TinBrick

I think CC is suggesting that a drop back to a moving average is possible, and that the nearest one is the 20day one

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

It's a big retrace even to the 20 day moving average.

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.

The volatility today has been quite astounding.

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!)

Note to self: must STOP getting addicted to trading. One day it's going to go wrong and Au is going to skyrocket.

"Be right and sit tight"

Jesse Livermore, 1877-1940

http://stockvision.org/books/Edwin_Lefevre...Operator-EN.pdf

Hope so! I get more powder next week. Will buy at 970 and will TRY to restrain myself if it is higher.

Why would you restrain yourself?

Think of all that pent up energy in gold. All it may take is one more bank run to send investors on mass into gold. The price could explode any day...

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?

Well, he's an 'investor'. Investments can go down as well as up. If he'd bought a load of shares in some bank or house builder, he'd also have lost a load of money.

 

What amazes me is that the Daily Mail even considers the story 'Investor Loses Money' worth printing!

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

I don't have a problem believing Ker... If you look at the logo on his(?) original post it matches up with GCI Financial - http://www.gcitrading.com/ - and I'd have to agree with cgnao on this one. They appear to be a tin-pot outfit based in Belize.

 

Hmmm, you pays yer money....

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.

Could you let us know who (ie which company) this is please? I'd like to make sure I never used them!

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 . . .

I think long term is difficult with SB. Certainly gold and silver are fairly limited to about 3 months out, currencies 6 months and indices/stocks max one year.

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!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bucket_shop_%28stock_market%29

 

The highly leveraged use of margins theoretically gave the speculators equally large upside potential. However, if a bucket shop held a large position on a stock, it might sell the stock on the real stock exchange, causing the price on the ticker tape to momentarily move down enough to wipe out its clients margins, and the bucket shop could take 100% of their investments.

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?

Let me clarify this once and for all.

 

Spread betting outfits are just modern age bucket shops.

 

There is no trade entered on any market anywhere when you place a bet with them.

 

They are out there to rip you off.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bucket_shop_%28stock_market%29

 

ONLY SUCKERS SPREAD BET

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?

I suspect he's in a different time zone as it's pretty much flatlining $18.11 .... if Ker was in the US that would tie up.

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

I've had this before with IG. They claim the silver and gold prices quoted are not the market spot but those of a feed. They don't say what feed and I've seen it deviate from the spot on many occasions usually just enough to whip me out of a guaranteed stop.

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.

got to give you a bit of thanks here Cuthbert, your moneyweek newsletter a couple of weeks ago showing how silver was bouncing off of $16.50 persuaded me to get in around $16.80. up a nice little bit in my SB account.

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

There's reason to hope for a steady and considerable rise this week, so long as the PPT don't come and do something radical to mess things up.

Please excuse my ignorance of this TLA - the what?

It seems odd that the votes are not counted until the next day. I have been in charge of a polling staion a couple of times in the UK and the votes are counted immediately after the polling stations are closed and often goes on through the night and into the next day if recounts are necessary. What about the security and integrity of the ballot boxes overnight?

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.

Could be a bit of both

 

but youre a braver man than me if you do

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 . . .

Gold is near record lows in price versus crude. In fact, this price has only been seen 33 days in fifty years, consider buying it! Thank you, James Turk, for this gem. www.fmgr.com

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?

also I am reading that even if the tax changes take place in 2011, some trust eg PWE estimate that for tax reason they will be unaffected til a few years later!?

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