Jump to content

THEBIGMAN

Members
 View Profile  See their activity

  • Posts

    808

  • Joined

  • Last visited

 Content Type 

Posts posted by THEBIGMAN

  1. SILVER

    in Gold, FX, Stocks / Diaries & Blogs

    Posted

    wrt selling silver, this will be more difficult imo, in fact very difficult though.

    Yeah. Silver is notoriously volatile; just look at the big peaks and troughs since the shenanigans started a couple of years ago.

     

    Ted Butler's worth reading for a while until you realise that every article is, in fact, exactly the same and has been since the mid-90's. Don't get me wrong, I'm sure he's right about price manipulation and I'm glad he's calling "foul", but I don't think there's anything that he, or you, or I can do about it. Of course, assuming he's right and the market has been suppressed for over 30 years, then the free market will eventually correct this, as it always eventually does.

     

    Back down to $11 in 1980; back down below $10 in November 2008. Plus ca change. Allowing for currency depreciation, there's an awful lot of potential upside for silver, despite its principal industrial application (photography) being made obsolete by digital technology and ink-jet printing. Personally I think that battery technology will be a significant consumer of silver ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silver-oxide_battery ) in the age of the electric car. YMMV ( ;) )

     

    This volatility is why my personal choice is to hold through the physical commodity ETCs (PHAU and PHAG). Cheap 'n' liquid. To each their own...

  9. GOLD

    in Gold, FX, Stocks / Diaries & Blogs

    Posted

    There is also a large group that believes that most of these 'corrections' are mostly irrelevant under a long-term perspective.

    Yeah, the buy-to-let crowd <_<

     

    Seriously, I actually do agree with you on the whole, GF. I'm just reminded of a wise old dog who warned us not to underestimate the gnomes of Zurich.

  11. GOLD

    in Gold, FX, Stocks / Diaries & Blogs

    Posted

    This is and will be 100% irrelevant.

     

    Why are people always so keen on finding reasons why gold could/would/should fall?

    Simple, I'm long-term bullish on Au & Ag, and have been for a couple of years now. Unfortunately I was a bit too exuberant on the last big rally and thus missed the opportunity to buy on the dips following the massive Ag smack-down from over $21 to under $11. I don't wanna make *that* mistake again.

     

    Some wise old man once said: "There's an old saying in Tennessee — I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee — that says, fool me once, shame on... shame on you. Fool me... You can't get fooled again."

     

    If gold gets smacked down, for whatever reason, it'll be a great opportunity to load up. And ain't a smack-down highly probable what with so many Euro countries degenerating into basket-cases?

  17. GOLD

    in Gold, FX, Stocks / Diaries & Blogs

    Posted

    Interesting piece on gold backwardation - Is in depth !

     

    http://www.professorfekete.com/articles/AEFRedAlert.pdf

     

     

    Could have been written by someone on here (but I assume it wasnt)!!!

     

    Update: Ouch! Freakin' awesome article.

     

    http://www.safehaven.com/article-12032.htm

     

    Take Mr. Gordon Brown, the prime minister of Britain. As the Chancellor of the Exchequer he ordered the Bank of England to sell one half of the nation's gold reserve in one fell swoop. He even overruled the Governor of the Bank who first refused. The sale took place at the average price of $250 in 2000, a major multi-year bottom. Nice shot, Mr. Brown! The Chancellor has earned the name of the bottom-picker of the century.

     

    Now, as prime minister, he could order the Bag Lady of Threadneedle Street to sell the other half. If she did, it would be a sale fetching a price three times higher. Better still, she could buy back the gold in 30 days at a discount. (This is the meaning of backwardation in gold.)

     

    But look who isn't selling on these unbeatable terms? Why, Me-too Gordy isn't, that's who. He has learnt that a bird in hand is worth a dozen in the bush. He knows that if he falls to the temptation of 'risk-free profits', he may never see his gold again. It would disappear in the black hole of irredeemable currency, where the other half did. Gordy has made himself the laughing stock of the world once as the bottom-fisher of the century. He does not want to do it again. Who can blame him? If he did, he could earn a second nickname: the sweetest-singing crow of the century, and he doesn't want that.

     

     

  18. GOLD

    in Gold, FX, Stocks / Diaries & Blogs

    Posted

    Interesting email from stockgumshoe.com: Discounted gold & silver with help from... Microsoft!!! :blink:

     

    The following is copied from my email of Nov. 24, it has not been updated for the new 30% cash back rate from live.com or the now lower gold and silver prices ...

     

    The story of how you can buy gold with Microsoft's help.

     

    For those who have been interested in buying some gold coins, or just want to explore some online shopping during this holiday season, I wanted to alert you to the massive effort Microsoft is making to throw away money in its attempt to catch Google ... and how you can catch some of that money.

     

    Microsoft's new plan is to give cash back to folks who are registered with live.com (free), set up a free "cash back" account, and buy something after clicking on an ad within the live.com search. I've done this myself, it takes just a few minutes -- they explain the basic rules here, but I can verify that, at least in my case, they have approved my cash back and even paid some of it already.

     

    What you do is set up your live.com account, set up a cashback acount using the link at the top of their page, and then do a live.com search -- here's what a search might look like. The little gold coin icon in the ads alerts you that there's an ebay sponsored ad for this search that you can click on, which begins the cashback train.

     

    This has quickly spawned a cottage industry within eBay, which is a large advertiser on live.com. Today the cashback percentage that Microsoft is offering is 25%, with a maximum total of $200 per purchase -- sometimes the cashback is instant, sometimes they delay it by a month or two. And they can also drop the program or change the percentage or amount any time they want (and they have).

     

    So what does that mean? It means that if you don't mind taking ten minutes to jump through Microsoft's hoops, the ideal purchase on eBay right now is around $800 -- that would maximize your 25% cash back, and in the end you would pay only $600 for your $800 item.

     

    And what costs about $800?

     

    An ounce of gold.

     

    Gold coins have been trading at a big markup to their melt price lately, especially on ebay, but not a $200 per coin markup -- so you could go in and buy an American Eagle coin for about $1000, get your $200 cash back, and have paid $800 for one ounce of gold that has a current melt value of $820, and that will typically be sold by other secondary dealers for at least $900.

     

    You can buy these coins directly from the mint for $975 right now, so you can see that this is a great offer for dealers, too -- they can make a quick profit by charging a little more than its worth just by following Microsoft's rules (it has to be an instant purchase of a "Buy it now" item, last I saw, and after paying with PayPal you just click a link to request the cashback, and it should register pretty quickly in live.com's system).

     

    You'll see a lot of offers on ebay that reference this cashback program, and that clearly are priced at a premium to fair value because of that $200, but they may still be good deals if you like the idea of buying gold or silver coins (or whatever you may be shopping for). The silver offers are legion on ebay as well, whether for Maple Leafs or American Eagles, so the savvy dealers have put together lots of deals that are in the $800-$1000 range to try to tempt the customer who knows about the live.com program and wants to get the best possible deal -- with the runup in silver today of around 10%, I saw several package deals that were priced below melt value after you took account of the cash back.

     

    There's no such thing as a free lunch, of course -- you may have to wait a couple months for Microsoft to pay you back (for me, about half of my purchases got instant cashback and half will come in a month or two); you may overpay because of the cashback, which will irritate those who like fairness; you are dealing with ebay, so it's always important to make sure you trust the person you're buying from; and you have to use PayPal, which I know a lot of you don't like.

     

    Also note that some of these ads on ebay are clearly for middlemen, folks who don't have the coins yet -- be careful of those, they're probably planning to buy them after they get your money, and the sale could always be cancelled if they don't get the coins at a profitable price for themselves. Look for coins in inventory, and photos of the actual coin, among all the other important things that you might care about for coins (quality, etc., if you're not buying just for the melt value of the gold).

     

    And of course, as some predict, gold may head down to $400 again and your little cashback adventure would have been for naught.

     

    And the final reminder: I am far from an expert on numismatics or on ebay. Still, in the current market this is the only way I know that I can buy good quality American Eagle gold or silver coins at or near melt value right now, and that's saying something. Plus, I got a few nice 25% cash back discounts on some Christmas gifts for my kids, so it's worth knowing about even if you don't want to wade into coin shopping.

     

    So I can only tell you that I know the Microsoft-Ebay-PayPal program is not a scam, and they don't make it hard to get the money back, at least in my case ... whether you use it to buy something worthwhile or not, well, that's another question.

  20. SILVER

    in Gold, FX, Stocks / Diaries & Blogs

    Posted

    I have just looked this up on the silver institute website and by the looks of this it is only $1.52 per ounce. I wish i had looked this up before loading up at $17. I have pasted the quote below.

    You ain't alone there, buddy :angry:

    Thank goodness sterling has gone down the U-bend, otherwise I'd be looking at a 50% loss. Bunch of arse, I say.

     

    Um, rant over.

  24. SILVER

    in Gold, FX, Stocks / Diaries & Blogs

    Posted

    do you know Jason Homel?

    well, he has some plans to bankrupt Comex, maybe you could follow his ideas , buy at spot price and save this 25%, I didn't read the article, but i think it will help you:

    http://silverstockreport.com/2008/premiums.html

     

    Jason Hommel is a bible-thumping lunatic who contradicts himself every other sentence.

     

    Click [HERE] to read the (very civil) exchange between Hommel and Antal Fekete. Hommel makes a right pillock out of himself...

     

    ...and [HERE] to see the debate continue. Hommel looks dafter and dafter with every turd that drops from the misplaced rectum he talks out of, particularly whilst attempting to refute this article.

×
×
  • Create New...