GOLD

[airedale]

Is something cooking in NY? POG jumped $15 before the Nymex closed for the weekend. Most unusual.

[TTrader]

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina — Divers have concluded a mission to retrieve 9.5 tons of unrefined gold and silver worth nearly $22 million from a shipwreck off southern Argentina.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/...xx5WgD99R0ATO4

[airedale]

Is something cooking in NY? POG jumped $15 before the Nymex closed for the weekend. Most unusual.

POG up by another $10 to $966 despite the Nymex being open. Looks like another attempt at $1000 and beyond may be building up.

[JBmurc]

Monday August 24, 10:20 AM

INTERVIEW - ETF Sec eyes $1bln assets in Japan by end-'10
By Chikako Mogi and Chikafumi Hodo

TOKYO (Reuters) - ETF Securities Ltd, an operator of commodity exchange-traded funds (ETFs), said it aims to have $1 billion in assets under management in Japan by the end of 2010 as it makes its debut on the Tokyo Stock Exchange on Monday.

The London-based company launches five new ETFs on the Tokyo bourse on Monday -- Physical Gold, Physical Silver, Physical Platinum, Physical Palladium and a Physical PM Basket ETF.

"I would say within 18 months by the end of next year, I would hope for $1 billion equivalent (for all items in Japan)," Hector McNeil, ETF Securities' global head of sales and marketing, told Reuters, saying that this was a conservative target.

"ETF Securities will be aggressive about launching more ETF products in Japan by the end of 2010," he said, adding that Japanese investors could be offered 50 commodities-related ETFs, including industrial metals and energy, as well as equities ETF products.

ETF Securities is also considering offering localised contracts in Japan, such as rubber and rice, although much will depend on liquidity, he said.

The company is planning to expand its foothold in Asia, eyeing listing its funds in Singapore, then Hong Kong within the next 18 months, McNeil said.

McNeil said the firm has already held talks with bourses in Hong Kong and Singapore, adding that it was also looking to China, as well South Korea, Indonesia and Taiwan.

Besides Japan, the company already has funds listed in Australia.

ETF Securities, which offered the world's first listing of exchange-traded commodities (ETCs) in 2003, issues securities backed by physical stocks of commodities such as precious metals, giving investors exposure to movements in the asset price without having to buy and store the commodity themselves.

In late July, ETF Securities launched a U.S. silver trust on the New York Stock Exchange.

"Certainly, we would want to become the leading provider of ETFs in the Asian region. That's our ultimate aim and objective," McNeil said.

"The great thing about Asia is that nobody has really established dominance and footprint ..., so we feel it's actually the place where the opportunity is," he said.

ETF Securities has a business model that should see little impact from U.S. moves to tighten regulations on positions in U.S. futures markets, McNeil said.

Exchange-traded funds have become a top target in U.S. regulators' efforts to rein in excessive speculation in oil and other commodity markets, the Wall Street Journal reported on Saturday.

"Obviously CFTC is particularly focused on futures and not on physical assets ... So we feel quite confident that our products are robust from all aspects, McNeil said.

"And in fact we have several products (registered) in the U.S. currently and we've been given no indication that they will be affected," he said.

"Clearly we'll keep an eye on that," McNeil said of the development. "I think they (U.S. regulators) realise that if they push too hard investors will look elsewhere. I think the last thing they want to do is to drive investment offshore."

On market outlook, McNeil said gold prices would stay around current levels in the short term. Spot gold traded around $950 per ounce on Monday, keeping in a broad range between $920-$970 since rising near $990 in early June.

"Gold is now driven by the dollar, but the price could jump in the long term on possible supply shortage, as well as concerns over inflation," he said. "I think $3,000 is probably the best or the worst case... I don't know ... But the psychological barrier of $1,000 could be breached very very quickly.

[TTrader]

Bet me to it JBmurc... Another interesting article over at CNBC.

Entitled Charts: Gold to Hit $1,040 'Very Quickly'; S&P to Weaken

http://www.cnbc.com/id/32562897

Gold's "breaking out" to a higher level as imminent, Chris Locke, managing director at Oystertrade.com Management, told CNBC Wednesday, as other analysts have said the precious metal could shine again as inflation fears resurface.

"We're on this point of the market making a substantial move to the upside," Locke said.

"We will see the market move through the bull market highs of $1,040 very, very quickly," he added.

The S&P 500 index has maintained its uptrend from the March lows and the next target for it is 1,050, Locke said. But for the fall period, Locke sees the index weakening.

Locke told CNBC he's been looking for a signal that the U.S. index will peak in August before correcting slightly, but that signal hasn't occurred yet.

But he said he's "seeing some kind of loss of momentum to the upside" and therefore predicted that the September to November period "will be weaker" and will test the levels below 950.

He also sees sterling reaching "levels towards parity" against the euro, at 95 cents. "Sterling looks the most vulnerable to me," he said.
© 2009 CNBC.com

[airedale]

POG at $978.60 today. Even rose strongly on the Nymex. Perhaps the Nymex manipulators have gone long.

[srowe]

Holy Mac!
In the blink of an eye gold is heading towards the $1000 mark

[arco]

Current potential perhaps to 1030. Main target price area is the dark grey box with fringe area the lighter grey box.

[stevo1]

China pushes silver and gold investment to the masses
A report suggests that the Chinese government is pushing the general public into buying gold and silver bullion, which could have a dramatic effect on the markets.

Author: Lawrence Williams
Posted: Thursday , 03 Sep 2009

LONDON -

We are indebted again to Paul Mylchreest's Thunder Road Report for news that will bring big smiles to gold and silver investors everywhere. Apparently China is pushing the idea of buying gold and silver for investment purposes to the general population in the way that Western television sells soap powder. If 1.3 billion Chinese citizens start buying gold and silver, even in tiny quantities, imagine what that will do to the market!

The report notes that China's Central Television, the main state-owned television company, has run a news programme letting the public know how easy it is to buy precious metals as an investment. On silver investment the announcer is quoted as saying " China has introduced its first ever investment opportunity for silver bullion. The bars are available in 500g, 1kg, 2kg and 5kg with a purity of 99.9%. Figures show that gold was fifty times more expensive than silver in 2007, but now that figure has reached over seventy times. Analysts say that silver has been undervalued in recent years. They add that the metal is the right investment for individual investors and could be a good way to cash in."

What appears to have happened in China is a total relaxation of strictures on holding precious metals by the individual with the government pushing gold and silver as an investment option, seemingly at every opportunity. This is a far cry from the situation only a few years ago where the distribution of gold and silver was strictly controlled. Now, the Thunder Road Report notes that every bank will sell gold and silver bullion bars in four different sizes to individuals and gold related investments are said to be soaring in popularity.

Around a year ago, Leyshon Resources managing director, Paul Atherley, in an investor presentation in London - and no doubt delivered elsewhere in the world too - commented that some employees at the company's gold mining project in northern China would, on pay day, go to the local bank and buy a small gold bar as an investment and wealth protector. To an extent we put this down at the time to mining company hype - but this seems to be exactly the same phenomenon noted by Thunder Road. The Chinese are being converted from being the lowest per capita gold consumers in the world to a nation of small precious metals investors. Now, by next year, Chinese consumption of gold is likely to exceed that of India, which has been for years the world's biggest gold market. And one suspects that the potential for gold purchasing by individuals is only in its earliest stages. As more and more Chinese move into the cities and individual wealth grows, this trend is only likely to accelerate.

Paul ends the piece on Chinese gold and silver potential with the following comment: "Simply put, the Chinese government is trying to trigger a national gold craze...and it's working. The Chinese public now has gold trading platforms on steroids.... ...Also, for the first time in history, Chinese investors can even trade gold abroad (in London) with the swipe of a ‘Lucky Gold' card. I can't even get Bank of America to open a foreign currency account."

This may be an overstatement of the case from a precious metals bull - or it may not! Certainly if China is indeed pushing the public to buy gold then there may well be a hidden agenda here. It's unlikely they are doing it and will suddenly pull the rug out from under millions of investors. A cynic (or a raging gold bull) would suggest that this will precede a move to switch a good proportion of the country's reserves into gold which would have a huge effect on the global gold price and could prove disastrous for the dollar. Maybe it's not in China's interests to drive the dollar down too much until it has managed to divest itself of the huge dollar overhang (see the article on Chinese Sovereign Wealth Funds we published yesterday - Chinese sovereign wealth fund dumping dollars for strategic investments like gold ). The country may well already be, of course, surreptitiously building its gold reserves without reporting the build-up.
If the Chinese are indeed beginning to buy gold and silver as the quoted report suggests then this has to be a strong signal that prices are going to rise, and perhaps rise dramatically, in the relatively near future. We await comment from other China watchers for confirmation of the gold and silver buying spree, but with global gold production at best flat and probably in decline, even a small increase in Chinese buying could have a substantial impact on gold and silver prices.

Article scource

http://www.mineweb.com/mineweb/view/...8452&sn=Detail

[Dr_Who]

WOW! thanks for the article Stevo.

I am gonna do some more research into this theory.