Gold

[JBmurc]

Well have sold down some of my gold share positions more so to diverse into the likes of AGS -U308 VIL-OIl gas
I don't think the gold bull trend is over but if it keeps falling sub 1500 then T/A wise it will be.... I've been bullish since the $500-600oz days
unlike others that have been wrong for years calling it's demise on every pull-back I wait till it broken it's 10yr+ trend before I believe the growth of the price is over...
This of course means the inverse that I would be believing the USD printing and inflation will stay low going forward (highly Fn unlikely)

[drillfix]

Well have sold down some of my gold share positions more so to diverse into the likes of AGS -U308 VIL-OIl gas

I think you should have done that a long time ago JB, regardless of pog or oil so you can have a bit more balance into the equation.

Good Stuff~!

[JBmurc]

I think you should have done that a long time ago JB, regardless of pog or oil so you can have a bit more balance into the equation.

Good Stuff~!

Well I've been trading Gold shares for many many years the likes of TRY,IAU,DIO,SBM etc so having no gold/silver shares would be weird for me currently I'm weighted 35% Gold/Silver shares to the rest of my interests made up of U308,OIL&GAS,REO,base metals
I'm happy to continue to hold the likes of CVR PXG neither are expensive at current Gold price

[Skol]

Lipper Indexes and Mutual Fund reports in the latest Barron's at the end of the 1st quarter confirm what most of us probably know.

Gold funds are the worst performing for the quarter, -7.4% and worst for the last year, -20.4%.

The last time the HUI was at its current level gold was about $1100, so something's gonna give.

[Skol]

Gold losing glitter as investors turn away



5:30 AM Monday Apr 9, 2012

The price of gold, which has been rising for years, seems to be going down. Photo / AP

The price of gold, which has climbed for years like a blood pressure reading for anxious investors, plunged last week to its lowest level in three months.

Gold fell almost US$58 ($70) to US$1614 ($1969) per ounce. It has declined 15 per cent since September, when it hit a peak of US$1907 ($2327). It had more than doubled since the financial crisis three years earlier.

Surprisingly, the fall came on an ugly day in the stock market as the Dow Jones industrial average lost 125 points. Last year, a day like Wednesday would have caused fearful investors to buy gold as a protective investment.

"It's difficult to forecast, but I think the gold bull market is over," said Cetin Ciner, a professor of finance at the University of North Carolina-Wilmington. He likened the surge in gold to dot-com stocks before they collapsed.

Some investors buy gold as a hedge against inflation, and minutes from a Federal Reserve meeting that came out on Tuesday afternoon suggested that the central bank believes inflation remains under control.



Gold's attraction as an asset of refuge during crises also seems to have diminished. The economy has picked up, and worst-case scenarios in the United States and Europe have faded.

"Fear has been gold's best friend, and so to the extent that fear is dissipating, gold should fall," said Jim Paulsen, chief investment strategist at Wells Capital Management. "We might look back at these Fed minutes as the line in the sand."

Gold has been hit in recent weeks by striking gold sellers in India, the world's largest buyer of physical gold, who are upset over Government tariffs. Another bearish sign was a surge on Wednesday in the dollar, which tends to rise when gold falls.

Gold fetched only US$300 to US$400 ($366 to $488) an ounce during the 1990s but climbed steadily last decade. By late 2008, it was near US$900 ($1098). It took off after that fall when prices for stocks and corporate bonds plunged, wiping out years of savings. Investors bid up prices for the safest of assets, like US Treasury bonds. Others turned to gold.

"During our bout with Armageddon, people ran to it for safety," said Abraham Bailin, a commodity analyst at Morningstar. "It might sound silly now, but that's where it started."

Demand for gold also surged as the Federal Reserve bought bonds, starting in the spring of 2009, to push down borrowing costs and stimulate the economy, a move known as quantitative easing.

The Fed's efforts to pump money into the banking system and avert a deep recession led to fears of runaway inflation, a concern shared by the tea party and big-shot investors.

Buying gold soon became a political statement. For those who didn't trust financial institutions or were wary of the Government, it was the investment of choice. The television personality Glenn Beck advised viewers to stock up on gold bars. "Gold became a symbol of your political leanings," Bailin said. "It became a way to speculate on the solvency of the economy."

Or perhaps to speculate that the price would continue to rise, whatever the reason. Some analysts, like Ciner and Paulsen, said that as the price climbed ever higher, everyday investors may have been trying to catch the wave.

Gold was named the "best investment" in CNBC's quarterly survey of investors released last month, topping real estate and stocks by a wide margin. Nearly half of those surveyed considered it a bad time to buy stocks.

One popular vehicle for buying gold, the SPDR Gold Trust, a fund that trades on the open market like a stock, has attracted hundreds of millions of dollars of investor money each month since its launch in 2004.

It now holds US$67.3 billion ($82.1 billion) worth of gold. That makes it the largest ETF except for the SPDR S&P 500, which tracks stocks, according to Morningstar's Bailin.

Ciner noted that the price of gold dropped on Wednesday despite news that Spain had to offer unexpectedly high interest rates to attract investors to buy new Government bonds. That suggested that the European debt troubles are far from over, normally a trigger for buying gold, not selling it.

"It's pretty obvious that gold's character has completely changed," Ciner said. "If it was a real safe-haven asset, you would have expected investors to flock to gold."

Some commentators say gold's popularity reflects a widespread skepticism of the financial system and national currencies and investors are fools to feel confident about them.

John Manley, chief equity strategist for Wells Fargo Advantage Funds, said gold's role as a sort of fourth currency to the three big ones - the dollar, euro and yen - was unlikely to diminish because of those currencies' troubles. Those include the US debt, Japan's ageing population and dissent among European countries about how to solve the debt problem there.

Nicholas Colas, chief market strategist at ConvergEx Group, said he thought gold's popularity reflected the anxiety of our age. The price could change, he said, but an ounce of gold was always bound to be worth something. Old stock certificates, he said, could wind up worth no more than toilet paper.

"The gold rush isn't over," he said. "It's just on pause."

[JBmurc]

Gold rebounds as US data revives easing hopes

April 9, 2012 - 10:56AM

Gold has rebounded after disappointing US employment data revived expectations that the US central bank may ease monetary policy further and helped burnish gold's appeal as an inflation hedge.

Spot gold rose as much as 1 per cent in early hours before easing to $US1642.16 an ounce. US gold gained 0.8 per cent to $US1643.50.

US employers hired far fewer workers in March than in previous months, keeping the door open for the Federal Reserve to provide more monetary support for a still sluggish economy.
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US government debt prices surged on Friday, pushing yields to more than three-week lows after surprisingly weak job growth in March rekindled bets the Federal Reserve would embark on another round of bond purchases to stimulate the economy.

China is due to release its inflation data for March, which likely edged up to 3.3 per cent from 3.2 per cent in the previous month, lifted by volatile vegetable prices and higher energy costs.

Money managers, including hedge funds and other large speculators, cut their bullish bets on US gold futures and options in the week ended April 3, said US Commodity Futures Trading Commission.

Jewellers in India called off their three-week-old strike on Saturday, an industry official said, on assurances from Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee that the government would consider scrapping a budget proposal to levy excise duty on unbranded jewellery.

Reuters

[JBmurc]

China to Maintain Golden Focus

By Robin Bromby
The Australian, Sydney
Monday, April 9, 2012

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/busi...maintain-golde...

It was just the tip of the iceberg. We're talking about last week's move by Zijin Mining Group to launch a $299 million bid for Norton Gold Fields, which operates the Paddington goldmine near Kalgoorlie.

There was some surprise expressed at this. While Chinese companies have been snapping up bulk and base metals projects around the world, it was generally thought they had little interest in picking up gold projects.

Think again. A very reliable source close to several gold companies tells us Chinese interests are not only taking stakes in explorers and miners, they are also buying gold directly from producers and shipping it home.

There is much talk in gold bug circles in the United States that the recent purchase by the Bank of International Settlements of more than 4 tonnes of gold may have been wholly or in part on behalf of the People's Bank of China.


Our source is quite clear on one thing: The move on NGF is just the beginning. China wants more gold and it doesn't want to pay full market price for it (as it doesn't for any mineral) so it will be looking to pick up more Australian gold producers and add the yellow metal to its existing central bank gold pile.
Not something the Perth Mint will be happy to hear.

Chinese interests took control last year at Laverton-area goldminer A1 Minerals, now renamed Stone Resources after its Hong Kong parent.

That parent took an unsuccessful lunge also at Crescent Gold. Last year a Chinese consortium spent $US79 million on a 17.7 per cent holding in Gold One International.

Chinese interests spent $80 million to buy the controlling stake in Australian-owned Zara gold project in Eritrea and Yunnan Tin owns 12.3 per cent of YTC Resources, which is developing the Hera goldmine near Cobar in New South Wales.

And Sovereign Gold, which featured here two weeks ago for uncovering long lost shafts on the Rocky River-Uralla goldfield in northern NSW, has subsequently signed up partner Jiangsu Geology & Engineering to pay $4 million to buy 30 per cent of two tenements.

[elZorro]

From the Moneychanger overnight (turn your olde English filters on):

Oh, mercy, the Bernancubus is speaking in Georgia (the one around Atlanta, not the one around Tblisi) tonight, and markets are all a-moiling, not knowing what he will say. The Moneychanger is a-moiling because no matter what he says, there's no gauging the public's irrational response to it.

Y'all think about this. Y'all are grown people, competent to run your own lives and make generally good choices, but your economic future is chained to this apparatchik's bloviation du jour, because he runs the private bank that manufactures out of thin air the money you must use in your business. Wherefore it is easily seen that it needs only a single moron to mess up the plans of millions of intelligent people, under our present "stabilizing" system.

Let us cut to the bone: no matter what the Bernancubus says, and no matter what the public thinks of it, he will inflate more because he can do no other. Other power hath he none, save to inflate, so he will.

And you can INVEST on that.

Whatever Bernanke said, it seems to be affecting gold in the upwards direction.

http://www.4-traders.com/news/Bernan...nds--14262512/

[airedale]

Hi Ez, gold moved up slightly overnight going against the trend in the major indices. Perhaps the bottom of the correction is in place.

[JBmurc]

au3650nyb.gifGold still up 12% on a 1 year basis ...looking at the 10yr chart IMHO currently we are going though another tight trading range like late 07 to mid 09 where the gold price got smashed majority three times off $1000 resistance point ...this time it's 1800 we have had two goes at maybe one more to go before another breakout towards $2000oz .....or if the selling pressure pushes it down below 1500 the beginning of the end of this bull trend?? or will it like last time even after the longer trend down from 1000- to the 700's 25%+ just set it up for a much bigger rise later on...ie 1800 -1350 before the third stage of the bull trend pushes GOLD 3000+ 2014-15 etc