Johan van der Smut

At first sight, New York appears to be having a spurt and not a smackdown (although 1.30pm BST is not for another few minutes, so let's see what happens).

I'm getting there, but it takes days for the money to come through and days to transfer it to a bank account (and then days to transfer it to BV, if that's the way I choose to go, although I suppose I could always use CHAPS again.) Depending on which way the wind's blowing, I might reluctantly risk moving back into ETFs for several days until prices stabilise.

Springing up again. Oh, the timing, the timing. The thing is, I've just put a large CHAPS payment through to BV. (They don't call me Smut for nothing, you know.)

POG slipping to low $850s as London opens. I hope it drops a little more, temporarily you understand, to give us ETF refugees a chance to clamber aboard the starship Gold Bull.

Yep, that's me. But I'll learn from my mistakes and I'm delighted the gold bull's not dead. Just remind me not to question the wisdom of Bubb, Schiff, FP et al and not to be so swayed by the naysayers next time gold hits a bump.

$853, says The Bullion Desk.

Had to happen the day after I cashed in my ETFs. Still, at least I've got some gold with Bullion Vault.

Over the weekend I was thinking about an article Cuthbert wrote for Moneyweek.com at the start of the year, reviewing the forecasts of PM experts competing in the London Bullion Market Association's annual prescience contest. At the time I downloaded a pdf of the report and have been looking at it again. Ross Norman of The Bullion Desk, referenced as the most bullish commentator and the one who usually comes first or second on the gold price forecast, predicted a low of $840 (ha) and a high of $1,250 (hmm, we'll see). John Reade, on the other hand, predicted $700 to $1,000, which, unless prices soar to record highs in the next three months, looks pretty far-sighted. He also made a very good estimate of silver price, forecasting a low of $11.60 and a high of $20.50. So I take what Mr Reade says seriously. And what he says sounds promising. The report can be downloaded here.

Turns out silver did fall off a cliff... but was on a bungee rope.

I hate to say this, but silver has just fallen off another cliff.

Well, well, well. http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2008/se...ties.wallstreet

Down to $748...

Interesting. The POG on The Bullion Desk leapt from $751/752 to $758/760 in an instant, but on Kitco it's still showing $752.

I'm not sure anyone has really answered Wanderer's question. Is there any evidence for the contention that if silver falls below $10, say, that we'll suddenly see it plunge to $6? While I'm probably more willing than 95% of the general public to countenance a SHTF scenario (being told at least twice in recent months that "if the Fed hadn't done such-and-such there'd have been a global systemic meltdown" is enough to make any clued-up person nervous), I have to be honest and say that I still get a Louis Theroux's Weird Weekends survivalist vibe from all this talk of swapping PMs for food. That may be prejudice on my part. I might be eating my words if the S finally does HTF. But I'd be interested to hear a more technical argument for what is likely to happen next (preferably before 1.30pm or 4.30pm).

Getting hammered again. Sigh.

I clicked on to this related video. The most recent comment is: "Karl Denninger is Cgnao, and I claim my £5."

It's just bounced off $11.90 and yet I'm strangely Zen-like about it all. Fannie and Freddie have reassured me of the fundamentals.

He's predicting a rise of "25% by the year end, starting this week". I do believe (after a weekend of listening to GF and Cuthbert's podcasts, the F&F news and now this) that my bullishness is returning.

Dollars.

If I'd had tech stocks in 1999 or banking shares in the past year, I might have been terrified when the price had dropped 40%. Still wasn't anywhere near the bottom, though. Or am I missing something?

Yes, thanks for that, GF, and for Puru Saxena show. Interesting to hear Saxena saying you'll make a ton of money if you buy into China and Vietnam at today's prices. I might have a look at those...

Oh sure, several of us are having real crises of confidence on the silver thread.

Yeah, well, there is that. I'm sympathetic to the idea that if everyone is running to one side of the ship, you should be running to the other. That, as Peter Schiff put it in one of his recent radio shows, by switching tactics and following the herd you're saying: "Everyone else was jumping off a cliff. Did you expect me to just stand there and do nothing?" But sometimes herds can be right. For a while. Buying property in the early 2000s, for instance.

They're not profits any more. I'm in negative profit. I'd put the money in a bank and take a breather, probably. Be liquid while the markets crash and crash (perhaps - "pennies in the pound" and all that) or the inflation/deflation picture becomes a little clearer. I'm largely in ETFs anyway, which everyone on here seems to have a downer on.

I should add that I still find the supercycle theory compelling, and that I respect the Bubbs, Schiffs, Bonners, Puplavas and Sinclairs of this world much more than the property cheerleaders who've been proved so woefully wrong. But what if they're mistaken now? The doubts are getting to me and making me wonder if I'm not cut out for this lark. It's a while since I read it, but James Ferguson's advice in Moneyweek to take profits from commodities before they go into the doldrums for a couple of years seems more prescient than ever. Ah well, you learn from your mistakes.