marceau

Thanks for the answer. I quite like farmland as the supermarkets have made it hard to make a profitable farm.Many farmers Ive met have complained about this and some have thrown the towel in. I know an egg farmer and a dairy farmer who recently have done this. How can you sell a farm at a high price if you cant make a living out of it? Jim Sinclair has also recommended this so as to be self sufficient and I am seriously considering it.

I'd broadly agree, energy and agricultural land. The key question, as always, is at what price?

Timing will be absolutely critical - come inflation or deflation the price paid for assets could vary massively in the space of months. I think the transition from gold could prove to be tricky one, especially as I believe all the ratios we're familiar with are about to go well beyond their historic extremes.

This link may be temporary, but newsnight did gold last night:

Newsnight

All in all more balanced than I'd expected, but they had to get the 'it's a bubble' line right in at the start. Oh and that crook Blanchflower still parroting Keynesian claptrap and shilling for Labour. It's going to be a treat watching him implode as things play out over the next decade, his whole belief system is about to come crashing down around his ears.

Following classic contrary style I'd now expect a large correction in the next month or so. All good, as I'd really welcome one last great opportunity to buy.

$1500

Here's the best way to celebrate the reaching of a great milestone.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gSq8ZBdSxNU

http://To da moon.

Coincidence? I think not.

Oh, and....

House Republicans Unveil Budget With $6 Trillion Cuts

http://www.bloomberg...ver-decade.html

Literally all I can say to that is LOL.

I thought people might find this amusing;

 

http://money.uk.msn.com/money-saving/photos.aspx?cp-documentid=156830900

 

 

 

So simple really, why isn't everyone doing this?

After 2 years - congratulations, you now have a 5% deposit on a shoebox. You should be so proud.

In these euphoric times a voice of doom, placed here as a counterpoint to current bullishness. It's always worth taking a look at arguments against your current position.

This particular argument does strike me as complete crap, but I thought I'd stick it out there nonetheless.

http://www.kitco.com/ind/Schmidt/mar072011.html

Fed's gonna raise rates lol. What, REAL ones? Whoops, didn't think so.

I am looking at a number of silver stocks including Avino, Alexco, Fortuna, Impact Silver and Silver Bear Resources. All are small and mid cap. In gold, have you come across Medusa Mining (MML)? They are producing 100k oz pa at cash costs of under $190. MML is a high grade narrow vein miner and are currently building up to expand their existing mine to over 200k oz pa in 2013. They have a potential open pit mine, which will add another 200k oz pa by 2015. There are also several other potential gold and copper targets and all development is being financed by internal cash generation. MML also pays a six monthly dividend - i've yet to find another gold stock that is such a cash machine. Here is the latest presentation:

 

http://www.medusamining.com.au/newsroom/as...resentation.pdf

There's plenty out there, agree completely with Pixel on SLW, that divi will put an excellent floor under the price. However it's had a very good run so it's probably worth waiting for a pullback before entering.

Royal Gold (RGLD) has a similar model in gold royalties, that hasn't moved as far as SLW but has the potential to do so.

For silver miners consider ECU Silver Mining, Bear Creek Mining, Aurcana Corp, Great Panther and First Majestic as well as the ones you mentioned above.

For gold check out Atna Resources, Brigus Gold, Gold Bullion Dev Corp, Agnico Eagle, Osisko and Gold One. My current favorite is Atna - huge potential there.

I think the key is diversification, usually 10-20% of mining stocks will be absolute dogs or even 'widowmakers' in performance terms. Putting all you eggs in one basket in this sector is absolutely suicidal, so I like to stay in over 20 different companies at all times.

Another one worth a look is Jim Sinclair's Tanzania Royalty Exploration (TRE) - looks like a run of the mill explorer at the moment but they plan to pay future divis in gold! As with most miners it has has huge short position against it and takes some brutal hits from time to time. One of these hits has just started, so a good buying opportunity may be coming up.

I have been putting money into the mining shares via an ISA, some of the shares are still cheap.

Same here. The miners are going to be the last train to leave the station and accordingly many are still way below their 2008 highs.

Still numerous 10+ baggers to be had. As an added bonus for those in the UK, most stock on the Canadian exchanges can be put into ISA wrappers, CGT-free!

My jaw dropped during this interview....

 

http://www.cnbc.com/id/15840232?video=3000008535&play=1

 

US GOV has 260m Oz of gold NOT valued at market prices; i.e. $42 Oz -> so we are "sitting on a gold mine".

8000 tonnes... mmm... but.. but... even at current market prices that's peanuts...

 

They finally come to the conclusion that selling all the gold in fort knox would only reduce the deficit of the USA by 1/4, and not actually reduce the debt at all.

 

 

One of the talking heads actually said "gold is money" at 3m20s.

 

They didn't actually come out with it and say that gold needed to revalue higher in order to make an impact on the deficit *and* the debt itself, but it doesn't take much for those who know what the missing piece looks like to deduce that's logically what might happen.

Thought the guy made a great point about Russia and China not having been in the game until now. This interview really made me want more gold, although I'm sure that wasn't their intent.

I think I may order an extra couple of ounces this month.

Street after street after street of terraced houses have been bought in towns like Preston and Bolton - tarted up with a 5k kitchen/bathroom/carpets makeover and rented to DHSS tenants for a guaranteed minimum of £395 a month - more if the local market average rent is higher.

 

So, £4.8k in guaranteed annual income for the landlords.

 

And lots of those houses were bought for 20k 10 years ago. They've already paid for themselves twice and are now real cash cows.

 

There was a program on the box years ago - must have been 2002 ish - featuring a woman in Preston who had bought her council house using Right to Buy in the late 90s. A few years later she wanted to move but decided to rent it out and buy another place for herself.

 

And, off she went. A couple of years later she had 17 properties - all within the same few streets. She bought them all on 15 year repayment mortgages. They'll be paid off in the next few years and, apart from the 70k income they must bring in, she will have - even in today's market - at least 1.5 million quids worth of property owned outright. She was, if memory serves, a hairdresser.

 

She should have run courses on how to become a property millionaire - because she's actually done it - all on borrowed money and with the government (us) paying the rent.

Yeah, I remember that programme. It was one of the first things that made me aware we were heading into a bubble. I thought at the time, wow this looks easy, maybe I should try it, and then thought better of it because of the leverage and risk involved. Guess I should have just stumbled in without any research.

If I recall correctly she tried buying upmarket houses and found she couldn't make money. Only now do I realise that was because the gov't rent subsidy hadn't stretched that far at the time. It probably does now, what with benefit families being given house in Kensington etc.

People are going to look back at this period in 50 years and just shake their heads in disbelief.

Sounds simple. Why wasn't it done?

Because bailouts have worked without consequence for the last 30 years, so politicos and economists didn't feel the need to look for alternatives.

Unfortunately those who warned 'but you're only only making things worse' have finally been proven right. From here on in bailouts and inflation will cause immediate, rather than delayed, harm.

Agree with you on the result though, most nations are totally committed to the inflationary course now, and will see it through to the bitter end. The only upside is that it'll kill off Keynesian and inflationary thinking for generations.

Who, exactly, would have been willing to take on the liabilities of banks in liquidation?

 

"Here you are, roll up, here's a bank ... there's some CDOs and MBSs and a load of other things they invented that means even their directors had no idea what was actually going on ... look as far as we know they've lent 2x against assets worth x ... but, to be honest, we've no idea ... how many of the loans are risky ... no idea ... nor did they ... it's all a bit tricky .... capital wise ... you'll need the mother of all capital positions before you take it on ... otherwise you'll be bankrupt too ... form an orderly queue ... what do you mean there's no-one in it ... just a guy from the Treasury ... is that all?"

 

Haven't noticed other more competent and better capitalized organizations taking up the slack so far.

That's exactly why liquidation was so important. All the mark-to-fantasy crap would have been sold at true market value and bond/shareholders would have been wiped out. But let's face it, no-one should shed a tear for them.

Almost everything on that company's balance sheet would have been taken by someone. Even the dodgiest loans would have had some worth, even if it was only fractions of a penny in the pound. But when the government stepped in and mark-to-fantasy took over, no-one would come in because the asset values were kept artificially high. So we got stuck with the incompetent bloated 'zombies' and the 'competent and capitalised' that would have taken their place would/could not enter the market, because it was rigged.

With fair valuation an impossibility, trust and trade ground to a halt and we spiraled down. Govt then steps in again, inflates to hide the mess, which only further erodes trust and the ability to find market value.

Vicious circle, rinse, repeat, impoverish. QED.

I guess you've forgotten the queues around the block as people waited to empty Northern Rock of every penny of their savings.

 

If nothing had been done - this would have spread and, yes, Britain would have ceased to function as a nation.

Completely wrong - the process of reallocating the assets and liabilities of banks in liquidation would have taken a year at most. In the meantime other more competent and better capitalised organisations would have taken up the slack.

Would there have been disruption? Of course. Would it have been catastrophic? Absolutely not.

Your queues around the block will still come, but they'll now be for jobs, or worse still food and shelter.

A thought I had quite some time ago. I guess Norway or Canada would be some of the best places to live in terms of natural resources etc. But then you don't make such a decision in a vacuum.

Canada would be a no-brainer were it not for its troublesome neighbor.

Looking into my crystal ball I see great quotes of the future:

'How dare Canada hoard it's resources while Americans starve'

'A united continent is in everyone's best interests'

Where would the government get the money from to recapitalise the whole banking system? I don't think you grasp the scale of the problem. This is not one bank that is in trouble that needs the BOE to step in as the lender of last resort.

 

In 2008 we were half an hour away from the cash machine network being closed down. This is a crisis - not a blip.

 

If house prices fell by 50% - the whole things going down the pan.

Ahh, the ultimate fallacy of the banking crisis - that if nothing had been done Britain would have ceased to function as a nation and somehow just sunk into the sea.

So what we will get is not a greedy landlord held in place at the expense of the saver but a greedy Banking landlord propped up by the tax payer.

What an utterly hideous concept, so given the current UK political mindset that means it's almost guaranteed to happen.

'Despair' seems the only appropriate word.

Hey, I hope you shorted them.

 

Down 4.3% today!! I opened my short this morning too. Thanks for flagging this up.

 

Persimmon, Taylor Wimpey also down alot. Min you, so are the miners. Some FTSE sectors looking sick today.

I've been in and out of BDEV since 2007 - it's been my most consistently profitable short. Looking at the chart today I'm getting all nostalgic.

It's a utter dog of a company though, laden with barely manageable debt and utterly dependent on a sector which will be subdued for a decade at best, and will outright collapse at worst.

Think I'll try a few shorts on the next up move, probably around the 95p area.

I’ve been told that the majority of those who will be made redundant in the forthcoming job losses in the public sector will be informed between Feb and April.

 

Apparently, everyone is on hold at the moment, not knowing if it will be them.

 

As soon as the deed is done, the uncertainty that is largely to blame for the depth of the situation at present will evaporate (until the next round that is), leading to an improvement in GDP and a slowdown in housing falls, maybe even a levelling off.

IMO the job losses are a red herring. What kills the UK (and slowly strangles the housing market) will be a persistent lack of growth.

Key phrases for the next few years - 'the deficit remains stubbornly high' and 'growth was unexpectedly low'.

If the government could alter the long term interest rate structure why did all those millions who lost their homes have to pay 4.5% interest? Obviously the future is going to have higher inflation in it than the last few years of near economic death. With higher inflation comes higher interest rates.

 

Even so, like International rockstar, you can be confidant that interest rates will not be raised sufficiently to prevent inflation.

That's exactly it. Interest rates will rise, but let's be totally clear, there's no Volker out there, or anything like the political will to create him. There's no chance of western governments getting ahead of inflation, absolutely no chance.

They may succeed in generating occasional scares, but the dips they create will be buying opportunities. Unless the deflationary black hole totally overwhelms things, positive real interest rates are at least a decade away and we'll have to endure a huge amount of inflationary pain before someone is allowed to get a grip of the situation.

Looks a reasonable place to start buying. A few times now in various currencies, gold has consistently bounced off the baseline/ trendline. Looking at the Euro, pound and dollar, the price is near to the trend. This same trend line was used to identify 750 pounds as a good buying op in June last year.

I'll be buying a fair chunk of physical gold over the next couple of days, although to be honest a deeper correction to £650 wouldn't surprise me at all.

Still, have a good cash percentage at the moment, so there's plenty of dry powder to take advantage of further falls.

Hadn't checked 'coininvestdirect' for a while, popped in there today and was shocked to see they are buying around the £850 mark.

Sure feels tempting to part with some of the stash I bought below £400 just a few short years ago. I've even turned several pounds profit on each ounce of physical silver, a fact which kind of blew me away to be honest.

Make no mistake, prices are at TSHTF levels at the moment. The key question is - is the fear justified, YET?

Learner is right, you've got to have an exit strategy or you'll never take a profit. But not one of the many reasons I bought gold and silver in the first place has changed. Until governments start behaving responsibly, I'm not selling anything.

In a couple of years, gold will possibly be just like property and internet stocks yesteryear.

 

- Unlimited potential

- Finite supply, ever growing demand

- As solid as gold

- Golden opportunity

- Will never be worthless

- The sheiks will buy it all

- The Chinese will buy it all

- The Indians will buy it all

- Only ever goes up

- Gold loans underwritten by RBS and Lloyd's

- Tax incentives

- You name it

That will be the time to sell every ounce you have.

I do not understand the problem. Does that suggest that the price of gold will plummet or that the bullion banks will get caught with thier pants down?

The problem is the inevitable size of the move when the market picks a direction. The scale of the positions involved mean the little guy will be vapourized when the move comes- even the bullion banks may take a hit on this one when it comes.

Heavy speculative interest from the black boxes and hedgies on one side, and the PM 'monarchy' doing all of the selling is a highly dangerous combination. Yet another reason to step away from anything but physical gold at the moment, the paper game is way too dangerous.

Somebody has got this dramatically wrong. Who? Let's flip a coin.