ologhai

To answer my own question: yes...

Is gold about to breach £800?! Looks like it's having a go!

Just to repeat what I said at the end of the previous gold thread (just in case ): I saw a short item on BBC News 24 yesterday which suggested that money marketeers are betting that the pound will strengthen immediately after the election. Unfortunately, the piece was intended for mass consumption, so there was almost no detail on the whys and wherefores. As a general point, though, it perhaps does make sense that there should at least be some short-term optimism that Something Will Get Done with a new government (which is looking increasingly likely I guess -- the 'new' part). There has certainly been a sense that, prior to the election, the present government has been more or less paralysed by the need to do their best to win another term. In fact, this may have been the case for about two years. It may be that the PoG in UKP has reached a short-term high around here.

I saw a short item on BBC News 24 yesterday which suggested that money marketeers are betting that the pound will strengthen immediately after the election. Unfortunately, the piece was intended for mass consumption, so there was almost no detail on the whys and wherefores. As a general point, though, it perhaps does make sense that there should at least be some short-term optimism that Something Will Get Done with a new government (which is looking increasingly likely I guess -- the 'new' part). There has certainly been a sense that, prior to the election, the present government has been more or less paralysed by the need to do their best to win another term. In fact, this may have been the case for about two years. It may be that the PoG in UKP has reached a short-term high around here.

Any thoughts on what the UK General Election will do to the pound (and PoG)? The Conservatives are looking slightly stronger than they have for the last couple of weeks or so. Perhaps they'll do better than originally thought (although whether that's an over-all majority remains to be seen), and that might lead to some strength in the pound?

And what's more, when around three thousand people died on Sep 11, 2001, what was made valuable by that?

I've wondered this, too. I don't think we should ever under-estimate the human mind's ability to spot patterns, even in noise. It would be interesting to introduce some randomly-generated charts in among charts of real data to see if anyone would notice the difference[1]. I have a gut feeling (but no evidence) that the close analysis of random charts would yield just as many points of apparent interest as real ones. [1] Of course, when I say 'random', I don't mean random-random, as in just numbers plucked out of nowhere, which would probably produce charts that are clearly implausible for real data. However, I know of procedures for generating random-walk or similar data that produce realistic (but still entirely random) results. These procedures can be used to generate many kinds of plausible 'noise', for example for artificial terrains, and I imagine labelling the results up as economic data of some kind would be equally fine.

I miss the way the Gold thread used to be. I just noticed a bit of a smackdown, and my first thought was to come here and enjoy some of the smackdown-related banter... *watches tumbleweed roll by*

It's always fun to make an arse of myself in public (), so... Sure! Why not? Gold will go more or less sideways for about a month (although, it may be pretty choppy, so it won't feel like sideways necessarily), then there'll be another jump early in the new year, then a slower climb up to a local top around the end of Q1 -- at which point, I would expect to see £850/oz (I was going to say £900 knowing that what seems like 'wild prices' now can seem almost normal when they arrive, e.g. how wild did $1200-before-year-end seem a couple of weeks ago?). In dollars, it'll be more like $1400 or so by then[1]. *places d*ck on block* [1] And if you believe all that, you can knit fog... I sounded pretty confident, though, didn't I, eh, eh?

I like stuff that I can actually stick into my own PM spreadsheet -- which I have done in the case of rGold (both for USD and GBP)... although I am starting to run out of colours for all the little wiggly lines...

That sounds uncomfortably like 'it's different this time'.

Welcome back!

Don't know why, but it just feels like a nice day for buying...

I'm not so sure... I'm now suffering from arrow-envy...

Yep, just bought some! Still have dry powder just in case...

Touché. Or not. If your question wasn't so obviously flippant, I might've tried a rational, reasonable and objective reply. We'd both know I'd be wasting my time, though.

With the full knowledge that it's arbitrary, I have been thinking that I'd start to buy more silver when it dropped below £8.

In the interests of diversity, I have bought gold through BV and silver through GM. If BV started offering silver on similar terms to GM, I don't think my approach would change. However... The cost of using BV for gold is less than the cost of using GM for silver: off the top of my head, it's under 1% commission for buying gold with BV and over 5% for buying silver with GM. Is that only to do with differences between GM and BV, or is it due to differences between gold and silver?

Time for a remake of Goldfinger with Daniel Craig?

In recent times, I'm actually beginning to feel as if I'm starting to get my sea legs with gold; not completely, but a lot more than when I first started buying. Psychologically, I found it helped to sell a bit in February when gold felt (temporarily at least) a bit toppy. Having 'taken profits' a little, I then found that I wasn't so concerned about which way gold was going to go next -- either it went down (in which case, I could start averaging back in again -- which I've begun to do), or it carried on going up (in which case, I still held more than I'd sold, and having experienced gold's volatility as you have, then I 'knew' it wouldn't keep going up without some form of retracement sooner or later, in which case I'd just sell a little more, or wait for the expected retracement to take it to the same level or lower than I'd sold some). I know that many regulars to this thread think that any form of gold trading is madness. However, after watching gold doing its thing for quite a long time now, I felt as if I might have -- not spotted a pattern as such -- but certainly noticed that volatility is very much a part of how gold gets to wherever it's going. And, as I say, psychologically, it has quelled the nausea somewhat! It sometimes feels as if one should buy when fear is saying that enough's enough and it's time to get out, and sell when greed is saying that you should quickly buy a load more before you 'miss the boat'...

Thanks for taking the time to host it. Sorry I couldn't be around till the end.

I'm logged onto Skype and I sent you a chat message about five minutes ago... No reply... Still confused!

Perhaps the question is -- when will most participants be assuming the call with begin? There's less point in starting in 10 mins or so if most people are expecting it to begin in a little over an hour.

It's now 7am in the UK. So is the call in 30 mins or not? *confused*

Is it still planned to be 7.30am UK (i.e. in about an hour or so) today? I'll try to be on Skype by then, but there's a chance I may be a few minutes late.