Mr Pipples

Pixel8r - I've just skimmed through these last round of posts re. ethics of trading, but I'd guess you might be over-generalising in your posts while, actually, you are thinking of (and therefore, should maybe be referring specifically to) certain types/ways of unethical/irresponsible trading, unethical/irresponsible financial instruments - which might be governed in an unsatisfactory and damaging manner. Bad practise, bad products, bad procedures, etc. I agree with the basics of that kind of thing being wrong - but not trading, per se, being intrinsically wrong.

I do agree with a lot of peoples view on here, including Pixel8r's, that there is a v. strong argument in support of buy and hold physical pm's. Like some of the others who do trade (and talk about it here) - I do not trade my (majority) core holdings. (I might skip in and out with some very occasionally (haven't yet) if it seems like a obvious winner - but I'd always leave a healthy portion.) To be honest, I would like to see Dr B buying a bit of physical bullion too!

Sure. But it doesn't hurt to have a backup plan, just in case. Besides it is only prudent to prepare the worse in the best way you can. I'm very fortunate to have bought some ridiculously cheap arigcultural land in SK and I'm aware that not many people might have such an opportunity. In those cases, the local community will be your main backup plan: helping each other out together for the things that they don't have or need to protect. Didn't Faber say the other day that he had some land out in Thailand? Even he knows what's coming. Do what you think is best for you and your family.

Yep, totally agree with all that. Prepare and plan as well as you can for you and your family. (Personally, I may well be moving to Chiang Mai myself soon - that's the area in Thailand Faber has land in, I believe.)

As if you folks don't know already, this is going to get real ugly. I sincerely hope most of you have some land out in the country by now. Don't think for one second that this coming shit-storm won't affect you. It will. And PMs won't be enough. Me? Land is already there (just a couple of acres) and in the process of building a small house and drilling a water well. I'm going to get me some dobermans as well. I sincerely wish all you fellow gold bugs good luck. We are all going to need it. Peace be with you all.

Is say only a very small percentage of people (in the west) are able/in a position to make this happen - even if they really want to. Of course, this depends on the country you live in, etc. but, taking the UK as an example, unless you have loads of money/a mobile or movable job/already live in the countryside where there's a slim chance a couple of acres of agricultural land will come up for sale (at a fair price) less then a few miles away - you'd have to be extremely lucky to do this (and end up with a fair size plot of reasonable land). I guess the situation in S. Korea is quite different though...

Gold, Gossip and Russias Tu-160 Bombers by Adrian Ash - http://safehaven.com/article-12858.htm

A thought... China ain't gonna be happy.

From http://www.jsmineset.com/

Hourly Action In Gold As Of 3PM CDT From Trader Dan

Posted: Mar 18 2009 By: Dan Norcini Post Edited: March 18, 2009 at 5:16 pm

 

Filed under: Trader Dan Norcini

 

Dear Friends,

 

The events that have transpired since the writing of my midday commentary are so stupendous that I felt a few comments were in order.

 

The news that the Fed would be buying $300 billion of long-dated Treasuries sent the bond market into what can only be called a frenzy. In all the years I have been trading, I have never seen anything quite like it. We are talking about a move that carried from 123^25 to 132^18. The drop in yield was nothing short of breathtaking. The effect on the yield curve was to flatten it considerably. If the idea was to give the banks some ability to borrow short and lend long and profit from the recently steepening curve, that just went up in smoke but apparently the thinking is that the Fed can artificially force down long term interest rates and this will have a beneficial effect on the comatose housing market. Hey you morons – why not just hand out money directly to every taxpaying citizen in the country? After all, you can just print more of it whenever we need it… God help us all…

 

The effect on both the Dollar and the gold price was instantaneous. The Dollar collapsed as well it should have while gold shot up nearly $60 of its worst levels of the session.

 

Folks – it is my sincere conviction that this current administration is absolutely CLUELESS in how to solve this problem and are flailing in the wind. They are throwing anything that they can think of at a wall and hoping that something will stick. These theoreticians and academics, none of whom can probably even balance their own damn checkbooks, are now attempting to run the monetary system. In the process they have just destroyed our Dollar and make no mistake about this – they are now monetizing debt – which is another way of saying they are printing money out of thin air. Is it any wonder that the Dollar cratered and gold shot up so sharply?

 

As a long term friend of gold I am of course pleased to see gold moving higher but as an American citizen who loves this nation, I am both sickened and angered at the amateur hour that has taken over in Washington D.C. While the Fed burns down the Dollar, the same dipsticks who helped create this mess are worried about $165 million in bonuses when they are spending over $3 trillion in debt that my children will be saddled with. And to see the chief ringleaders, Barney Frank and Chris Dodd, feigning outrage and attempting to hop on the populist bandwagon to distract attention away from the gargantuan sum of indebtedness that they have just chained to the next generation makes my blood boil.

 

Wake up America – these damn fools are destroying what is left of our Constitutional republic.

 

Obviously the technical action in gold completely erases that which transpired before the Fed announcement. Now we have to see if gold can sustain a footing above the $930 level. If it can, and it must if it is going to have a chance at trending higher, then it has a very good shot at $960. That level is what will need to be taken out in order to challenge $1000.

 

The mining shares as evidenced by the HUI and the XAU both launched technical breakouts smashing above the 40, 50 and 10 day moving averages and taking out horizontal resistance levels in the process. The HUI needs to take out 320-323 to set up a trending move.

 

Please see the gold chart below for the levels…

 

Paulson goes for gold - http://ftalphaville.ft.com/blog/2009/03/17...-goes-for-gold/

That’s John not Hank, of course. And the scourge of the banking industry has just made a big bet on the yellow metal.

 

This statement was released by Anglo American on Tuesday afternoon. (emphasis ours)

Anglo American announces the sale of its remaining 11.3% shareholding (39,911,282 shares) in AngloGold Ashanti Limited to investment funds managed by Paulson & Co Inc for $32.00 per share in cash, generating proceeds of $1.28 billion. The proceeds will be used for general corporate purposes. Consistent with Anglo American’s stated intention to dispose of this non-core holding, Anglo American no longer owns any shares in AngloGold Ashanti.

Crunch Time? By: Theodore Butler - http://news.silverseek.com/TedButler/1237228354.php

If the short-term signs I see, both micro and macro, are true representations of what is occurring with supply and demand, then it may be crunch time in silver. If that’s the case, buckle up and get ready for the ride of your life.

GoldMoney Alert - 15 March 2009 - Extraordinary Stress in the Silver Market - http://goldmoney.com/en/commentary/2009-03-15.html

Rumors abound in London in particular about the shorts being late in meeting deliveries. So the present backwardation is not surprising. It is in effect a confirmation of these rumors, but it also shows that promises to deliver are being increasingly doubted. In other words, people who hold physical silver are not willing to exchange their metal for some paper promise, nor should you. Hold real physical silver; do not accept any paper substitutes like certificates, pool accounts and ETFs.

EDIT: Found this too: Got Gold Report notes 'shocking' short concentration in silver - http://www.gata.org/node/7267 (the bottom of linked article particularly interesting)

World mints report soaring demand for gold coins - http://uk.biz.yahoo.com/13032009/325/world...gold-coins.html

Now or Never. Face The Gold Cliff & Buy - http://www.321gold.com/editorials/thomson_...n_s_031109.html

1. The million dollar question on everyone's mind in the gold community is: has the correction to the $900 area in gold run its course? Or at least running its course. Or is any rally now going to be followed by another hit?...

 

...47. It's time to face the mirror. Buy this weakness and keep buying if gold falls further. Or never buy again. Do it in small stages, smaller than you think is rational.

Worth a read.

...or is much of that already in the price - explaining why gold has rise to 900-1000 even in a disinflationary environment? If so, people may now be strating to look beyond the problems, and seeing a light at the end of the tunnel.

Looking at the action in markets today - I'm not so sure. That 'positive' feeling seems to be missing. Hmmm...

As ever, I'm aware of how inclined the human mind seems to be to look for (and find) patterns whether they're there or not.

 

It's quite common for charts to be posted on here with trend lines and support lines (and other more complicated patterns) marked out, not always because of some underlying formula, but just because a human mind thinks it's found a pattern and has joined the dots -- as though they're the only lines that could've been drawn through those particular dots[1].

 

It feels a bit like if you gave a constellation of stars to a number of cultures, and find out later whether they made it into a bear, or a chariot, or hunter with a spear. And that constellation itself is all of those things, and none of them.

 

TA on short timescales may work like a dream, but I've not yet seen it demonstrated to do so. It feels a bit like predicting whether it'll rain or not a week on Tuesday. However, when I see charts on long timescales and watch repeating cycles (and that have repeated several times over), it starts to feel a bit more like saying that it'll be summer time in the northern hemisphere two years next July. It's then, over the long timescales, that I think looking at charts may really have something to reveal, but of course it's only for people taking the long-term view.

 

Anyway, I remain agnostic about short-term TA, but still interested to see people's best guesses at what patterns they can see!

 

[1] I don't dismiss those charts -- I take them onboard as a possible point of view about what's coming next -- but as they seem to turn out to be just as often wrong as right, it's only part of a mosaic of things (including fundamentals) that I would try to use to work out where things are heading.

Yep to all that... Thing is with the various kinds of TA, a main reason for me to pay attention to it, comes from that I think it is self-generating/perpetuating to a large degree - what with all the hedge fund black boxes following TA algorithms and technical traders influence, etc. on stocks and markets. TA seems like guessing on a guessing game.

Fair play to you bigT - do keep posting!

As I said, the bottom is in.

 

This is fact, not a view, and is all you need to know.

 

All else is spin and market manipulation.

 

PS: TA in gold is the best way to the poorhouse.

What you reckoning now, cgnao? Lower - or still sure it'll hold at $900? Ta.

3 links to gold stuff at FT:

Hedge funds turn to gold - http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/37fcba70-0c0a-11...00779fd2ac.html

Hedge funds turn to gold

 

By Henny Sender in New York and Javier Blas in London

 

Published: March 8 2009 18:13 | Last updated: March 8 2009 18:13

 

Hedge fund investors who made money last year by betting against investment banks are now buying gold as a way of betting against central banks.

 

The gold bulls include David Einhorn, founder of hedge fund Greenlight Capital, who last year came under the spotlight for his short selling of shares in Lehman Brothers, after arguing that the bank did not have enough capital to offset its exposure to falling property prices. Other funds looking at gold include Eton Park and TPG-Axon, investors said.

 

Their belief in bullion is being expressed even as gold prices have retreated from last month’s break above the $1,000 an ounce level. Spot gold in London closed last Friday at $939.10, after falling last week to $900.95 an ounce.

 

Investors such as Mr Einhorn are turning to gold because they are worried about the response of the US Federal Reserve and other central banks to the global economic crisis. A bet on gold is essentially a bet against all paper currencies.

 

“The size of the Fed’s balance sheet is exploding and the currency is being debased. Our guess is that if the chairman of the Fed is determined to debase the currency, he will succeed,” Mr Einhorn wrote in a recent letter to his investors. “Our instinct is that gold will do well either way: deflation will lead to further steps to debase the currency, while inflation speaks for itself.”

 

Mr Einhorn’s comments – and the revelation he is buying gold itself – are in line with the views held by other large institutional investors in Europe, according to bankers in London. The head of commodity sales at one major bullion bank told the Financial Times that he had never been so busy dealing in gold for large investors in his life.

 

Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and UBS all forecast the gold price will surge above $1,000 this year. Peter Munk, chairman of Barrick Gold, the world’s largest miner of bullion, told investors last week that all countries have embarked on policies that will favour gold.“The only option to governments is to print and print more money,” he said. “That will end in tears.”

 

In the past, hedge funds, which depend on absolute returns to earn high fees, had avoided gold because it does not produce any yield and costs money to store and insure. But those issues have become less important as central banks have pushed interest rates to nearly zero, reducing the yields on currencies.

Barrick founder sets no limits on gold price - http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/1f4375ee-0c07-11...00779fd2ac.html

Barrick founder sets no limits on gold price

 

By William MacNamara

 

Published: March 8 2009 17:42 | Last updated: March 8 2009 17:42

 

Peter Munk, founder and chairman of the world’s biggest gold miner, says even now he is no “gold bug”. In a career spanning 60 years, the 82-year-old entrepreneur amassed fortunes in hi-fi consoles and a south Pacific hotel chain before turning to gold mining. A mystical belief in the metal’s value is irrelevant when it quite obviously rises and falls like anything else, he says.

 

But in his role at Barrick Gold, the Canadian miner, he sits atop the industry at a moment of vindication for diehard gold bugs. Inflation expectations and a fearful impulse toward bullion hoarding have pushed the gold price to sustained levels above $900 an ounce.

 

Peter Munk: 'a feeling of insecurity is here to stay'

 

Sitting in the London offices of UBS, he says: “One used to think that UBS shares were among the safest investments one could possibly make.” Billions of dollars have been wiped out on such assumptions, he says.

 

“Is there anywhere else people can put their money and not lose it? On this question I have had more phone calls in the past six months than ever before – from people who have $120,000 inherited from their grandmother, and from hedge fund managers with millions. I am not saying George Soros, but people of that calibre have told me they are investing in gold.”

 

He acknowledges that the gold price – which breached $1,000 an ounce last month – might be inflated. The pile-in for government bonds and gold may be characterised by the same herd mentality that saw investors snap up equities then dump them last year.

 

If it is possible that the gold price is too high, “equally possible is the opposite”, he says.

 

“Gold is a small market, susceptible to small moves. Let’s say a small percentage of the world’s central banks – or simply the United Arab Emirates, by itself – do not believe President [barack] Obama’s pledge that he will halve the US deficit by the end of his first term. They shift some of their dollar reserves into gold. It would not take many decisions of this kind to push the price above $2,000 per ounce.”

 

More important, he says, the global economy will recover but individual investors have been traumatised. “A feeling of insecurity is here to stay. The result is that the appeal of gold as a hedge has broadened enormously.”

 

When markets do recover, he adds, so will jewellery demand, the largest component of gold demand.

 

If the gold price has found a new floor at about $800 an ounce, Barrick and other big gold miners stand to see a surge in revenues this year. This has led to speculation that gold mining companies – somewhat like Chinese mining companies – could snap up other assets inexpensively and become more diversified miners.

 

“Base metals are uppermost in the minds of the two or three leading gold companies,” Mr Munk says. But diversification is “interesting but not a reality for Barrick”.

 

Shareholders pay a premium for pure gold companies precisely because they are a proxy for the metal, whose value does not track industrial cycles with the precision of industrial metals such as nickel.

 

Strained gold supplies are another compelling argument for a high gold price in the future, Mr Munk says. Existing mines are ageing and becoming more expensive as they are forced to go deeper.

 

He and friends Nathaniel Rothschild and Oleg Deripaska are developing the Mediterranean’s largest super-yacht marina, a half-billion dollar project on the site of a former naval base in Montenegro.

 

He rejects any criticism of the timing. “If the current elite goes bust, it will simply be replaced by a new elite, who will buy their boats. Look around Davos this year. So Goldman Sachs cancels their dinner party. In its place, a Kazakh company has a dinner party.”

Suki Cooper of Barclays Capital on haven-sent gains for gold - http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/ebcc1cda-07d2-11...00779fd2ac.html

To be published live from 2pm on Monday, March 9.

Gold & The Panic Phase by Jim Willie - Gold & The Panic Phase: http://www.financialsense.com/fsu/editoria.../2009/0305.html

the response to xxxxx in the gold & silver prices will be profound, with advances to date only a prelude to a march to $2000 gold and $50 silver.

etc.

Silver will outshine gold in 2009 - http://www.resourceinvestor.com/pebble.asp?relid=49185

Silver prices are poised to outperform gold while moving dramatically higher later this year due to increasing investment demand, attendees of the world’s largest mining conference in Toronto were told earlier this week.

 

Speaking at the Prospectors and Developers of Canada Association (PDAC) annual convention, German investment fund manager Oliver Frank told a packed room at the “Accessing European Capital” forum that silver will likely end the year in the $25 range. This bold projection is almost double current silver prices.

 

A late 2009 surge in pent-up buying demand, particularly among Europeans, will prove to be the catalyst to silver reaching historic new highs, added the CEO of the Butzbach-based investment fund, Silver Capital AG.

 

He also believes that heightened global investment demand will also help gold to breach the hallowed $1,500 mark by year’s end – an appreciation of about 60% over its March ‘05 spot price close.

 

Both scenarios should stem from investors continuing to flock to gold and silver as “safe haven investments” in response to the onset of a hyper-inflation in the U.S. economy, Frank added.

 

Yet, he believes silver should enjoy a bigger percentage boost in value because physical demand has been consistently outstripping supply in recent years.

 

“In Europe -- Germany in particular -- everyone is trying to buy silver bars and coins, rather than gold, but there just isn’t the physical supply available. Global above-ground inventories are severely depleted. So, people these days just can’t get their hands on enough silver,” Frank said.

 

Hence, it is becoming increasingly popular for investors to gain access to the silver market by way of a proxy. This involves buying into a silver-denominated exchange traded fund (ETF) – an index fund that tracks silver’s performance. No less than 200 million ounces of silver have changed hands in this manner over the past 12 months, which is an unprecedented figure, Frank pointed out.

 

However, his countrymen have a sentimental attachment to buying physical silver, particularly in the form of coins, as this proved to be a crucial investment lifeline for many of them during the 1930s, Frank says. This was an era in which hyper-inflation ravaged the German economy. In fact, Germans have traditionally valued silver coins as a hedge against political or economic crises dating as far back as the 15th century.

 

Frank also forecasted that industrial demand for silver will remain robust during the balance of the year, especially since it has a growing reputation for being an “enviro-metal.” This is due to its anti-bacterial qualities and its uses in a growing diversity of high tech energy-saving applications.

 

He added that all of these developments will prove to be a boon to ‘emerging primary silver producers’ (ones that don’t extract silver merely as a by-product of gold or base metals mining). This is especially the case now that silver is about to establish a sustained trend reversal, he predicted. It will lead to silver revisiting the $15 level over the next three months, before re-establishing its $20-$21 highs of 2008 by late summer.

 

Furthermore, a rising tide market for silver prices won’t be the only major value driver for primary silver producers this year, Frank noted. Notably, oil’s pronounced drop in price in recent months has significantly driven down mine operating costs – a scenario that is expected to continue for the rest of 2009.

 

Any emerging silver producer that matches lower mine operating costs with an expansion of silver inventories and a corresponding increase in output this year is onto a winning strategy, he added.

 

“Money managers and other smart money are shifting more of their cash positions into the stocks of silver producers. Companies like First Majestic are doing the right thing right now by raising money to spend in the ground,” he went on to say.

 

“This will translate into increased output to capitalize on heightened demand for silver, and corresponding higher silver prices. This should generate increased earnings and boost share price valuations.”

 

(First Majestic Silver Corp. [TSX: FR] [Frankfurt: FMV] announced the closing of a $21.2 million equity financing on March 5th, 2009).

 

In the event that any of the world’s tiny handful of emerging primary silver producers manages to ramp up production to a critical mass of around three million ounces, they will surely benefit from meaningful economies of scale, Frank said.

 

This should provide a comfortable earnings buffer against any future volatility in silver prices. And that, he says, makes for a much more dependable and successful business model that will attract considerably more buying interest from institutional investors.

 

Great Panther Resources Ltd. (TSX: GPR) is another fast-growing silver producer that Frank singled out as an example of a company that has very successfully curtailed mine operating costs while maintaining a steady trend of setting new year-on-year production records.

 

“They’re doing the right things to ensure a good upside for their share price in 2009,” he added.

Silver Backwardation: Prices About to Soar - http://seekingalpha.com/article/124517-sil...opular_articles

Russian TV interviews GATA director on gold suppression - http://www.gata.org/node/7231

May well be some subscribers on here already, but I reckon David Morgan at www.silver-investor.com is worth a listen. Reckon I'll sign up soon - but even the free mailshot emails and bits are well worth a read.

Russian Prime Minister Putin thinks gold is going up - Gold Price Correction Will Not Last

http://www.gata.org/node/7210

Vyacheslav Shtyrov, president of Sakha, approached Prime Minister Vladimir Putin on Wednesday with a plea for help. The sparsely populated republic, home to companies including Transneft, Surgutneftegaz and Mechel, is suffering from the drop in prices for gas and coal.

 

Sakha is having trouble keeping up with its investment goals for 2020 and the region's labor market is suffering, Shtyrov said at the meeting.

 

Putin listened and then took a breath.

 

"Vyacheslav Anatolyevich," he said, addressing him by his patronymic, "the global prices of coal, gas, metals and even diamonds have fallen. But the price of gold is rising -- and gold is mined on your territory."

 

When Shtyrov called attention to miners' problems with creditors, he was once again rebuffed. "We'll solve the problem with gold mining," Putin said. "Especially since -- I'll say it again -- I'm well aware that the price of gold is rising on world markets."

 

While the price of gold might not be enough to save Sakha single-handedly, the prime minister, for the most part, is right.

 

Minus a slight setback this week, the commodity's value has increased steadily since Nov. 12, when it reached an annual low of $712.30 per ounce. Between then and this year's Feb. 20 high, it has gained 39.4 percent to $992.90.

 

Gold's decline this past week reflected a correction of a sharp rally, said Lenar Khafizov, a metals analyst at Rye, Man & Gor Securities. On Friday, prices for the metal fell to $984.74 an ounce, down 4.2 percent from the previous week.

 

Nonetheless, the rally should continue through the first half of the year, with gold reaching a maximum price of $1,150 an ounce in May or June, Khafizov said.

 

While gold tends to fluctuate in reverse correlation to the dollar, the longtime safe haven has been given an extra boost from the vulnerability of foreign currencies.

 

The leader in the Russian market is Polyus Gold, which saw its shares on the MICEX rise 172 percent from 448.95 on Nov. 18 to 1,220.46 on Friday. Shares of gold and silver producer Polymetal grew 207 percent on MICEX from a yearly low of 70.03 on Nov. 20 to close last week at 213.86.

 

Russian gold producers have also benefited from the falling ruble, said Nikolai Sosnovsky, a metals analyst at UralSib. "A strong gold price coupled with a weak ruble means lower cash costs for production, which in turn means better financials this year," he said.

 

"UralSib believes 2009 will be tough and we don't see a recovery this year," he said. "We don't see any positive movement in global economies, and for the moment that will keep gold prices high."

 

It remains to be seen, however, how the news will play out for Shtyrov. In a statement dated Thursday on the Sakha web site, Putin's second reminder on the price of gold appeared in a slightly different form from the official transcript.

 

"I think we'll solve the gold mining question. Especially since the price of gold on world markets is rising," Putin said, according to the Sakha statement.

Wow someone bailed out of this bigtime before the news and it turned into a rout by the look on the day?

 

This means existing shareholders didn't get to participate and got diluted down in simplistic terms to me. Happens a lot.

 

Whether this is a good move looks dependant on price of silver i guess.

Yes - I was not amused. Thanks for the response.

My source informed me that a co-ordinated intervention is being organized in the gold market.

 

Don't sell. Buy later.

FFS.

First Majestic Silver / FR.t (>50% SLV)

Can someone explain what this all means to an existing stockholder? Down about 18% on open!

CHART JAN.2023:  AG/ First Maj. vs. SIL Feb'22: July'22: $6.26 vs. $28.94 : 21.6%

04.26.23:  $8.00 vs. $30.70 : 26.05%

old, 4.26

SIL -etc. Update: w-AG:  SIL set for a 2024 Breakout?

===

(in edit - Charts);

FR.t / First Majestic Silver ... all-data : 10-yr-W : 5-yr-W : 2-yr-D : 6-mo-D / 10d : Aug. 4, 2017

8/4/2017 Last: C$7.89 -$1.79 -18.49% : Volume: 3,090,799 /

-in edit-

FR.t held above 50% of SLV / Silver etf

yeah, in 1983

Ha! Didn't spot the date - found the link to the article today on www.thebulliondesk.com - odd!