Gold

[Skol]

You've been on too many of those conspiracy theory websites JB.

Looking forward to my bottle of red because the implosion will take place before the end of the year.

This what George Soros reckons:

The Hungarian-born hedge fund pioneer founded his Quantum Fund in 1970, and his longevity at the top end of the industry is almost as extraordinary as the raw number for his taking last year.

It is more than 17 years since his bet against the pound earned him $1bn (£650m) and the nickname "the man who broke the Bank of England", and when Institutional Investor's rich list was first calculated in 2001, it was Mr Soros who topped it with earnings of $700m that year.

He has kept atop the rankings, through good years and bad, through boom times and financial crises, thanks to the sheer size and diversity of his holdings. The Quantum Fund was up 29 per cent last year, earning Mr Soros $3.3bn in investment gains and fees.

But Mr Soros enjoyed 2009 for reasons other than the billions. Thanks to the financial crisis, he has won an eager audience for his philosophy of finance, which warns that markets are inherently unstable and prone to what he calls "reflexivity". They don't reflect economic reality, he says, they change it.

Armed with this insight, he has been vociferously arguing for a ban on speculative credit default swaps – which he describes as "selling insurance on someone's life to someone else and giving them a gun" – and betting there will be a bubble in gold

[JBmurc]

George Soros doubled his investment in the world's largest gold fund – just weeks before claiming investing in the precious metal is now the "ultimate bubble".
do as I say not as I do.........LOL

[Skol]

Here's a quote I used to bring up occasionally before the POO collapsed re. herd instinct.

According to Gustave Le Bon, whose excellent book (The Crowd) appeared at the end of the 19th Century,

"a chain of logical argumentation is totally incomprehensible to crowds, and for this reason it is permissible to say that they do not reason or that they reason falsely and are not to be influenced by reasoning."

Gold like all bubbles will collapse as it has before, but 'this time it's different' right?

When the Dubai property market crashed a whole lot of losers got caught in the crossfire there and it was with great pleasure that many of them were what are referred to as 'celebs', like the Beckhams and Brad Pitt.

Whole heaps of other 'celebs' got emptied out by Madoff.

I'm betting the 'celebs' are queueing up to buy gold right now.

[Skol]

Yep I was right! "as gold fever breaks across the globe".



Celebrities
Look out for what the top stylists, like Jessica Paster have to tell you about why gold is the way to make celebs shine.

Jessica Paster has been dressing Hollywood’s elite since 1997. Her all-star roster include: Cate Blanchett, Penelope Cruz, Deborah Messing, Sandra Bullock, Hillary S****, Diane Lane and many more. But, whatever your particular take, look out for dynamic attention-grabbing designs which reflect your own personality, aspirations and dreams. Remember to strike the right balance in choosing your hand-picked jewelry, whether you are looking for day or evening wear, why not take further inspiration from the award winning online magazine, Gold Inspirations, and luxuriate in the warmth, sensuality and spiritual richness of gold.

Gold in Fashion
Jessica Paster Top Stylists Feature

Trends
Shopping for the new season? Be sure to buy gold. This autumn the designers focus on gold’s texture, and fabric-like finishes, silky, ribbed, plaited, pierced and woven.

Designers
.Whatever the occasion calls for real gold jewelry glows on catwalks as gold fever breaks across the globe

[Huang Chung]

Skol, with all the celebs in the world, you just had to go to the top of the 'A' list with Jessica Paster, didn't you?

[Skol]

Hey HC, Jessica's just the stylist to the 'celebs'.
Here's something from Nightly Business Report with some old hack celebs selling gold. Contrarian Warning.

Taking a Shine to Gold
Tuesday, April 06, 2010 SUSIE GHARIB: With gold prices trading above $1,100 an ounce, there's lots of hype about investing in the shiny yellow metal. But tonight's commentator worries that some late night infomercials could take the shine off your portfolio. Here's Todd Buchholz, author of "Lasting Lessons from the Corner Office."

TODD BUCHHOLZM AUTHOR, "LASTING LESSONS FROM THE CORNER OFFICE": I don't blame celebrities for pocketing money endorsing products. Peyton Manning looks great playing ping pong with Justine Timberlake in an ad for Sony which brings me to the New York Mets and investing. When I was a little kid, a guy named Ed Kranepool played first base. Recently, I was in New York flipping channels on the television and there he was. I hadn't seen his name in 20 years. What was he doing on the air? Was it an old-timers day? No, Ed Kranepool was hawking investments in gold. He always seemed like a decent guy. I hope they pay him well. But why, oh, why would any investor listen to Ed Kranepool on the price of gold? He was a lifetime .261 hitter. Now, if Tom Seaver did the ad, I might be interested. In truth, our airwaves are inundated with ads for gold investments, urging you to buy gold as a hedge against inflation and any number of disaster scenarios. Watergate burglar G. Gordon Liddy does them, too. Please be careful. Unlike copper, which gets used in all sorts of industries from electric wiring to water pipes, gold has a huge speculative shine to it. A few weeks ago the Chinese government said it had already bought enough gold to last it awhile. If you're going to spend money based on late night TV ads and infomercials, you might get off cheaper buying something like a Ginzu knife or Ronco's pocket fisherman. That way, if times got tough, you could always catch and filet your own dinner. That's better than getting your portfolio filleted. I'm Todd Buchholz

[Huang Chung]

I'm betting the 'celebs' are queueing up to buy gold right now.

I can just see Leonardo DiCaprio, Rob Reiner, Larry David, Camerion Diaz busily loading up the boots of their Prius' with gold bars.....

[Huang Chung]

Hey Skol...if you haven't seen this already, you'll probably get a kick out of it, especially the big 'connection' at the end.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DNSakO8Z11o

[Skol]

Here's something on Todd Buchholz.

April 2008 commodities prediction
In April 2008 on the PBS Nightly Business Report, Buchholz forecast that commodity prices, including oil, would climb higher in the short-term but then tumble during the summer of 2008. On July 13, 2008, addressing the Southern Legislative Conference, when oil prices were $137 per barrel and leading Wall Street analysts were forecasting a move to $200, Buchholz predicted that prices would fall in half over the next six months. He comments were met with criticism from other leading economic analysts, but within the next eight weeks, prices of commodities such as oil, grain, and industrial metals all started to crumble, and the price of oil fell significantly.

[Skol]

Hey Skol...if you haven't seen this already, you'll probably get a kick out of it, especially the big 'connection' at the end.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DNSakO8Z11o

Thanks HC, brought back memories of Ray Smith and Goldcorp in 87.

Smith departed NZ with his mistress for Park City, Utah.


The curious case of the missing gold of Goldcorp, which collapsed in 1988, also proved fascinating to the investing public. Listed in February 1986, chairman Ray Smith predicted people would soon be embracing gold as an investment. The company sold "unallocated gold certificates", holding the real gold in its vaults. But it turned out there was not enough gold to go around, and what was there was claimed by funder BNZ.

About 1600 certificate holders fought back, but in the end the lawyers were the winners, pocketing an estimated $2m for a legal battle that went all the way to the Privy Council. BNZ got its gold.

Fraud charges were laid against Smith, who was acquitted. He later wrote Where's the Gold? in which he claimed BNZ helped squeeze the company dry in the six months before the towel was thrown in.

The litigation and investigations that followed the collapse of the 1980s corporates cast a shadow for years, and there is no reason to expect any different of the modern finance company collapses, where receiverships, civil and criminal cases and moratoriums guarantee headlines for years to come.