Gold World News Flash |
- Markets crumble as Draghi bond plan deemed too vague
- Is The Inexplicable American Consumer Rebelling?
- CME LOWERS SILVER Initial & Maintenance MARGINS 11% EFFECTIVE Mon 8/6
- Is Big Data the Next Billion-Dollar Technology Industry?
- The Fed's Gold Is Being Audited… By The US Treasury
- The Ultimate Fear Mongering Video ? or the Ultimate in Insights, Forecasting & Sound Advice? You Be the Judge
- 10 things that stand out one year after the US rating downgrade
- Gold & Why We Are Facing A Real Catastrophe Going Forward
- The Fed's Gold Is Being Audited... By The US Treasury
- In junior-IPO-land, money favours old hands
- Why Mega Banks Are The Modern Cocaine Cowboys
- CME Lowers Silver Margin Requirements Effective August 6
- Gold Triangle Support at 1565 on Friday
- The Gold Price Closed $16.30 Lighter at $1,587.40 and Must Hold
- Priced For Collapse
- What happened to Gold? Part 2
- Abort, Retry, Fail?
- Risk. Not. On.
- Gold Seeker Closing Report: Gold and Silver End Modestly Lower
- In The News Today
- Gold & Why We Are Facing A Real Catastrophe Going Forward
- Gold Daily and Silver Weekly Charts
- Gold Priced For Collapse
- Conflicts & Pressure Points
- “Five years into the banking crisis, the banking world remains very much in denial and a long way from recovery.”
- South Korean Central Bank Says it Bought 16 Tonnes of Gold in July
- Gold Struggles at $1600 Post-Fed, "Driven by Expectations" of Central Bank Action
- Central Bank Monkey Business
- The Tortoise and the Hare
- Swiss gold repatriation movement leader interviewed
| Markets crumble as Draghi bond plan deemed too vague Posted: 02 Aug 2012 11:30 PM PDT by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, The Telegraph:
"These are very strong words," said Julian Callow from Barclays Capital. "Draghi has made it clear that the ECB is preparing to buy Spanish and Italian bonds on a much bigger scale. This is the thin end of the wedge for QE and marks a turning point in the crisis." Market opinion was deeply divided, with critics lining up to berate Mr Draghi for failing to deliver on last week's pledge to do "whatever it takes" to save the euro. "This could accelerate the crisis," Jacques Cailloux from Nomura said. "We have a bond crash in Spain and Italy, and the worst financial crisis in European history and all we get from the ECB is 'guidance'. It is clear that they are not yet ready to do anything," he said. The euro plummeted below €1.22 against the dollar on the lack of concrete action. The IBEX stock index in Madrid plunged 5.2pc, while the MIB dropped 4.6pc in Milan.
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| Is The Inexplicable American Consumer Rebelling? Posted: 02 Aug 2012 11:05 PM PDT from Testosterone Pit.com:
The strongest and toughest creatures out there that no one has been able to subdue yet, the inexplicable American consumers, are digging in their heels though the entire power structure has been pushing them relentlessly to buy more and more with money they don't have, and borrow against future income they might never make, just so that GDP can edge up for another desperate quarter. But it's been tough. Despite the Fed's insistence that inflation is "contained," or its periodic fear-mongering about deflation, consumers have been hit with rising costs. Tuition has been ballooning—up 21% in California in 2011 alone! Student loan balances exceed $1 trillion. Some parents who are still paying for their own student loans are now watching their kids piling them up too [read.... Next: Bankruptcy for a whole Generation]. Healthcare expenses have seen a meteoric rise. And so have many other items that cut deep into the average budget. Inflation is a special tax. It's not that horrid if it's small, if higher yields compensate investors and savers for it, and if higher wages compensate workers for it. But that hasn't been the case. The Fed's Zero Interest Rate Policy has seen to it that entire classes of investors and savers get their clocks cleaned; and wages haven't kept up with inflation since the wage peak of 2000—with the very logical but brutal goal of bringing wages in line with those in China. Read More @ TestosteronePit.com
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| CME LOWERS SILVER Initial & Maintenance MARGINS 11% EFFECTIVE Mon 8/6 Posted: 02 Aug 2012 10:33 PM PDT from Silver Doctors:
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| Is Big Data the Next Billion-Dollar Technology Industry? Posted: 02 Aug 2012 10:30 PM PDT by Doug Hornig and Alex Daley, Casey Research:
The Large Synoptic Survey Telescope is slated to come online in 2016. When it's operational, estimates are that it will acquire knowledge of our universe at the rate of 140 terabytes of data every five days, or better than 10 petabytes a year – that's 10,000,000,000,000,000 bytes per year, or more data than in every book ever written accruing about every two days. And who knows how much info the Large Hadron Collider will be spewing out by then? In 2010 alone, the LHC gathered 13 petabytes' worth. And then there's Google, processing in the neighborhood of 24 petabytes. Per day. Only a few years ago, a gigabyte (one billion bytes) was thought to be a lot of data. Now it's nothing. Even home hard drives can store a terabyte (one trillion) these days. The commercial and governmental sectors regularly handle petabytes (quadrillion), while researchers routinely chat about the looming frontiers: exabytes (quintillion), zettabytes (sextillion), and yottabytes (septillion). It has not been necessary to name the next one after that. Yet.
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| The Fed's Gold Is Being Audited… By The US Treasury Posted: 02 Aug 2012 10:16 PM PDT from Zero Hedge:
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| Posted: 02 Aug 2012 09:32 PM PDT Warning: New evidence points toward an imminent financial collapse and the destruction of American wealth. Income, investments, retirement, and even personal safety are now at severe risk. In*this new video I lay it all out for you. Words: 515 So says*Mike Larson ([url]www.moneyandmarkets.com[/url]) in an introduction to his promotional video entitled “The Ultimate Financial Bubble“. As editor of www.munKNEE.com*(Your Key to Making Money!) and www.FinancialArticleSummariesToday.com (A site for sore eyes and inquisitive minds)*I listened to the video (Click here) and*early on thought it*to be just empty fear mongering (it is full of sensational words, phrases and cliches) but the more*I listened to it*I realized that, in spite of the manner in which the*”concerns” were*being conveyed, there were interesting insights, bold forecasts*and potentially profitable suggestions on how to protect oneself from such expected events and how to profit in the process.*Whil...
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| 10 things that stand out one year after the US rating downgrade Posted: 02 Aug 2012 08:30 PM PDT by Zarathustra, Also Sprach Analyst:
Now it is almost a year since the US was downgraded, what have changed in the global economy? Well, the US economy is still growing, albeit at slower rate now, and what people (particularly those gold bugs) used to fear about US Treasury yields blowing out or US dollar turning into toilet paper are not happening. On the contrary, the European mess is growing bigger and bigger, and it already feels like a hard landing in China despite the heavily massaged official data not confirming it. One year after the historic downgrade, here are 10 of the developments in the global markets and economy which stand out. 1. US Treasury yields have gone down, down, down Read More @ AlsoSprachAnalyst.com
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| Gold & Why We Are Facing A Real Catastrophe Going Forward Posted: 02 Aug 2012 08:00 PM PDT from KingWorldNews:
Today Stephen Leeb, who is Chairman of Leeb Capital Management, spoke with King World News about the dreadful warning legendary value investor Jeremy Grantham's recently issued: "This is a guy that has come to the view of resource shortages over the last 2 or 3 years. He's becoming much more vehement about it, saying we could have real catastrophes in the food market, in water, etc., and energy could be right behind." The acclaimed money manager also discussed gold, but first, when asked about the dire situation the ECB faces, Leeb responded, "They've got to start buying bonds, period. It's very simple, Spain cannot survive with bond yields over 7%. I doubt they can survive with bond yields much over 5%, when you've got no growth and 25% unemployment." Leeb continues @ KingWorldNews.com
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| The Fed's Gold Is Being Audited... By The US Treasury Posted: 02 Aug 2012 07:25 PM PDT
Far more importantly, for all those financial novices who fail to grasp the simplest relationship between assets and liabilities, the allegation expounded by the "conspiracy theorists", as the LA Times calls them, has never been that the gold at the NY Fed is not there. It is by all means there: after all what safer place to keep it than 80 feet below the Federal Reserve itself, the same Fed which has exclusive access to the 1000+ strong Federeal Reserve Police whose "primary duty is to provide force protection to Federal Reserve facilities. Secondary responsibilities, depending on the particular location, may include liaison work with other law enforcement agencies and/or investigative work related to administrative matters."
And not only the gold belonging to the US: it is well known that the bulk of Europe's sovereign gold is also contained deep under downtown Manhattan: we wish them all the best when they attempt to repatriate the physical when they need it, such as the day after the EUR finally collapses. No - what the "conspiracy theorists" allege is that claims existing in paper format on the physical gold held under Liberty 33 are orders of magnitude greater than the actual physical gold these claims supposedly have recourse to. Indeed, this too was a conspiracy theory until the failure of MF Global proved it to be a conspiracy "fact" and the entire asset-liability rehypothecation daisy-chain threatened to begin unwinding in November of 2011, at which point forced delivery of hard assets would expose the entire facade of the modern financial system to be a hollow sham. So unless the Treasury will also conduct a full "audit" of every single paper trail and every physical bar is mapped to all of its existing obligors, then the entire operation is absolutely meaningless and simply a waste of taxpayer money. Because the physical gold may well be there (and furthermore it is the gold at Ft. Knox that was questionable; never the gold held by the Fed, but who cares about details). The problem is if the paper claims on this gold are far greater than the actual deliverable physical gold for that moment when the latest attempt to kick the can down the rehypothecated road finally fails. Of course, none of the this was addressed in the simplistic LA Times narrative whose sole purposes is to "frame" the issue for those uninformed and on the fence that, look officer, America is proactively doing something to address all those tinfoil hat nut job gold hoarders' allegations that the Fed actually is not in possession of its gold. Here is what was addressed:
Of course, what attempt at framing would be complete with an actual quite vivid description of the frame.
Gasp: will someone think of the sacrifices. Oh wait, that is precisely what one is supposed to think of. And none of what actually matters. At this point, the Times piece almost grasps what the real issue is, once again courtesy of Ron Paul:
The LA Times' conclusion redirects however to more important things. Such as the Fed's current role of preserving "ze price stabeeleetee."
And so forth. The whole piece can be found here in its entirety. One thing which will not be found after the jump, however, is this rather extensive explanation of a topic we touched upon: in essence how under the guise of the Fed "gaining its independence" in 1951, the Fed lost all of it. Below we repost our article from April in which we explained every nuance of the tortured relationship between the Fed, the Treasury, and the US presidency, which finally hits a screeching crescendo in 1951... and afterwards was silent. From Zero Hedge Who Is Lying: The Federal Reserve Or... The Federal Reserve? And Why Stalin "Lost" When one thinks of the early 1950's, things that often come to mind are fries and milkshake, muscle cars, Little Richard, and greased hair. Things that rarely come to mind are that the US and China were openly at war over a little piece of land called Korea, that the Treasury market did not exist, that short and long end rates were "fixed" by the Fed at 0.125% and 2.5% respectively, even as inflation was at the highest it has ever been in the post war period at over 20%. What absolutely never comes to mind, is that on March 3, 1951, the world as we know it changed forever, after a little noted event known as the Fed-Treasury Accord of March 3, 1951 took place, and mutated the role of the Federal Reserve, which set off on a path that would ultimately lead to the disastrous economic state the world finds itself in today. Oh and another thing that never comes to mind, is that while the current iteration of the Fed, various recent voodoo economic theories, and assorted blogs, all claim that excess bank reserves are never an inflationary threat, it is precisely two Federal Reserve chairmen's heretic claims that reserves will light an inflationary conflagration, that forced then president Truman to eliminate not one but two Fed Chairmen, and nearly result in the "independent" Federal Reserve being subsumed by the Treasury to do its monetization and market manipulation/intervention bidding. Which then begs the question: who is telling the truth about the linkage of reserve accumulation to inflation - the Fed of 1951, or every other Fed since, now firmly under the control of the Treasury-banker syndicate. Because they can not both be right. Why is March 3, 1951 such an important date? Because, more than anything, the confluence of events that led to the "Accord" signed on this day have extensive parallels to our current situation, as the attached paper by the Federal Reserve of Richmond shows in exquisite detail, yet 100% in reverse. In a nutshell what happened in the late 1940s and early 1950s was that in the aftermath of WWII, and the outbreak of the Korean war, America found itself in a very odd situation... one never really encountered until today. The country had soaring inflation - as in real inflation, not just core inflation measured by hedonic adjustments and excluding all those thing that actually do go up in price. More importantly, it had the 1950's version of ZIRP - only then it was called a peg, in this case of 0.375%, and subsequently 0.125% on short end Treasurys, and 2.5% on long-dated paper. In other words, the monetary situation in 1951 was one where both the short and long end of the curve were artificially boosted (think ZIRP and Twist), just so holders of Treasury paper (at that time only insurance companies as banks were not allowed to invest in TSYs) did not experience losses and get further "demoralized" in addition to the war that Truman was currently waging. In fact, the following quote from none other than Truman is as idiotic, yet as valid today, as it was 61 years ago:
And this:
This is arguably the earliest recorded iteration in modern history of a "the world will come to an end unless you don't do what I tell you" type of threat uttered by a member of the administration (ahem Hank Paulson) to a governing body. We will skip commenting on the supreme irony that according to Truman, Stalin would win if the US did not engage in the same central planning that ultimately brought the Soviet empire down. Yet what is so very different about this date in history, is that while it was the Treasury pushing tooth and nail for endless bond pegging by the Fed (apparently nobody had thought of QE back then yet, because it would have been all the rage), the body warning about the potential threat of runaway inflation from a surge in reserves, as well as the dangers associated with central planning was... The Federal Reserve. Huh !!?? The same Fed that can not withhold its exuberance in encouraging ZIRP, Twist, LSAP, selling of Treasury Puts, and every other form of market intervention known to man, warning the president these very same actions would lead to ruin? And not only that but Truman being forced to get rid of not just Fed veteran Marriner Eccles (after whom the building in which centrally planned schemes are hatched every single day in yet another supreme irony), but also his successor Thomas McCabe who also refused to follow the precepts of central planning... who in turn was replaced by a Treasury muppet, or someone who will gladly monetize US debt whenever needed, at which point the scene for the final outcome was set. That is impossible you say. Oh, not only is it impossible but it gets much better. Because not only did the two veteran Fed chairmen warn against the state's incursion into central planning, but they explicitly said something which the Fed, or at least its modern versions, have rejected over and over, especially during congressional committees: that a build of bank reserves is the surest way to spark hyperinflation. But....but....but.... this is what fringe tin-foil hat blogs allege.... not Fed chairmen who between them have over 20 years of tenure. Well, here are the facts:
In response to Truman's ceaseless demands for pegging interest rates even as inflation was spiking over 20%, NY Fed president Sproul said that...
In other words, pegging (i.e., ZIRP, Twist, LSAP)... is "impossible and improper"... is unconstitutional another word for it? In retrospect perhaps we were a little too rought on Mr. Martin, who despite being a Treasury puppet, had these words to say:
There are those who claim the Fed has become the bankers' puppet. It was not always so. In fact, the bankers loathed the Fed... Until the "Accord"
It just gets better, as Marriner Eccles puts it into overdrive:
Yet punchline #1:
And #2 and final:
And there you have it folks, clear as daylight, every aspect of the tension of the "independent" Fed brought to the surface. Because the few men who dared to stand up against Truman, the doctrine of central planning, "pegging" Treasury prices, and the banking cartel whose sole prerogative has always and only been cheap and easy money, all got their just deserts: Fed president #1:
And Fed president #2...
As a reminder Snyder was the Secretary of the Treasury. And whom did Truman replace McCabe with?
Martin was undersecretary of the Treasury: the same institution that wanted all objectors to central planning scrapped. His position? Quote the Fed:
Yet by keeping bonds pegged at ridiculously low prices during the late 1940s, and early 1950s, inflation exploded. And that is what marked the beginning of the end, as while the Fed may have gained its independence, the US presidency, acting on behalf of the banks and populism (to keep capital losses to a minimum) made it all too clear anyone who steps out of line would be fired. Call it a Stalinist putsch. Actually hold on, did we say Stalin lost? Perhaps we may need to revise that. And while we got closure on that, we are still confused: is the real seed of inflation in reserves?
Ok, now we get it. And should we listen to the Fed or the... Fed? Read the full absolutely must read Rchmond Fed narrative of the 1951 accord here. We can only hope someone in Congress can ask Bernanke for his take on the allegations made by the man responsible for the name of the current Fed headquarters. &
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| In junior-IPO-land, money favours old hands Posted: 02 Aug 2012 06:57 PM PDT Kip Keen writing for Mineweb reports: A look at recent junior IPOs suggests veteran teams with solid exploration backgrounds and credits to success are where the money's at. The appetite for junior exploration IPOs on the TSX Venture is what you might expect it to be these days. Not very hungry. A quick round-up of recent IPOs on the Venture shows that only one among new IPOs in June and July (since we last visited the subject) broke the million-dollar barrier, Precipitate Gold, a junior explorer that holds property options and concessions in the eastern Yukon and northern BC. What the shape of June and July IPOs illustrate more than anything else is that pedigree counts now more than ever. Far and away the better known names involved with the recent IPOs (table below) are in Precipitate's stable. That Precipitate raised the most in the recent round of IPOs suggests what little money is going to the heavily favoured veteran teams.In Precipitate's case this is a fairly stacked list. Adrian Fleming, who played a key role in Underworld Resources as the company's CEO in the run up to Kinross's takeover of it, is Precipitate chairman. Gary Freeman, of Ethos Capital, another Yukon explorer, and Quinton Hennigh, who headed up Evolving Gold, are both on the board of directors. In management, Darcy Krohman, who was a senior mining analyst with the BCSC and former vice president of exploration for Timmins Gold and Silvermex Resources, is president and CEO. And the driving forces behindn founding Precipitate were the late David Coffin and his brother Eric Coffin of HRA. Eric and David's estate are now the company's top shareholders and both of them helped pick key Precipitate properties, some of which are under option from Strategic Metals, a major Yukon explorer. But, even with such solid names behind you, it isn't easy to hit the ground running. As far as Junior IPOs go, the latest batch in view here are not able to embrace former U.S. president George W. Bush's philosophy, "Drill, baby, drill." With budgets of a few hundred thousand dollars in play, and the knowledge financing markets are tough, most of the stated exploration plans are very modest, involving boots on the ground more so than drillbits into it. And clearly if you have cash these days, you spend it sparingly and hold out for friendlier horizons to appear where, hopefully, financing loosens up and you can break out the big plans. Until then it continues to be a waiting game. In fact, about the tough state of junior affairs in sourcing cash for exploration, it was Eric Coffin that recently said in the Gold Report, "I suspect a lot of companies are going to say, 'Let's just wait and see if next year is better.'" Select IPOs on the TSX Venture June/July
August 2, 2012 (Source: Mineweb) http://www.mineweb.com/mineweb/view/mineweb/en/page66?oid=156302&sn=Detail&id=92730 Disclosure: Precipitate Gold is a Vulture Bargain Candidate of Interest (VBCI). Members of the GGR team may hold long positions in PRG.V. The editor of GGR participated in a private placement for Precipitate Gold and holds a long position at the time of publication.
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| Why Mega Banks Are The Modern Cocaine Cowboys Posted: 02 Aug 2012 06:17 PM PDT
From Jonathan Weil of Bloomberg: Cocaine Cowboys Know Best Places to Bank To grow up in South Florida during the 1970s and 1980s, as I did, wasn't your typical American childhood experience. Back then the area was known as the most dangerous place in the country. Carnage from the drug wars filled the local news long before "Miami Vice" became a hit TV show. By elementary school, my friends and I knew some of the lingo. A Colombian necktie wasn't a piece of clothing, but a gruesome execution method. When I was 7 years old my barber was murdered in his shop, apparently over a drug deal. It had been a long time since I thought much about those days. By chance I recently came across a fabulous documentary, "Cocaine Cowboys," by Miami filmmaker Billy Corben. Then last month a Senate panel held a hearing on the U.K. bank HSBC Holdings Plc (HSBA) and its ties to drug lords, money laundering, al- Qaeda and rogue nations such as Iran and North Korea. Here's a bank with $2.7 trillion of assets that flouted U.S. laws for a decade, according to the July 17 report by the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. HSBC turned a blind eye to organized crime, Mexican drug cartels and overseas terrorism financiers, and gave them access to the U.S. banking system. HSBC's main U.S. regulator, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, for years tolerated its violations of anti-money laundering laws. For this, HSBC and the OCC apologized. Justice Department fines are likely. It's an outrage HSBC hasn't had its U.S. banking licenses revoked, assuming the Senate panel's report is accurate -- and there's no reason to believe it isn't. Try This Let's try out a novel idea: Banks that help drug cartels launder money and give cover to those tied to terrorism should be put out of business. Is that really so hard for everyone to agree on? Free markets have worked in the U.S. because we have the rule of law. It's why so many investors from other countries want to do business here. When contracts are breached, courts can be accessed to enforce them. When individuals or companies commit crimes, they're supposed to be prosecuted and punished. Except we have this mutant species of corporation called too-big-to-fail banks whose collapse might wreck the global economy. No financial institution in the U.S. can survive a felony indictment. So these companies have become un-indictable, creating a perverse nonchalance regarding financial crimes. In 2010, Wachovia paid $160 million to settle criminal allegations of laundering Mexican drug money. By then the bank had been bought by Wells Fargo & Co. (WFC), and the Justice Department let it off with a deferred-prosecution deal. Usually the most that happens to management is someone resigns, as HSBC's head of compliance, David Bagley, said he would at last month's Senate hearing. What would it take for the government to really crack down on wrongdoing in the financial-services industry? What finally prompted the feds to do something about cocaine smuggling into South Florida long ago was the epidemic of violence it spawned. A defining moment came in July 1979, when drug traffickers went on a shooting spree in broad daylight at the Dadeland Mall in Kendall, southwest of Miami. This was unprecedented. The gunmen arrived in a delivery van that had been converted into an armored personnel carrier. Two people were killed. Bystanders dove for cover. Cars in the parking lot were riddled with bullets from machine-gun fire. Attacks like that became frequent over the next few years. In 1979 there were 349 murders in South Florida, according to the Justice Department, triple the number of two years earlier. By 1981 murders had climbed to 621. The local police were outgunned, outnumbered, easily corrupted and often stoned. Finally in 1982 President Ronald Reagan formed a task force and devoted hundreds of additional federal agents to South Florida to restore law and order. Back then, too, the cartels' enablers included dirty banks. As Corben's film noted, in 1979 the Federal Reserve's Miami branch reported a $5 billion cash surplus -- more than the country's other Federal Reserve banks combined. One crucial difference, compared with today, was the drug banks in those days were relatively small. When an outfit such as Sunshine State Bank got busted, it didn't threaten the economy. In terms of stray bullets, Miami is a much safer place today. But mainly what the U.S. did was drive the cartels, the turf battles and the killings into Mexico, where the violence is out of mind for most Americans even while much of that country has turned into a narco-state. Maybe if the bankers were the ones spraying machine-gun fire in the streets, that might spur the U.S. government to take meaningful, punitive action. Short of that, you have to wonder if anything would. Too-big-to-fail isn't merely an economic problem. It is a great moral failing of our society that poisons our democracy. Something has to give.
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| CME Lowers Silver Margin Requirements Effective August 6 Posted: 02 Aug 2012 05:48 PM PDT On Thursday, August 2, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange or CME announced changes in the silver "margin rates." The notice to traders said in typical fashion… "As per the normal review of market volatility to ensure adequate collateral coverage, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange Inc., Clearing House Risk Management staff approved the performance bond requirements for the following products listed below." For non-hedgers and speculators the amount required for initial bond requirements dropped 10.7% from the current $18,900 to $16,875 for each 5,000 ounce silver contract (SI). The maintenance (margin) requirement for Spec traders falls from $14,000 to $12,500. For traders considered by the CFTC and the exchange as hedge members, the initial bond and maintenance requirements fell from $14,000 to $12,500, also a reduction of 10.7%. The new rates will be effective as of the close of business on Monday, August 6. There were similar reductions for the Silver Miny(QI) and E-Mini (6Q) Silver contracts, as well as slightly larger reductions percentage wise for Palladium and Platinum contracts. For the full notice to traders follow the link just below. Source: CME
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| Gold Triangle Support at 1565 on Friday Posted: 02 Aug 2012 04:51 PM PDT courtesy of DailyFX.com August 02, 2012 01:09 PM Daily Bars Prepared by Jamie Saettele, CMT After breaking the triangle pattern, gold has dropped well into its former range. Other than calling this a range, there really is no reason to waste time trying to figure out where this market is headed next. In fact, one can make the argument that the triangle remains underway (latest top composing wave C), in which case this market will get even more frustrating to follow over the next few months. LEVELS: 1569 1578 1584 1596 1610 1618...
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| The Gold Price Closed $16.30 Lighter at $1,587.40 and Must Hold Posted: 02 Aug 2012 04:37 PM PDT Gold Price Close Today : 1587.40 Change : -16.30 or -1.02% Silver Price Close Today : 2698.1 Change : -53.6 or -1.95% Gold Silver Ratio Today : 58.834 Change : 0.554 or 0.95% Silver Gold Ratio Today : 0.01700 Change : -0.000161 or -0.94% Platinum Price Close Today : 1386.30 Change : -13.50 or -0.96% Palladium Price Close Today : 567.05 Change : -14.75 or -2.54% S&P 500 : 1,365.00 Change : -10.32 or -0.75% Dow In GOLD$ : $167.71 Change : $ 0.53 or 0.32% Dow in GOLD oz : 8.113 Change : 0.026 or 0.32% Dow in SILVER oz : 477.33 Change : 5.95 or 1.26% Dow Industrial : 12,878.88 Change : -92.18 or -0.71% US Dollar Index : 83.32 Change : 0.270 or 0.33% Today the GOLD PRICE closed Comex $16.30 lighter than yesterday, at $1,587.40. Silver gave back 53.6 cents and ended at 2698.1c. Gold and silver seem determined to test the lower boundaries I mentioned yesterday, $1,580 and 2680 cents. The GOLD PRICE today touched $1,584.90, but never climbed higher than $1,615. Since $1,585.83 marks a 61.8% correction of the 12 to 30 July move ($1,564.9 to $1,619.70), gold needs to hold that line. If not, it whispers lower prices will come. My opinion -- but only my natural born fool opinion -- is that it will hold, but tomorrow will tell me. The SILVER PRICE low today at 2697c comes mighty close to retracing the entire advance from 2679c to 2801.4c. That's not unusual for silver, but both metals have reached that cliff-edge where they must reverse course or tip over. Gold closed below its 20 DMA ($1,590.81), which doesn't promise great things. Silver has reached the bottom of that flat-topped triangle we have been watching. Not holding there would be in very bad taste. Thanks to central bankers, not only does economic hardship abound, but short term bewilderment and confusion as well. Be patient, silver and gold may struggle here but will have sorted it out by the month's end and should be rising by then. With decisive indecisiveness ECB head Mario Draghi (a Goldman Sachs alumnus) packed full the Blarney Cannon, then forgot to light a match. He said something equal to, "You all better watch out, or I might have to start doing something." It's not nice to disappoint markets, and stocks responded by dropping all over the world. One begins to wonder whether the entire euro-debacle is being managed to bring the Southern countries to a point of such desperation that they will accept whatever fiscal controls Berlin wants to impose. But Occam's razor says that we ought always to prefer, as the most likely explanation, the most obvious explanation. Therefore we conclude that nothing more is motivating Draghi and the ECB than simple feckless incompetence born of the unworkable central banking system. Yield on 10 year US treasuries fell again (bonds rose), but still look toppy. Whether that top in bonds and faith in the Elmer Gantry of currencies, the US Dollar, comes next week or in six months, the fall of that house will be great. Have mercy on the world! Now that the drunk Mario bought for markets last week has worn off, what happens next? The US dollar index rose 27 basis points (0.35%) to 83.321 today. Meanwhile the Euro, which had reached its 50 DMA ($1.2414) before Mario closed the bar, sank all the way through its 20 DMA ($1.2237) and filled the gap it left behind a few days ago. Closed $1.2183, down 0.36%. Promises to drop below $1.2000. Yen is acting like a kid that hangs back hoping nobody will notice him. Rose today 0.28% to 127.85c (Y78.2), but is flat lining on the chart, carefully controlled and held below 128.18c. On 2 August 1858 the rule of the East India Company was transferred to the British government. Hard for us to believe that for nearly 200 years a corporation had been running a large part of the country. Imagine that, a corporation running a country! Why, it would be like the Federal Reserve running our monetary system, or the Too-Big-To-Fail Banks ordering government to bail them out, or defense corporations calling the shots in Washington! Unthinkable! By the way, it was the East India company that emptied all the silver out of England. Under the corrupt regime of Charles II the company hired his mistress to influence legislation allowing silver to be exported from the realm. Once it passed they had every reason to ship silver to India, because the ratio in England was 15.5 oz of silver to one ounce of gold, while in the Far East it was 12 - 10 oz. Thus all the silver they drained out of England bought far more in India than gold would have, and they could convert their profits into cheap gold and ship it back to England. That's one reason why in 1718 when Newton reformed the English monetary system he put it on a de facto gold system. He had no choice: very little silver remained in England. Argentum et aurum comparenda sunt -- -- Gold and silver must be bought. - Franklin Sanders, The Moneychanger The-MoneyChanger.com 1-888-218-9226 10:00am-5:00pm CST, Monday-Friday © 2012, The Moneychanger. May not be republished in any form, including electronically, without our express permission. To avoid confusion, please remember that the comments above have a very short time horizon. Always invest with the primary trend. Gold's primary trend is up, targeting at least $3,130.00; silver's primary is up targeting 16:1 gold/silver ratio or $195.66; stocks' primary trend is down, targeting Dow under 2,900 and worth only one ounce of gold; US$ or US$-denominated assets, primary trend down; real estate bubble has burst, primary trend down. WARNING AND DISCLAIMER. Be advised and warned: Do NOT use these commentaries to trade futures contracts. I don't intend them for that or write them with that short term trading outlook. I write them for long-term investors in physical metals. Take them as entertainment, but not as a timing service for futures. NOR do I recommend investing in gold or silver Exchange Trade Funds (ETFs). Those are NOT physical metal and I fear one day one or another may go up in smoke. Unless you can breathe smoke, stay away. Call me paranoid, but the surviving rabbit is wary of traps. NOR do I recommend trading futures options or other leveraged paper gold and silver products. These are not for the inexperienced. NOR do I recommend buying gold and silver on margin or with debt. What DO I recommend? Physical gold and silver coins and bars in your own hands. One final warning: NEVER insert a 747 Jumbo Jet up your nose. No, I don't. 
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| Posted: 02 Aug 2012 04:11 PM PDT Europac
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| Posted: 02 Aug 2012 04:01 PM PDT Alf Field
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| Posted: 02 Aug 2012 02:39 PM PDT August 2, 2012
No viruses or anything malicious at work… and you're able to recover the files… but only after hours, if not days, of tedium.
Knight Capital Group (KCG) executes trades on behalf of retail brokers like E-Trade and TD Ameritrade. Shortly after the open, it fell victim to a "trading blunder" attributed to "installation of trading software," in the words of a Forbes story. "The problem… led the firm's computers to rapidly buy and sell millions of shares in over a hundred stocks for about 45 minutes after the markets opened," according to a New York Times account. Result: Knight found itself unloading a ton of overvalued shares at a substantially lower price than it bought earlier in the day. Total losses: $440 million — which wipes out KCG's entire second-quarter revenue ($289 million) and then some. The result for Knight stock is… well, "devastating" would be a mild understatement.
"You have to question if this is the beginning of the end for Knight," consultant Christopher Nagy told the Times. Certainly it's a black eye for Knight CEO Thomas Joyce. He was one of the most vocal critics when "trading glitches" fouled up Facebook's debut as a publicly traded firm in May.
Fidelity Investments bought more than $200 million of shares before the IPO. It bought more afterward. Today, Morningstar figures reveal that in June, Fidelity unloaded 1.9 million of FB's publicly traded shares. The private shares can't be traded till later this year. Whether Fidelity made a profit, we don't know. But at last check, FB shares are down 45% from their IPO price of $38. Whoops, make that 47%… hard to keep up this morning. "Facebook and Goldman will fleece millions of Americans of their retirement funds," Addison wrote in our first forecast of the year 2011. That's when Goldman Sachs put its best clients into private shares of Facebook. At that time, Goldman estimated the company's value at $50 billion. On the eve of its IPO May 18 of this year, that figure approached $100 billion, or as Chris Mayer noted that day, 25 times sales and 100 times earnings. This morning? $38.2 billion.
The major indexes held up OK yesterday after the Federal Reserve failed to deliver QE3, or anything even approaching it. All the Fed delivered was changing the "prepared to take further action as appropriate" language from its June statement to "will closely monitor incoming information on economic and financial developments and will provide additional accommodation as needed."
The ECB left its benchmark rate at 0.75% before the U.S. open. That was expected. What wasn't expected was the utter lack of detail in ECB president Mario Draghi's press conference afterward. His big speech last week in which he promised to do "whatever it takes" to save the euro? "The speech doesn't say anything about timing, bond buying," he said by way of clarification today.
The trading action has been very good for subscribers of Options Hotline. This morning Steve Sarnoff recommended they sell their puts on the Russell 2000 ETF for gains of 58% in less than two weeks. That handsome win comes on the heels of two "multipliers." Last Friday, Steve told his readers to sell their Coca-Cola calls for 102% gains in a little over two months. And the week before, he urged them to grab 100% gains on Qualcomm calls after only three days. Reader response to Steve's sell signals has been overwhelmingly positive. "Great addition!" writes one reader. These alerts "will be an attention grabber for those of us that need it," says another. "I think that this will be a great addition to your services," writes a third. With Steve's expert guidance, you have a chance to profit on your very first play. Our publisher Joe Schriefer walks you through the process at this link.
Silver, as usual, is taking the bigger hit: It's down to $27.21.
The country's stash now totals 70.4 metric tons… up nearly fivefold over the last 13 months. Still, that's less than 1% of South Korea's foreign exchange reserves.
The city of 210,000 has racked up more than $1 billion in debt. Last week the city council suspended debt payments, quit paying into the retiree health fund and — this must be a really radical step — imposed a hiring freeze. San Bernardino is the third city in California to file for bankruptcy this summer, after Stockton and Mammoth Lakes. Your city government doesn't have to file for bankruptcy before you feel the pinch of higher taxes and fewer services. It's a theme Addison's hammered away at for more than a year now: His most recent forecast — updated for the most-recent developments, with the help of Bill Bonner — is available here.
What's the point, you wonder, if the Mayan calendar says the world will end on that date? Well, there's a strain of thought that says Dec. 21 will mark, not necessarily a catastrophe, but instead a shift in mass consciousness. Bolivia's foreign minister has taken this to heart: "Dec. 21 of 2012 will be the end of egoism and division," declares David Choquehuanca. "Dec. 21 should be the end of Coca-Cola." What does he have against Coke? He's not really specifying. "The planets will align for the first time in 26,000 years and this is the end of capitalism and the beginning of communitarianism," Choquehuanca told the Venezuelan newspaper El Periodiquito. Somehow, we doubt the decision will have much impact on KO's bottom line…
In the meantime, Choquehuanca is urging Bolivians to take up drinking a local peach-flavored soft drink called mocochinche. Heck, we even gave Bolivia a running start by calculating KO's market cap to account for the market swoon today. Speaking of which, Facebook is now below $20…
At a workshop last month in New York, a hacker going by the name "Ray" used keys produced with a laser cutter and 3-D printer to unlock handcuffs made by two of the biggest manufacturers. These aren't cuffs you can buy at a police surplus store: England's Chubb and Germany's Bonowi strive to sell only to "authorized buyers." The problem for police is that the same key can unlock every pair of handcuffs in the department. That way, someone who's cuffed by one officer can be uncuffed by another officer. Or someone who's managed to buy a key on eBay and copied it on a 3-D printer…
"It would take major modification of the receiver to be able to fire both."
"Making a gun receiver is not a great stretch, and, with costs dropping so fast, within the reach of many would-be 'hobbyists' that desire automatic weapons!"
"Monks in Tibet and the perceived downtrodden (perhaps Watts and what's left of Detroit) will be armed. And dangerous. Not a chicken in every pot — but perhaps an AR-15 in every hand wishing one. The worldwide political ramifications are monumental. Just saying…" The 5: And people call us doom-and-gloom…
"Tax policy on dividends is another risk factor. "But as long as there is a zero Treasury rate policy, people will look for better returns. So I think a dividend stock bubble is possible, but probably several years out."
"As I understand his philosophy, he has no qualms with 'being charitable' when it is an individual's choice to do so. His beef is with (a) forced charity (an obvious oxymoron) and (b) 'charities' whose self-indulgent, bloated bureaucracies consume well upward of 80% of every dollar donated in 'administration,' in many cases delivering a nickel or less to actual beneficial activity. (I happen to live in the Third World, where deserving recipient's of charity are not hard to find, who benefit from 100% of every dollar I freely choose to divest in that manner. "As for the 'ice floe' kerfuffle, Mr. Casey has never advocated for society to banish the weak and/or elderly — his libertarian views could not be more staunchly pro-individual/anti-groupthink. The opinions he expresses on the subject are in admiration of the personal morals of those who choose their own one-way path over being a significant and perpetual burden to their loved ones. "Said another way, once it becomes clear that the burden you place on your loved ones is detrimental and irreversible, it is selfishly immoral to persist. By referencing aboriginal societies who respect an individual's choice to take a long walk, Mr. Casey does in no way condone that choice being usurped by a council of village elders, especially of the modern sort, whether they be known as 'health resource allocators,' 'death panels' or 'nanny state do-gooders.' "Thank you for sponsoring The 5 as a forum for economic and philosophic matter, not just a stock market play-by-play." The 5: "Health resource allocators?" We had to look that up to see if it's an actual term. We see only seven hits on Google. So far. But it's got potential… Cheers, Dave Gonigam The 5 Min. Forecast P.S. "I wouldn't be surprised to see this rally cut short," Steve Sarnoff wrote his readers Sunday evening. "It may take an Olympian effort for buyers to sustain their jump." Anticipating a falling Dow, Steve recommended a suitable play. After only three days, this play is up 43%. And that's in addition to the 58% gains on stumbling small caps in less than two weeks. Steve's next buy recommendation comes this Sunday. You can be on board by clicking here.
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| Posted: 02 Aug 2012 02:34 PM PDT After a brief spike higher (just to flush all those stops) in front of Draghi's 'dis-believe' press conference this morning, markets plunged. Some wanted more but algos tickled us up to VWAP into the close once again though we note that once there - volume and average trade size surged, allowing those bigger momo players a better exit than mere mortals. Equities and broad risk assets stayed in very close sync all day with cross asset class correlation surging systemically, VIX rose and fell on the day ending down 1.4 vols at 17.5% (after touching 19.25% after the European close) - but notably VIX is now more back in line with equity/credit implied values. The USD ends today up 0.8% on the week, and implicitly commodities tumbled (copper and oil down 3-3.5% on the week and gold/silver -2%). Treasury yields bounced higher as stocks nibbled back to VWAP into the close but ended down 2-4bps (long-end outperforming). All in all - no capitulation, but a broad based derisking that seemed to benefit from some pre-positioning in protection (and help from the VWAP algos twice). Wil tomorrow's NFP be good enough to be bad or bad enough to be good (high volume and low average trade size suggests few want to position for it too aggressively). S&P 500 e-mini futures (ES) saw two reversions to VWAP (red rectangles) - at Europe close and US close that were accompanied by heavy volume and large block size exits...
VIX surprised a few with its 'weakness' today as stocks sold off - but hopefully this will clarify - as it seems the warning we noted a few days ago of pre-emptive positioning was indeed what occurred and likely supported today's market modestly...
But broadly speaking risk markets clung together in a non-capitulative manner today - and notably gold (beta-adjusted) underperformed...
and across all risk-asset-classes correlation picked up (lower right) and equities tended to cling to risk all day (upper right). Despite some early shenanigans into the European close (upper left), equities stayed true to their rates/vol/credit capital structure. The VIX vs 'fair' equity/credit relationship reverted today (lower left) and it will be interesting to see if today's vol selling (unwinds of hedges) was accompanied by derisking in the underlying or simply a lifting of hedges (we suspect - given the VWAP reversion, high volume, and pick up in average trade size at VWAP that this was real money exits)...
Charts:Bloomberg and Capital Context
Bonus Chart: Terrible Truth - How many more jobs are gonna be lost thanks to algos? Knight Capital trades with a $1 handle after hours...
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| Gold Seeker Closing Report: Gold and Silver End Modestly Lower Posted: 02 Aug 2012 02:19 PM PDT Gold climbed almost 1% to $1615.05 by a little after 8AM EST, but it then fell to as low as $1584.97 by early afternoon in New York and ended with a loss of 0.66%. Silver slumped to as low as $26.97 and ended with a loss of 0.91%.
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| Posted: 02 Aug 2012 02:13 PM PDT Jim Sinclair's Commentary Gold is going to and trough $3500. South Korea diversifies further into gold By Simon Mundy in Seoul and Jack Farchy in London August 2, 2012 10:34 am South Korea returned to the gold market in July, adding 16 tonnes to its reserves in the latest move by a central bank Continue reading In The News Today
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| Gold & Why We Are Facing A Real Catastrophe Going Forward Posted: 02 Aug 2012 02:09 PM PDT  Today Stephen Leeb, who is Chairman of Leeb Capital Management, spoke with King World News about the dreadful warning legendary value investor Jeremy Grantham's recently issued: "This is a guy that has come to the view of resource shortages over the last 2 or 3 years. He's becoming much more vehement about it, saying we could have real catastrophes in the food market, in water, etc., and energy could be right behind." The acclaimed money manager also discussed gold, but first, when asked about the dire situation the ECB faces, Leeb responded, "They've got to start buying bonds, period. It's very simple, Spain cannot survive with bond yields over 7%. I doubt they can survive with bond yields much over 5%, when you've got no growth and 25% unemployment."
This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| Gold Daily and Silver Weekly Charts Posted: 02 Aug 2012 02:01 PM PDT |
| Posted: 02 Aug 2012 01:32 PM PDT Where is the gold price today? If you're like many Americans, you have no idea whether it went up, down, or sideways. Fortunately, I know my readers to be more informed - you likely know that after falling from almost $1900, gold has been trapped around $1600 since early May. But you may still be curious why despite continued money-printing and abysmal US economic reports, gold hasn't been able to hit new highs.
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| Conflicts & Pressure Points Posted: 02 Aug 2012 12:56 PM PDT by Jim Willie CB August 2, 2012 home: Golden Jackass website subscribe: Hat Trick Letter Jim Willie CB, editor of the "HAT TRICK LETTER" Use the above link to subscribe to the paid research reports, which include coverage of critically important factors at work during the ongoing panicky attempt to sustain an unsustainable system burdened by numerous imbalances aggravated by global village forces. An historically unprecedented mess has been created by compromised central bankers and inept economic advisors, whose interference has irreversibly altered and damaged the world financial system, urgently pushed after the removed anchor of money to gold. Analysis features Gold, Crude Oil, USDollar, Treasury bonds, and inter-market dynamics with the US Economy and US Federal Reserve monetary policy. Some extremely powerful differentials in power are setting themselves up, in a manner never seen before in modern history. Those who dismiss t...
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| Posted: 02 Aug 2012 11:53 AM PDT Loss of trust: By Ian Fraser Financial journalist Ian Fraser gives his view of events behind the collapse of RBS and HBOS and calls for a Leveson-style inquiry
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| South Korean Central Bank Says it Bought 16 Tonnes of Gold in July Posted: 02 Aug 2012 11:37 AM PDT "Silver's break-out above its 50-day moving average got crushed under the boot of JPMorgan yesterday." ...
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| Gold Struggles at $1600 Post-Fed, "Driven by Expectations" of Central Bank Action Posted: 02 Aug 2012 11:34 AM PDT London Gold Market Report from Adrian Ash BullionVault Thurs 2 August, 07:10 EST WHOLESALE PRICES for gold investment bars struggled just above $1600 per ounce in London on Thursday, after dipping below that level for the first time in a week as the US Federal Reserve left monetary policy unchanged yesterday. "Immediate QE is off the table," Reuters quotes Frank McGhee, chief precious metals trader at Chicago's Integrated Brokerage Services. "I will probably not be surprised to see them not do anything in September." The Bank of England today followed the US Fed in leaving UK policy unchanged in its midday announcement. The European Central Bank was also expected to make no change to its record-low rates of 0.75% per year. Stock markets meantime ticked higher, while crude oil held onto a sharp rally but major-government bond prices also rose. Silver prices ticked around $27.50 per ounce after hitting their own 1-week low versus the Dollar. "Increased or decreased pros...
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| Posted: 02 Aug 2012 11:08 AM PDT The thing about the Fed non-action is that every meeting they don't do something increases the likelihood they'll HAVE to do something at a subsequent meeting. - Dave in DenverWe wouldn't have the extreme volatility in the markets that surrounds Central Bank policy-decision meetings if analysts and traders bothered to think through the process of what happens if the Fed, ECB and Bank of England do not start the printing presses back up in a major way. I don't know of anyone, who if asked point blank how the western world solves its debt problem without extreme currency devaluation either by printing or default - and printing is in fact a de facto default - doesn't come to understand that the likely solution will be more printing. And a lot of it, quite frankly. Hell, even yesterday it didn't take a painstaking syllable by syllable dissection of the FOMC statement released to realize that the Fed is firmly on track to print a lot more if the economy doesn't recover. Recover? LOL. On a real inflation-adjusted basis, the GDP never climbed out of a recession. Just ask the millions of people who have either gone on social security disability or took down student loans and went back to "school" since 2008. At any rate, I wanted to share some thoughts on why many of us believe that the precious metals market is getting ready to take off again based on looking at the technical data embedded in the weekly Commitment of Traders report and daily open interest reports. To review quickly, it is now well known and accepted by everyone who trades and analyzes the gold and silver trading on the Comex that a couple key large banks - JP Morgan and HSBC, primarily; Scotia, Barclays and Deutsche Bank secondarily - manipulate the trading in gold and silver by engaging in massive short-selling of futures on the Comex. In fact, there has been no other market in history in which the ratio of the short interest position in the futures contract exceeds the available supply of the underlying commodity by the degree to which the short position in gold/silver futures exceeds the readily deliverable availability of physical gold and silver. In gold and silver the paper short positions on the Comex exceed not only the actual physical metal readily available for delivery in Comex vaults by several multiples, but it also exceeds any reasonable time measure of days of mining production globally of gold and silver. It's actually become absurd to the point at which most of us who understand the truth of the situation now wonder if the CFTC, SEC and Justice Department are in reality staffed and run by a group of Helen Kellers (deaf, dumb, blind). To further review, when the net short position in gold and silver taken on by the large banks reaches a relatively high level - in the context of a relatively high overall gold/silver open interest - the market inexplicably corrects in a violent and abrupt fashion, as the large banks who are short begin to offer an avalanche of paper contracts for sale and use the obvious "technical" levels on the chart to trigger large-scale selling by the large hedge funds. The latter being the "investor" group who has taken the other side of the big bank short position. Well, we've had one of the larger, longer corrections in the metals during the 11 year+ bull market in the metals. Not surprisingly, the COT metrics have reached statistically extreme low levels. The net short position of the big bank manipulators is at an "outlier" low level. Concomitantly, the net long position of the large hedge funds is also at an an "outlier" low level. Here's some thoughts I shared with a colleague earlier today: The gold o/i dropped another large 6,626 yesterday. It's now under 400,000. Over 6,073 of the overall drop in the last 3 days can be explained by deliveries. This is on the heavy side for the number of deliveries in the first few days. I think the rest of the o/i drop yesterday - some in December 2012 and some in April 2013 can be explained by hedge funds getting out of the way of the Central Bank absurdity this week.So that's where things stand in the precious metals market from the Commitment of Traders/open interest perspective. Throughout the duration of this bull market, and especially when the open interest "run-off" is part of an unusually large correction, the precious metals have subsequently made an extended run up to new all-time highs. What makes this time around even more interesting and compelling in terms of trying to judge how high "high" will be is the extraordinary and ongoing accumulation of large quantities of physical bullion by several Central Banks (China, Russian, South Korea, Mexico, Iran, etc) and the extraordinarily deteriorated financial and economic condition of the United States (at the Federal and State levels), the EU and England. The former will place extreme stress on the paper short positions in gold and silver and the latter will soon compel a massive amount of paper money to be printed. I will not put a time frame or price target out here publicly, but I will say that the next move higher in the metals has a high probability of shocking everyone except the most ardently perceptive observers. 
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| Posted: 02 Aug 2012 10:50 AM PDT It's easy to imagine readers glancing at this title and asking themselves "what possible relevance could this have with respect to modern markets?" Even if there was some relevance, "what could adult investors learn from this old children's fable?" To answer those questions properly requires first briefly summarizing the fable. We had a Great Race between a (quietly confident) Tortoise and an arrogant, condescending Hare. When the race began, the Hare immediately sprinted way ahead of the much slower Tortoise. However, over-confidence took over and the Hare began show-boating and goofing off, and the Tortoise caught up. This caused the Hare to once again sprint to a large lead, before again succumbing to over-confidence. The pattern repeats itself, with the Hare eventually goofing off once too often – allowing the Tortoise to cross the finish-line first. The details of the fable are generally considered totally irrelevant with respect to the "moral" of this story: slow and steady wins the race. It's now possible to answer the questions posed in the first paragraph. What relevance does "The Tortoise and the Hare" have for modern markets? Throughout the entire history of human investing, "slow and steady wins the race" has been the dominant principle of investing…until the last 15 years. That marked the approximate turning point, from which time the fraud-peddlers of Wall Street and their accomplices in the Corporate Media have brainwashed the Investor Sheep into forgetting that basic principle. Instead of "slow and steady wins the race"; these modern-day con-artists have programmed the Sheep to embrace a new mantra, their mantra: "bet on the Hare." This massive paradigm-shift in global markets (and the global economy) becomes much more apparent when we shift from metaphorical analysis to specifics. "Slow and steady wins the race" is the rational for two of the most time-honoured principles of investing: "buy and hold" and "buy low, sell high". We know the first principle is dead, because the charlatans who manage most investing for the Sheep have explicitly proclaimed again and again (following the Crash of '08) that "buy and hold is dead." We can see that even the second principle has been de-programmed from the minds of the Sheep once we analyze what "bet on the Hare" actually represents. In the fable, the Hare was both the clear race-favorite and capable of sprinting to large leads, apparently at will. Astute readers should now be able to figure out who these New Investors are who consistently "bet on the Hare." They are the momentum-players (i.e. momentum chasers). For the momentum-players, "buy low and sell high" is a principle which simply doesn't exist in their universe. By definition, all momentum-players buy high: they jump on the bandwagon of asset-classes which have already soared in value; simply hoping that this momentum will last long enough for them to (a) make a profit, and (b) make an exit with their profit before the inevitable "correction" occurs. Why did the Wall Street crime syndicate and the Corporate propaganda machine consider it essential to manipulate the Sheep from being buy-and-hold investors to momentum-chasing gamblers? The answer should be self-evident: it's much, much easier to cheat gamblers than investors. For those for whom this is not self-evident, I'll elaborate. Buy-and-hold investors are comprised of two closely-related sub-categories. There are the "value investors". These investors look at the present (discounted) value of a particular asset/investment, versus its current valuation. When the value of the investment seems to significantly exceed the current valuation, they buy. The second group are the "fundamentals investors". These investors look at the market/economic fundamentals for a particular asset, and when they perceive fundamentals which make it very likely/near-certain that an asset will rise in value over the longer term, they buy. More generally, both of these classes of investors are people who always "look under the hood" before they buy anything. Pretty hard to cheat such people.
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| Swiss gold repatriation movement leader interviewed Posted: 02 Aug 2012 10:33 AM PDT 12:30p ET Thursday, August 2, 2012 Dear Friend of GATA and Gold: GoldMoney today publishes an interview with Swiss parliament member Luzi Stamm of the Swiss People's Party, who is leading a campaign for a referendum to require the Swiss National Bank to bring the country's gold reserves home. The interview addresses concerns that central banks have misled their countries about the status and security of gold reserves. The interview is headlined "Luzi Stamm: Champion of a New Swiss Gold Initiative" and it's posted at GoldMoney here: http://www.goldmoney.com/gold-research/roman-baudzus/luzi-stamm-swiss-go... CHRIS POWELL, Secretary/Treasurer ADVERTISEMENT Prophecy Platinum Announces Wellgreen Preliminary Economic Assessment: Company Press Release VANCOUVER, British Columbia, Canada -- Prophecy Platinum Corp. (TSX-V: NKL, OTC-QX: PNIKF, Frankfurt: P94P) reports the results of an independent NI 43-101-compliant preliminary economic assessment for its fully owned Wellgreen nickel-copper-platinum group metals project in the Yukon Territory. The independent assessment, prepared by Tetra Tech, evaluated a base case of an open-pit mine (with a mining rate of 111,500 tonnes per day), an on-site concentrator (with a milling rate of 32,000 tonnes per day), and an initial capital cost of $863 million. The project is expected to produce (in concentrate) 1.959 billion pounds of nickel, 2.058 billion pounds of copper, and 7.119 million ounces of platinum, palladium, and gold during a mine life of 37 years with an average strip ratio of 2.57. The financial highlights of the preliminary economic assessment, shown in U.S. dollars, are as follows: Payback period: 3.55 years Prophecy Chairman John Lee says: "We are pleased with the preliminary economic assessment results. The numbers indicate that Wellgreen is one of most exciting mineral projects in the Yukon. The company is drilling to upgrade and expand the resource base. The infrastructure is excellent as the project is only 1,400 meters in altitude and 14 kilometers from the paved Alaska Highway, which leads to the Haines deep seaport. Discussions are under way with support from local stakeholders regarding permitting and logistics." For the complete press release, please visit: http://prophecyplat.com/news_2012_june18_prophecy_platinum_announces_res... Join GATA here: Toronto Resource Investment Conference New Orleans Investment Conference * * * Support GATA by purchasing DVDs of our London conference in August 2011 or our Dawson City conference in August 2006: http://www.goldrush21.com/order.html Or by purchasing a colorful GATA T-shirt: Or a colorful poster of GATA's full-page ad in The Wall Street Journal on January 31, 2009: http://gata.org/node/wallstreetjournal Help keep GATA going GATA is a civil rights and educational organization based in the United States and tax-exempt under the U.S. Internal Revenue Code. Its e-mail dispatches are free, and you can subscribe at: To contribute to GATA, please visit: ADVERTISEMENT Sona Discovers Potential High-Grade Gold Mineralization From a Company Press Release VANCOUVER, British Columbia -- With its latest surface diamond drilling program at its 100-percent-owned, formerly producing Blackdome gold mine in southern British Columbia, Sona Resources Corp. has discovered a potentially high-grade gold-mineralized area, with one hole intersecting 13.6 grams of gold in 1.5 meters of core drilling. "We intersected a promising new mineralized zone, and we feel optimistic about the assay results," says Sona's president and CEO, John P. Thompson. "We have undertaken an aggressive exploration program that has tested a number of target zones. Our discovery of this new gold-bearing structure is significant, and it represents a positive development for the company." Sona aims to bring its permitted Blackdome mill back into production over the next year and a half, at a rate of 200 tonnes per day, with feed from the formerly producing Blackdome mine and the nearby Elizabeth gold deposit property. A positive preliminary economic assessment by Micon International Ltd., based on a gold price of $950 per ounce over eight years, has estimated a cash cost of $208 per tonne milled, or $686 per gold ounce recovered. For the company's complete press release, please visit: http://www.sonaresources.com/_resources/news/SONA_NR18_2011-opt.pdf
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Mario Draghi, the ECB's president, said the bank may "undertake outright open market operations" to cap borrowing costs in those countries pushing through reforms. Intervention will be of "adequate size" to fulfil the task.
The CME announced after today's close a 10.7% REDUCTION in silver initial and maintenance margins effective Monday 8/6/12.
It is not news that our capacity to gather and store immense amounts of data has grown by leaps and bounds. A few years ago, it was unthinkable for a free email account to offer more than 10 or 20 megabytes of storage. Today, one stores thousands of times that amount. But that's barely scratching the surface compared to the truly massive data collection projects now under way.
When we started reading the 
On 5 August 2011, 
So… you sit down at your computer to install some new software. Everything goes smoothly until you get an error message and suddenly you discover you've inadvertently corrupted a bunch of files.
If "trading glitches" aren't enough to chase traders out of the market, their crack dealers — otherwise known as central bankers — are playing tough.
You thought a gun made on a 3-D printer was mind-blowing? How about the keys to police-issue handcuffs?
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