossible to convincingly deny, but even as economies and certainties crumble, our appointed leaders bravely hold the line. No one wants to be the first to say the dam is cracked beyond repair. To listen to a political leader at this moment in history is like sitting through a sermon by a priest who has lost his faith but is desperately trying not to admit it, even to himself. Watch Nick Clegg, David Cameron or Ed Miliband mouthing tough-guy platitudes to the party faithful. Listen to Angela Merkel, Nicolas Sarkozy or George Papandreou pretending that all will be well in the eurozone. Study the expressions on the faces of Barack Obama or Bernanke talking about "growth" as if it were a heathen god to be appeased by tipping another cauldron's worth of fictional money into the mouth of a volcano. In times like these, people look elsewhere for answers. A time of crisis is also a time of opening-up, when thinking that was consigned to the fringes moves to centre stage. This piece was posted in The Guardian last Sunday...and was sent to me by reader "Richard T". It will take you less than five minutes to run through it...and it's certainly worth the read. The link is here.  GM Is Watching You…I have never liked GM's OnStar system – in part because I don't like the idea of my car that I paid for having someone else's "black box" recording (and transmitting) data about how I drive, where I drive and even when I drive. I also don't like that GM force-feeds OnStar to every buyer of every GM car – whether the buyer wants it or not. I believe that GM's long-term goal is to see to it that not only every GM vehicle is equipped with a "black box" (technically, an Event Data Recorder, or EDR) but that all vehicles are so equipped – and every single driver in the United States – possibly the world – monitored whenever he or she is operating a motor vehicle. It is entirely within the realm of technical possibility that they'll even know exactly what you've been talking about while in your car, too – because OnStar is very much like a Telescreen from Orwell's 1984. If you have an OnStar-equipped car, you have GM's microphones in your car. And GM can turn them on anytime it likes – and record anything you say. No, I am not exaggerating. This amazing must read story was posted over at lewrockwell.com on Wednesday...and I thank reader Jacque Theberge for sharing it with us. The link is here.  'We didn't mean to track you' says Facebook as social network giant admits to 'bugs' in new privacy rowFacebook has admitted that it has been watching the web pages its members visit – even when they have logged out. In its latest privacy blunder, the social networking site was forced to confirm that it has been constantly tracking its 750 million users, even when they are using other sites. The social networking giant says the huge privacy breach was simply a mistake - that software automatically downloaded to users' computers when they logged in to Facebook 'inadvertently' sent information to the company, whether or not they were logged in at the time. This story was posted over at The Daily Mail on Wednesday...and I thank reader Scott Pluschau for sending it my way. The link is here.  |
| Don't worry, gold's correction is 'about over' Lassonde tells King World News Posted: 01 Oct 2011 12:19 AM PDT  Mining entrepreneur Pierre Lassonde told King World News last night that gold's correction is "about over," that "people don't have to worry for one second," and that gold is going to $10,500, if not necessarily by next Thursday. I thank Chris Powell for wordsmithing the above introduction...and the link to this KWN audio interview is here. |
"Likewise, an economic slowdown won't hurt gold prices this time around either, as long as Bernanke does not sit on his hands for 6 months. With Europe teetering on default, investors can be assured that the European Central Bank and the U.S. Fed will not allow another half year of deflation and money supply contraction to send the global financial system into ruins. Once an economy becomes fully addicted to inflation it is very hard to kick the habit.
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