marceau

You'd better send a commiseration bottle over to HPC as well.

Thirded. This move has me spooked, either we're looking at imminent meltdown and this really is the moment gold ascends to the heavens, or we're about to set up a doozie of a double top at $1030. Not the time for taking a risk tbh.

Maybe, time will tell. Those sectors which were heavily fuelled by debt growth are toast though, there will be no innovation to save finance or real estate. Perhaps retail has a chance, but it's a slim one for the foreseeable future. The market became so distorted it's hard to tell where genuine productivity ended and credit fuelled fortune began. I have a funny feeling that the debt effect made up a huge percentage of growth compared to sustainable productive output. And then there's the actions being taken by world governments, which will delay the price/profitability discovery process and hinder genuine innovators and producers for years to come. It's grim out there now, but I see absolutely no cause for optimism in the future. Long, slow and painful - words people are going to have to get used to.

This is it, this is exactly it, where is the growth? Without growth dividends will shrink. Without growth, even a p/e of 2 is too high! Where will companies make their money? I can't understand why people don't see this. All of the growth for the last decade was paid for by borrowed money, as Pluto says, tomorrow's earnings spent yesterday. That could mean almost a decade without growth before we take into account the effects of the recession. The only sectors with a hope of growth are commodities and new tech/innovations (and even they will struggle). The rest is, quite simply, fcuked for a generation (should they survive at all). The only way these indices will go up long term is Zimbabwe-style, in which case I'd far rather be holding gold than share certificates.

It's more likely to be people panicking at the smallest bit of news. The majority of the market simply hasn't got a clue where the 'smart money' went. There's no longer a crowd to follow, so the brain dead folks who create the big price moves are looking for someone to lead them by the hand. As a consequence they're piling into and out of assets en masse based on Bloomberg headlines, all in the hope they magically pick the right one and a trend emerges. The trend will form eventually, then we get the stampede and the morons pay over the odds for assets owned by the smart money. Happens every time, and this will be no different. So at this stage we on GEI are either smart, or totally deluded. I know which one my money is (literally) on.

The last Telegraph gold article came smack bang in front of a massive sell-off. I'm wary of this price action as it just seems too obvious, and by extension has a high chance of being a sucker move for johnny-come-lately bulls. You're right though, at some point gold will have to start getting mainstream acceptance in order to truly blast to new highs. Now seems as good a time as any (fingers crossed).

FWIW I'm going to stick my neck out and agree. I think gold's about to take a monster hit. The way it broke $900 wasn't right - no follow through and a weird hover. That looks like weak longs being given the 'opportunity' to get sucked in to me. I haven't sold any of my Xmas mining purchases, but I'm certainly not buying this particular rally. I'll reconsider if we get some sustained volume above $900, otherwise back down we go - and there's a long way to fall.

Yep, if Brown likes it or owns it, it's sure to fail. He neither likes nor owns gold - that should tell people everything they need to know about where to invest for the future.

Hehehe. $880 and $900 broken. IT'S BACK

Totally agree. Coincidentally, I just posted this in the mining section about SLW: Why risk it? As old JS says - Do you really want to be the guy who went broke trading gold, during the greatest gold bull market in history?

You're buying 20 ounces a day? Leave some for the rest of us.

They were at critical support/resistance and broke through. For gold, breaking through $834 means an attempt at major resistance around the $900 mark is a good probability. If it goes through $900, then the shorts will get squeezed to hell and we'll probably pop back to the highs above $1000 in a very short space of time. But I can't see that happening for few months yet. Edit: I guess the market is finally waking up to the inflation risk. The Fed really let the cat out of the bag when it started buying Fannie and Freddy debt directly.

2:15 Have a good sleep, I don't think even the NY halfwits will want to get in the way of this one.

Technically I would say gold will now grind its way up to a test at $900. If that suceeds then there won't be a rocket big enough to cover what happens next. If it fails then it's back to the lows (or worse). I'm tempted to trade the journey up to $900, standard setup, wait for the NY / London fix smackdowns and buy, sell the next morning before NY opens.

It's a shame this doesn't show the UK, where the gold and silver rockets have long since gone. Those wanting to escape now will have to pay extra for the privelage.

This is definately gold in currency mode, the broader markets (from what I can see at least) are barely changed. Optimistically I could say that some important people just cottoned on to the fact that certain currencies are toast, and are only likely to become blacker toast (or in the dollar and sterling's case, cinders) as time goes on. Proportionately, I hold very little cash, so this all suits me fine. I had been using the last few months to build up some cash for some selected buys in the new year. Based on the recent performance of the £, I'm starting to wish I hadn't. I just wish Gordon Brown was taking some flak for this. Anyone holding large amounts of cash must be able to see their wealth disappearing before their eyes, why aren't they complaining? He's robbing them blind while telling them he's a hero.

Entirely plausible, it would just be the IMF's equivalent of margin selling to boost liquidity. Whether this is true or not, I'm expecting a broad asset dump before we hit Xmas.

Thank you, it was quite a rally in silver. I've just sold half of what I purchased this morning and have set a stop at the $10 mark for the rest. Paper profits admittedly, but it all adds to the slush fund for mining equities and physical gold. I just can't shake the feeling that we're going down before Xmas, though, so I'm staying careful (I certainly wouldn't rule out a sub-$7 silver abberation).

From memory, backwardation (and warnings of backwardation) have so far proved to be a total red herring in predicting default on delivery. On the other hand I remember it being an extremely reliable buy signal for silver (and on freak occasions gold) for almost a decade, so I plan to take out some minis on Monday, with an aim to short term gain (a watchful eye will hopefully avoid short term pain).

It bounced well the first time. There will be a retest though and I can't say I'm optimistic. Xmas is coming and a large proportion of the market will want to dump before the holiday.

Horrific. The helicopter drops can't be far away now, I can hear the rotors turning already.

I think this may be the start of the next downleg. Sadly it's going to be a downleg for everything.

However, you never know what an impending market holiday can throw up. Waiting a few weeks may bring some stunning bargains.

It's amazing what you can see when the noise fades away. Nice chart.

New thread time - hurrah. For the record I can see some major declines in pretty much everything (including gold) as we run up to Christmas. Not that it really matters, you just can't get an ounce of gold for love nor money these days. It might be worth putting in some stink bids on miners just before the markets close for the holidays though. And there's always the prospect of an end of year tax sell off to create a few bargains. Happy hunting.