TinBrick

OK ,got hold of the wrong end of the stick - thanks!

Sorry, you've lost me there. Yesterday's close (Jul 17) was $20 above the 20DMA and the intra-day low more than $15 above it.

Has it? Change on the day was down about 0.4%, difference from high to low was about 1.7%. Isn't this well within normal trading ranges? (I'm not having a dig by the way - I do genuinely want to know if there's something I'm missing!)

"Be right and sit tight" Jesse Livermore, 1877-1940 http://stockvision.org/books/Edwin_Lefevre...Operator-EN.pdf

Why would you restrain yourself? If this is the case, aren't you at great risk of missing the boat when it does leave port? If you are expecting an imminent, sudden & large price rise but are uncertain of when that will happen, why would you try to time your entry to capture another 1% gain, when you could lose out on multiples of that?

Did you read the size of the "flat" - 120 sq ft! That's not a flat, it's a broom cupboard!

I have absolutely no problem believing him either, and I'm sure the chart he originally posted was for real. The more recent one of the USD gold price over the last few days has no similar identifying logos or symbols. The person who put it up on their photo collection makes no reference in it to spreadbetting. To be clear, I have no difficulty accepting that there can be errors in SB firms feeds or that they may unscrupulously fiddle prices in their favour. I don't, however, believe they would do it so obviously that it wouldn't deceive anyone.

If you follow the link, there is no indication of the source of these charts. There is also no reference to spreadbetting per se. No other chart from any source I can find shows gold going anywhere near the lows on these - ca. $891 - for the period in question, 1 to 3 July. Can't believe everything you read on t'Interweb . . .

This is true, but you can set up any of these to rollover automatically on expiry. Of course, that means you incur the cost of the spread again on each rollover, so you would need to be aware of that cost and take it into account in your investment decision. This is one reason some people favour CFDs which have no expiry date. That said, CFDs can have their own issues. In the last while there has been a lot of controversy about CFD clients being forced to deposit extra cash to reduce their leverage from, say, 90% to 80% at very short notice or have their positions closed at a hefty loss, only to see the underlying market recover. I'd say they felt pretty suckered too!

Are you suggesting that modern SB firms control enough of the market to produce such movements in major indices like the S&P or FTSE, or commodities like oil or gold? PS, coming back to the topic, silver's doing quite nicely, isn't it?

OK, let me play devil's advocate for a minute. If I understand correctly, you're effectively saying that SB firms are just bookies by another name and punters are betting directly against the house. What does that matter, if one handles one bets with due caution? I've read Frizzer's 2006 account of his travails with IG Index with interest (http://www.greenenergyinvestors.com/index....post&p=1416) , and it seems to me a major contributor to his losses, apart from the undoubted serious problems he experienced placing his trade both online and over the phone was the lack of a stop loss on his position. IG and others do offer guaranteed stop losses which are effective regardless of a gap down in the market. I wouldn't be an advocate of spread betting on a short term basis to scalp points in a fast moving market, but I see no reason why they can't be used to take medium to long term positions (weeks and months). This is what people like Mark Shipman and David Fuller do. Are they suckers?

Now that you mention it, I think you're right - Ker did say in another post that he's in Mexico.

Ker, who did you experience this problem with? Here's a graph of IG's spot silver price over roughly the same timeframe as yours, and the low point on it is $17.87 just before 4pm.

Likewise - I got in at $16.73 and very happy I did. Thanks Cuthbert!

Please excuse my ignorance of this TLA - the what?

This is standard for Irish election and referendum counts. The sealed ballot boxes are brought to the constituency count centres and secured by the police and constituency returning officers overnight. I have never heard anyone question the integrity of the process. Irish elections are done on a proportional representation basis with a single transferrable vote. The count process takes considerably longer that in the UK's first past the post voting system and it would not be possible to complete it overnight. It usually takes several days to get a final national result. The referendum is a simple Yes/No vote, but the count still doesn't start until the following morning. I guess if individual politicians' careers depended on the outcome there might be more urgency about it! FWIW, I voted No and my wife voted Yes. Take what you want from that! The official result is expected around teatime today (Fri). There were no exit polls so there is no early indication of the outcome although it's expected to be close either way. An unofficial "tally" of votes by campaign workers from both sides as the boxes are opened will give some indication mid-morning. At present the only straw in the wind is that Paddy Power the bookmakers have already paid out on a "Yes" majority vote - I don't know what information they have that everyone else doesn't. Update: RTÉ radio reports (10:43am) early tallies indicate the vote will be roughly 60%/40% against the treaty.

I don't know which is true, though for what it's worth I'm long gold and goldmining shares, albeit not on the basis of the oil/gold price ratio. I'm just making the point that Mr Turk's analysis only looks at one side of the story, where in fact there's a number of conclusions you could draw from the unusually high oil to gold price ratio: (1) Gold is cheap (Mr Turk's thesis) (2) Oil is dear (3) The market has concluded that in response to issues such as say, peak oil, oil needs to be fundamentally revalued upward. (4) Any combination of the above and probably lots of other issues I've missed And of course, with no disrespect to Mr Turk, he is in the business of selling gold investments . . .

Yes, but does this mean gold is underpriced or oil is overpriced? Couldn't it equally well be an indication that one should consider shorting oil?

Interesting. Can you tell us where you read this please?