saveyourassetsfirst3 |
- Marc Faber: Gold Far From Bubble Phase
- How to Put Yourself on the Gold Standard
- Gold Downside Targets and Manipulative Excuses
- Probability of Central Bank Intervention Against Gold Rattles Gartman Letter
- Gold hub: Singapore to scrap tax
- Bank of China, CME to seek wider use of yuan
- Ned Naylor-Leyland: PAGE squashed ... and now for something completely different
- Market riggers got China to kill PAGE, Maguire tells King World News
- China is in on gold price suppression too
- Marc Faber: US 'Financial Mess' Will Force Government to Take Your Gold
- Jim Sinclair: Refusal to recognize Greek default requires 'QE to infinity'
- Eric Sprott's take on Wednesday's metals takedown
- LISTEN: Naylor-Leyland discusses PAGE
- LISTEN: Precious Metals Special Report
- How safe is your physical Gold ?
- How to detect a Fake Tungsten Gold Bar
- To Stem The Rising Tide Of Gold and Silver Will Be Short-Lived
- An Answer to Warren Buffet on Gold
- Warren Buffet on Gold
- Sparta - Gold prohibition in a collapsing economy
- By the Numbers for the Week Ending March 2
- GLD Metal Holdings Within Two Percent of Pinnacle
- John Embry: “On The Cusp Of A Metals Breakout”
- Fabian4Liberty: The End of the Petro Dollar
- Bob Chapman - Financial Survival - March 2, 2012
- Where is Greece’s gold?
- Physical Gold Demand “Picks Up” in Asia After Price Falls, But Further Drop “Could See Focus on $1500 Gold”
- U.S. Mint's silver, gold coin sales tumble
- Gold and Silver Disaggregated COT Report (DCOT) for March 2
- Is Southern Copper Still A Good Long-Term Dividend Play?
| Marc Faber: Gold Far From Bubble Phase Posted: 03 Mar 2012 04:13 AM PST from TheAUReport.com:
The Gold Report: After Standard & Poor's (S&P) downgraded a cluster of Eurozone countries in January, you came out saying that downgrades should have been even deeper, depending on the country's credit-worthiness. S&P did give below-investment-grade ratings to Portugal and Cyprus—BB and BB+, respectively—but you indicated that some of these countries warrant CCC ratings. Do you anticipate additional downgrades? Marc Faber: If you accounted for the unfunded liabilities of most European countries, as well as the U.S., the quality of the government debt would be significantly lower. In other words, yes, I do expect to see more and more downgrades over time. Read More @ TheAUReport.com |
| How to Put Yourself on the Gold Standard Posted: 03 Mar 2012 04:11 AM PST by Peter Schiff, EuroPac.net via GoldSeek.com:
Nearly all economists who actually influence policy continue to regard gold as a failed and obsolete relic. Much as the automobile supplanted the horse and buggy, these economists see the "elasticity" of fiat paper money as a major improvement over the inflexibility of the gold standard. But what they see as progress has been, in reality, a major step backward. Read More @ GoldSeek.com |
| Gold Downside Targets and Manipulative Excuses Posted: 03 Mar 2012 01:00 AM PST SunshineProfits |
| Probability of Central Bank Intervention Against Gold Rattles Gartman Letter Posted: 03 Mar 2012 12:45 AM PST ¤ Yesterday in Gold and SilverIt was quiet in the gold markets on Planet Earth yesterday. Gold traded pretty flat but, once again, it was not allowed over the $1,725 spot price mark. The price developed a slight negative bias around 1:00 p.m. Hong Kong time...and then declined very slowly to its low of the day, which was fairly early in the morning in New York. Once the London p.m. fix was in, gold popped a few dollars, but that was pretty much it for Friday. Gold closed at $1,711.00 spot...down $6.70 on the day. Net volume was down substantially from Wednesday and Thursday, but still a quite high 132,000 contracts. I would guess that a lot of that volume would have been of the HFT variety.
Silver was under quiet selling pressure right from the New York open on Thursday night...and Kitco recorded the low of the day as $34.25 spot...which came just minutes before the Comex close at 1:30 p.m. in New York. Silver's high of the day in New York [according to Kitco] was at the Comex open...at $35.16 spot. Between then and the Comex close, silver 'declined' 91 cents, with sixty cents of that decline occurring in the last half hour of Comex trading. From that low, the silver price gained back almost fifty cents during the electronic trading session that followed, closing at $34.73 spot...down 78 cents from Thursday. Net volume was around 37,000 contracts.
Here's the New York Spot Silver [Bid] chart which shows their trading session in much greater detail...but even it doesn't show the spike low to $34.25...because it happened so quickly. I'm sure that a lot more speculative long positions got taken out on the spike down.
As I mentioned in 'The Wrap' yesterday, the dollar index began a rally at precisely 10:00 a.m. Hong Kong time in their Friday morning...which was 9:00 p.m. Thursday night in New York...and 99.9 percent of the rally was in by precisely 10:00 a.m. in New York. After that, the index pretty much traded sideways into the close at 5:15 p.m. Eastern time.
Despite the fact that the gold price did very little during the New York trading session, the gold stocks were under selling pressure for most of the day. The low came shortly before 1:30 p.m...which was the low price tick for the Dow as well. The gold stocks basically traded sideways from there...and the HUI finished down 1.98%.
With the silver price down about 2 percent during most of the New York trading session, the stocks didn't do particularly well either...and Nick Laird's Silver Sentiment Index closed down 2.42%.
(Click on image to enlarge) The CME's Daily Delivery Report showed that 25 gold and 216 silver contracts were posted for delivery on Tuesday. In silver, the biggest short/issuers were Jefferies and HSBC, with 135 contracts and 80 contracts respectively. The long/stopper was JPMorgan with 187 contracts in its proprietary [in-house] trading account. The link to the Issuers and Stoppers Report is here. There were no reported changes in GLD yesterday...but over at SLV a smallish 120,573 ounces were withdrawn, which I'd guess was a fee payment of some kind. There was an equally smallish sales report from the U.S. Mint. They sold another 75,000 silver eagles on Friday...and that was all. It was a little busier over at the Comex-approved depositories on Thursday. They received 597,553 troy ounces of silver...and shipped 575,795 ounces out the door. The link to that action is here. I was prepared for the worst in yesterday's Commitment of Traders report...and JPMorgan et al didn't disappoint. After Tuesday's big rally, the Commercial short position in silver jumped by a very large 5,405 Comex contracts...an increase of 27.0 million ounces of paper silver in one reporting week. The total Commercial net short position...which was down to a decade-low of around 71 million ounces in late December, has now blown out to 223.0 million ounces...a 200% increase in just over two months. As of Tuesday's cut-off, the four largest Commercial traders are now short 206.2 million ounces of Comex silver...and the '5 through 8' largest traders are short 44.6 million ounces of the stuff. On a net basis, once all the market-neutral spread trades in the Non-Commercial category are removed, the 'big 4' are short a hair under 43% of the entire Comex silver market...and about 26 percentage points of that is held by JPMorgan. In gold, during the reporting week, 'da boyz' increased their short position by 16,049 contracts, or 1.60 million ounces. The total net Commercial short position is now up to 24.5 million ounces of gold. The 'big 4' Commercial traders are short 15.4 million ounces...and the '5 through 8' largest commercial traders add another 5.6 million ounces to the total. In silver, the eight largest traders are short 112% of the Commercial net short position...and in gold, the 'big 8' are only short 86% of the Commercial net short position. Tuesday's COT report is now a historic snapshot of conditions before the crash, as everything changed the moment that JPMorgan et al engineered that horrific price decline on Wednesday morning. You can throw all those above numbers from Tuesday out the proverbial window, as it's a whole new ball game. Ted Butler and I aren't really sure just how much of the huge short position that 'da boyz' have been accumulating since late December, has actually been covered up to this point. Yes, the volume numbers have been way up there, but how much of it was leveraged long positions being liquidated...and how much was high-frequency trading volume? The other question that we both want answered is...are we done to the downside or do 'da boyz' have more pain in store for us? Don't know, but I expect that we won't be kept in the dark for too much longer. Of course we'd know more if we knew what the COT looked like at the close of trading yesterday....but we won't know until next Friday...a lifetime away. There's a reason they did the dirty on Wednesday, as they have nine days to do as they wish...and no one can see what they're up to. Here's are two nifty co-related charts that Washington state reader S.A. sent my way yesterday. They're pretty well marked, so require no further embellishment from me. You'll need to use the 'click to enlarge' feature to see the fine detail.
And here's another neat chart...this one courtesy of reader William Gebhardt. This is a graph that Warren Buffett should see...and he certainly doesn't want his stockholders to know about. It's too bad that Warren is now a bought and paid for shill of the dark side of The Force. His dad would disown him if he knew how badly his son had sold out to the very evil he himself fought against while he was alive.
Since it's the weekend, I have a lot of stories for you today...and I hope you have time to wade through them all during the next couple of days. We don't know if JPMorgan et al are done with this price correction or not. There's just no way of knowing for sure. Market riggers got China to kill PAGE, Maguire tells King World News. Ned Naylor-Leyland: PAGE squashed...and now for something completely different. Gold hub: Singapore to scrap tax. ¤ Critical ReadsSubscribe"How Did You Not Notice 24-Year-Olds Were Being Paid $2 Million A Year Who Clearly Didn't Know Anything?"Michael Lewis' scathing, aphoristic, uber-sarcastic style needs no introduction. As such we will leave this brief clip from Slate, in which The Big Short author is asked how to avoid a new financial crisis. This 3:45 video clip was posted over at zerohedge.com yesterday...and it's definitely a must watch. I thank Australian reader Wesley Legrand for sending it along...and the link is here.  Inflation not as low as you think, American Institute for Economic Research saysForget the modest 3.1 percent rise in the Consumer Price Index, the government's widely used measure of inflation. Everyday prices are up some 8 percent over the past year, according to the American Institute for Economic Research. The not-for-profit research group measures inflation without looking at the big, one-time purchases that can skew the numbers. That means they don't look at the price of houses, furniture, appliances, cars, or computers. Instead, AIER focuses on Americans' typical daily purchases, such as food, gasoline, child care, prescription drugs, phone and television service, and other household products. The institute contends that to get a good read on inflation's "sticker shock" effect, you must look at the cost of goods that the average household buys at least once a month and factor in only the kinds of expenses that are subject to change. This story was posted over at the cbsnews.com website on Wednesday...and I dug it out of a GATA release from yesterday. The link is here.  Why David Stockman isn't buying itSpend time with him and you discover this former wunderkind of the Reagan revolution is many other things now - an advocate for higher taxes, a critic of the work that made him rich and a scared investor who doesn't own a single stock for fear of another financial crisis. Stockman suggests you'd be a fool to hold anything but cash now, and maybe a few bars of gold. He thinks the Federal Reserve's efforts to ease the pain from the collapse of our "national leveraged buyout" - his term for decades of reckless, debt-fueled spending by government, families and companies - is pumping stock and bond markets to dangerous heights. This is another story that was posted over at the cbsnews.com website yesterday...and I thank reader Lance Gilason for sharing it with us. The link is here.  Wall Street, Fed face off over physical commoditiesWall Street's biggest banks are locked in an increasingly frantic struggle with the Federal Reserve over the right to retain the jewels of their commodity trading empires: warehouses, storage tanks and other hard assets worth billions of dollars. While the battle over proprietary trading and new derivatives regulations has taken place largely in public view since the 2008 financial crisis, the fight by JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs to retain or expand their prized physical commodity operations - most acquired in only the past six years - has remained hidden. The debate is nearing an inflection point: Within 18 months, the Fed will likely either allow banks more freedom to invest in the physical commodity world than ever; or force them to sell off the assets that many banks are counting on to buttress their trading books at a time when they are already vulnerable because of intensifying competition and new trading curbs. This Reuters piece from yesterday falls into the must read category for sure...and I thank reader Rick Swayne for bringing it to our attention. The link is here.  Iceland Wants To Adopt The Dollar... No, Not That One, The Other OneThe dollar in question is that of Canada. According to the Globe and Mail, tiny Iceland "is looking longingly to the loonie as the salvation from wild economic gyrations and suffocating capital controls...and for the first time, the Canadian government says it's open to discussing idea. There's a compelling economic case why Iceland would want to adopt the Canadian dollar. It offers the tantalizing prospect of a stable, liquid currency that roughly tracks global commodity prices, nicely matching Iceland's own economy, which is dependent on fish and aluminum exports." This zerohedge.com piece was sent to me by 'David in California'...and as a Canadian, this is first I've heard of it. The link is Gold hub: Singapore to scrap tax Posted: 03 Mar 2012 12:45 AM PST Singapore is seeking to lure bullion refiners by scrapping taxes on gold, an action that could also attract trading houses to open storage facilities and transform the country into a key Asian pricing hub, industry sources said on Monday. Singapore will exempt investment-grade gold and other precious metals from a 7% goods and services tax to spur the development of gold trading, Finance Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam said on Friday. The change takes effect in October and may lift demand for gold bars and coins in the fourth quarter and into 2012. Singapore's investment gold demand nearly tripled to 3.5 tonnes in 2011, according to consultancy firm GFMS. |
| Bank of China, CME to seek wider use of yuan Posted: 03 Mar 2012 12:45 AM PST  Bank of China Ltd, one of China's "big four" State-owned lenders, formed a tie-up with the world's largest futures exchange operator on Wednesday, through which the two parties will explore yuan settlement and clearing opportunities for commodities. The cooperation agreement provides for trading in contracts related to oil, interest rates, grains and gold. The pact includes a settlement and clearance membership in the derivatives marketplace CME Inc, and an application from Bank of China (Hong Kong) Ltd to become an offshore yuan settlement bank for CME, which is almost complete, said Si Xinchun, deputy general manager of the bank's corporate banking unit. |
| Ned Naylor-Leyland: PAGE squashed ... and now for something completely different Posted: 03 Mar 2012 12:45 AM PST  Ned Naylor-Leyland, investment director at Cheviot Asset Management in London and an organizer of the Pan-Asia Gold Exchange, today distributed a commentary explaining the interruption in the exchange's planning and the departure of some of its organizers to form another exchange, which will begin with a silver contract, silver seeming to be the most vulnerable spot of the market manipulators. Naylor-Leyland's commentary is titled "PAGE Squashed...and Now for Something Completely Different" and it's posted at GATA's Internet site. It, too, is a must read...and the link to the 2-page pdf file is here. |
| Market riggers got China to kill PAGE, Maguire tells King World News Posted: 03 Mar 2012 12:45 AM PST  London silver market rigging whistleblower Andrew Maguire told King World News yesterday that manipulation of the gold market this week "couldn't have been more blatant" and that a New York financial institution with influence in China has succeeded in killing plans for the Pan-Asia Gold Exchange there. But, Maguire adds, the originators of that exchange are engineering another one whose development will be announced soon. Maguire's interview is posted at the KWN website...and the link is here. I thank Chris Powell for providing the above introduction. |
| China is in on gold price suppression too Posted: 03 Mar 2012 12:45 AM PST  GATA's secretary treasurer, Chris Powell, has a few things to say about the above KWN interview with Andrew Maguire...and he does so in this op-ed piece posted on the gata.org website yesterday. It's a must read as well...and the link is here. |
| Marc Faber: US 'Financial Mess' Will Force Government to Take Your Gold Posted: 03 Mar 2012 12:45 AM PST  Economist Marc Faber, publisher of the Gloom, Boom and Doom report, says the government will seize privately held gold, even as he continues to buy physical gold himself. |
| Jim Sinclair: Refusal to recognize Greek default requires 'QE to infinity' Posted: 03 Mar 2012 12:45 AM PST  Market analyst and gold mining entrepreneur Jim Sinclair argues that the decision of the International Swaps and Derivatives Association not to recognize the Greek government bond write-down as a default triggering bond insurance will require "quantitative easing" to infinity to protect bond-holding banks against losses. Sinclair adds that "QE to infinity" puts a floor under the gold price. Jim's commentary was posted on his website jsmineset.com yesterday...and the link is here. |
| Eric Sprott's take on Wednesday's metals takedown Posted: 03 Mar 2012 12:10 AM PST Over at that site with the intials KWN. |
| LISTEN: Naylor-Leyland discusses PAGE Posted: 02 Mar 2012 11:04 PM PST
Please stop what you're doing and listen to this extremely important interview with Ned Naylor-Leyland of Cheviot Asset Management in London. from TFMetalsReport.com: Many have wondered what happened to the Pan Asia Gold Exchange. We were all excited last summer when we first heard about it but, then, things went eerily quiet. Today, Ned Naylor-Leyland and Andrew Maguire are finally able to go public with an update on PAGE and, more importantly, information on a brand new exchange that will soon begin trading a spot, physical silver contract. Please do three things for me:
Today is an historic day in the effort to dislodge the imperial forces that dominate the leveraged, paper markets of gold and silver. We must to grateful to Ned, Andy and all those involved in making this new silver exchange a reality. Ned promises to keep us posted with more details as the launch of the exchange draws near. For now, be comfortable in knowing that we have powerful allies who are intent upon making obsolete the existing model and will soon put forth a new structure, one that finally allows for true price discovery in the precious metals. TF
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| LISTEN: Precious Metals Special Report Posted: 02 Mar 2012 10:53 PM PST Precious Metals Special Report with Kathryn Derbes, David Morgan and John Doody
Jim Puplava hosts a special series of interviews this week in response to the Leap Year "take-down" of gold and silver on February 29th of this week. John Doody sees gold stocks as very undervalued and believes it's the best buying opportunity since 2008. Kathryn Derbes sees a silent army of buyers placing physical gold and silver in stronger hands, as physical metals buying becomes more intense. David Morgan sees paper shorts losing control over the silver market, and also believes the gold/silver ratio will drop from 50 to 35 this year, favoring silver over gold. Much More @ FinancialSense.com
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| How safe is your physical Gold ? Posted: 02 Mar 2012 09:00 PM PST |
| How to detect a Fake Tungsten Gold Bar Posted: 02 Mar 2012 05:30 PM PST |
| To Stem The Rising Tide Of Gold and Silver Will Be Short-Lived Posted: 02 Mar 2012 05:22 PM PST |
| An Answer to Warren Buffet on Gold Posted: 02 Mar 2012 05:00 PM PST 24hgold |
| Posted: 02 Mar 2012 04:45 PM PST 24hgold |
| Sparta - Gold prohibition in a collapsing economy Posted: 02 Mar 2012 04:45 PM PST |
| By the Numbers for the Week Ending March 2 Posted: 02 Mar 2012 03:03 PM PST SOUTH TEXAS -- Just below is this week's closing table.
That is all for now, but there is more to come. |
| GLD Metal Holdings Within Two Percent of Pinnacle Posted: 02 Mar 2012 02:07 PM PST SPDR Gold Shares (NYSE:GLD), the largest gold ETF, reported it held 1,293.68 tonnes of LBMA approved good delivery gold bars, held for the trust by a custodian in London. That is up 9.07 tonnes from one week ago, and up about 39.1 tonnes so far this year. Continued... Gold ended 2011 at $1,566 in London and closed Friday, March 2 at $1,711.96 on the Cash Market in New York, up $145.96 for the year or about 9.3%. GLD gold holdings as of Friday were within 26.76 tonnes (2%) of the all time high of 1,320.44 tonnes last set June 30, 2010.
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| John Embry: “On The Cusp Of A Metals Breakout” Posted: 02 Mar 2012 12:32 PM PST Precious Metals are on the cusp of breaking out says John Embry of Sprott Asset Management. John Embry of Sprott Asset Management talks with Daniel of futuremoneytrends. ~TVR |
| Fabian4Liberty: The End of the Petro Dollar Posted: 02 Mar 2012 12:16 PM PST |
| Bob Chapman - Financial Survival - March 2, 2012 Posted: 02 Mar 2012 11:56 AM PST Bob Chapman - Discount Gold and Silver Trading - March 2, 2012 , The Death of... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my blog http://www.bobchapman.blogspot.com for the full Story ]] This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| Posted: 02 Mar 2012 11:00 AM PST Recently there have been reports that if Greece defaults on the new bail-out package, creditors will be entitled to seize her gold. Whether or not this is true, it raises one big question: given the ... |
| Posted: 02 Mar 2012 10:40 AM PST
Physical Gold Demand "Picks Up" in Asia After Price Falls, But Further Drop "Could See Focus on $1500 Gold" THE U.S.DOLLAR gold price fell to $1708 an ounce Friday lunchtime in London – a 0.9% drop on Friday's Asian session high – as stock and commodity markets also fell slightly amid ongoing uncertainty over the Greek bailout deal. "Another move below $1690 will have the market refocusing back toward $1500," says the latest note from gold bullion dealing bank Scotia Mocatta's technical analysis team, referring to the low hit after Wednesday's $100 per ounce drop. The gold price has not fallen so hard "since the days of Lehman's collapse" adds Scotia. "The broader macro backdrop," adds Barclays Capital, "remains gold-favorable, given the negative interest rate environment, longer-term inflationary concerns and lingering sovereign debt uncertainties." "At these price levels we've seen interest in the physical market pick up, particularly from Asian buyers," says Marc Ground, commodities strategist at Standard Bank. The silver price meantime fell to $34.88 – a 1.7% weekly drop, but a 3.4% gain on where it ended the first Friday in February. Heading into the weekend, the gold price was looking at a 3.6% weekly loss, and 1.1% down on the Feb. 3 close. European leaders meeting in Brussels have signed off the Greek bailout deal. However, more than half the €130 billion rescue package will be held back until the Greek government provides a "detailed assessment" next week of how it will implement 38 required measures. The funds being released will facilitate Greece's ongoing debt restructuring with its private creditors. Yesterday, the International Swaps and Derivatives Association's Decisions Committee ruled that the Greek government's retroactive insertion of collective action clauses (CACs) – which could force private sector bondholders to accept the agreed deal with haircuts estimated around 70% – does not constitute a credit event. ISDA's decision that the existence of CACs does not constitute default means credit-default swaps, held by many investors to hedge their Greek debt positions, will not pay out. However, ISDA could still be asked to adjudicate on the related question of whether enforcing those CACs should trigger CDS payments. "They will have to enforce CACS," says Alessandro Giansanti, senior rates strategist at ING Groep in Amsterdam. "At that point the exchange will become coercive and that will be a restructuring event for CDS." "The sovereign CDS market is crying out for an injection of confidence," adds Nicholas Spiro, managing director of Spiro Sovereign Strategy, a London-based consultancy specializing in sovereign credit risk. "It's very important, particularly in much larger bond markets like Italy and Spain, that investors' hedges are perceived to be credible." "If I were a buyer of protection on Greece…I would be upset [by ISDA's decision]," Bill Gross, co-founder of world's largest bond fund Pimco, told CNBC Thursday. Pimco however was one of the fifteen financial institutions on the Decisions Committee that voted 'No' to the question of whether inserting the CACs should trigger CDS payments. German opposition to increasing the size of the Eurozone's so-called firewall meantime appears to be diminishing, German newspaper Der Spiegel reports. "Madame Merkel and I agreed that we would take a decision at the end of this month on this subject," French president Nicolas Sarkozy told reporters in Brussels. Germany has so far opposed taking unused funds in the temporary bailout mechanism, the European Financial Stability Facility, and adding them to the €500 billion European Stability Mechanism when the latter becomes operational in July. European leaders however were told by their G20 counterparts that they could not expect more International Monetary Fund aid unless the firewall was built higher. European banks meantime deposited a record €776.9 billion with the European Central Bank on Thursday, one day after the ECB's second longer term refinancing operation saw banks borrow nearly €530 billion. Bundesbank chairman Jens Weidmann has "squared up" to ECB president Mario Draghi in a letter leaked on Wednesday, today's Financial Times reports. In the letter, the FT says, Wedimann tells Draghi the ECB should reconsider its December decision to extend the eligibility criteria for collateral banks can post against their ECB borrowing. "The letter was only written so that it could be made public," the FT quotes one Eurozone official. Over in the US, Federal reserve chairman Ben Bernanke spent a second day testifying to Congress Thursday, a day after his comments to the House Financial Services Committee were widely blamed for Wednesday's gold price plunge. "We don't see at this point that the very severe recession has permanently affected the growth potential of the US economy," Bernanke told the Senate Banking Committee, in a session that finished ahead of schedule. In Beijing meantime the Bank of China has partnered with the world's largest derivatives exchange operator CME Group – which runs the New York Comex – to explore Yuan-denominated futures contract settlement, China Daily reports. Yuan-denominated gold futures will reportedly be one of the ideas investigated. Ben Traynor Gold value calculator | Buy gold online at live prices Editor of Gold News, the analysis and investment research site from world-leading gold ownership service BullionVault, Ben Traynor was formerly editor of the Fleet Street Letter, the UK's longest-running investment letter. A Cambridge economics graduate, he is a professional writer and editor with a specialist interest in monetary economics. (c) BullionVault 2011 Please Note: This article is to inform your thinking, not lead it. Only you can decide the best place for your money, and any decision you make will put your money at risk. Information or data included here may have already been overtaken by events – and must be verified elsewhere – should you choose to act on it.
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| U.S. Mint's silver, gold coin sales tumble Posted: 02 Mar 2012 10:29 AM PST WTF? March 1, 2012, 3:09 p.m. EST U.S. Mint's silver, gold coin sales tumble By Tatyana Shumsky --US Mint sales of gold American Eagle coins plunge 83% to 21,000 troy ounces in February from the preceding month --US Mint sales of silver American Eagle coins fall 76% to 1.49 million troy ounces --Higher gold, silver prices suppress investor appetite for bullion coins NEW YORK (MarketWatch) -- Rising precious metals prices poured cold water on investor interest in gold and silver coins in February. Sales of gold American Eagle coins at the U.S. Mint plummeted 83% to just 21,000 troy ounces in February, from 127,000 ounces in January, according to agency data. Sales of silver Eagle coins fell 76% to 1,490,000 troy ounces in February from 6,107,000 troy ounces the prior month. The sea change in investor appetite for coins was triggered by rising metal prices, analysts said. Gold had ended 2011 at $1,566.80 a troy ounce and rallied 11% throughout January to finish the month at $1,740.40. Silver prices rallied 19% to $33.319 a troy ounce over the same period. "The sharp decline in coin sales shows some consumer retrenchment in reaction to the higher prices," said James Steel, precious metals analyst with HSBC. Country Hedging's commodities analyst Sterling Smith agreed, adding that "as the price goes up, that naturally creates resistance to how many coins you're going to buy." February's declines in the Mint's coin sales are a sharp contrast to January, when coin sales raced to multimonth highs. January gold coin sale volumes were the highest since August, while silver coin sales that month were the highest in a year. The February data also cut into 2012's running tally against 2011. So far this year, the U.S. Mint has sold 148,000 ounces of gold, down 35% from 226,000 ounces in the first two months of 2011. Sales of silver coins for the first two months of the year total 7,597,000 troy ounces, down 21% from 9,662,000 troy ounces in the same period of last year. Still, the lower Mint sales figures don't directly reflect retail investors' appetite for coins because the agency mostly sells its product to intermediaries like coin shops and online gold dealers. "Mint sales tend to lead investor sales because dealers like us will stock up in anticipation of investment demand," said Mike Getlin, executive vice president at Merit Financial Inc., a bullion dealer based in Santa Monica, Calif. He added that Merit Financial had a 19% increase in ounces sold in February from the prior month. "Unfortunately, a lot of people's interest actually increases as prices go up. As it starts to make the news, as counterintuitive as it sounds, we often see an increase in demand," Getlin said. Comex gold for April delivery, the most active contract, rose $10.90, or 0.6%, to settle Thursday at $1,722.20 a troy ounce on the Comex division of the New York Mercantile Exchange. Silver for May delivery settled $1.019, or 2.9%, higher at $35.661 a troy ounce on the Comex. http://www.marketwatch.com/story/us-...k=MW_news_stmp |
| Gold and Silver Disaggregated COT Report (DCOT) for March 2 Posted: 02 Mar 2012 09:58 AM PST This week's Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) disaggregated commitments of traders (DCOT) report reflects stepped up "opposition" to the advances in the prices for gold and silver as of Tuesday, one day before the very large snap correction on Wednesday, which loped a net $87 off the price of gold and knocked silver for $2.25 in a single New York session. All of the trader's positions are calculated net of spreading contracts as of the Tuesday disaggregated COT report.
As a reminder, the linked charts for gold, silver, mining shares indexes and important ratios are located in the subscriber pages. In addition Vultures have access anytime to all 30-something Vulture Bargain (VB) and Vulture Bargain Candidates of Interest (VBCI) tracking charts – the small resource-related companies that we attempt to game here at Got Gold Report. Continue to look for new commentary often. |
| Is Southern Copper Still A Good Long-Term Dividend Play? Posted: 02 Mar 2012 09:19 AM PST By Sol Palha: Southern Copper Corp (SCCO) is one of the largest integrated copper producers in the world. We produce copper, molybdenum, zinc, lead, coal and silver. All of our mining, smelting and refining facilities are located in Peru and Mexico and we conduct exploration activities in those countries and Chile. Since 1996, our common stock is listed on both the New York and Lima Stock Exchanges. Reasons to be bullish on Southern Copper
Complete Story » |
With more than 40 years as an economist to his credit and claiming gold as the "biggest position in my life," Gloom Boom & Doom Report Publisher Marc Faber assures us that gold is nowhere near a bubble phase, but cautions that corrections of 40% are not unusual in a bull market. At the end of March, Faber will share his secrets for surviving corrections at the World MoneyShow in Vancouver. In advance of that appearance, he sat down with The Gold Report for this exclusive interview where he discusses his bias for portfolio diversification in terms of geographies as well as asset classes.
While you may agree with me that the world desperately needs the gold standard, you may be equally convinced that the day global leaders embrace it is still a long way off. Fortunately, regular people no longer have to wait for the leadership to come to their senses. It is now possible for individuals to establish a personal gold standard using the world's first Gold Debit Card. The service, offered by my company Euro Pacific International Bank, allows users to save in gold but spend in local currency.
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