Gold

Wed, Aug 25 2010

You’ll Buy Gold Now and Like It!

By Jeff Clark, Casey’s Gold & Resource Report
I get this question a lot: “Should I buy gold now, or wait for a pullback?”
It’s a valid question. For nearly two years, gold hasn’t had a serious decline. There have been pullbacks, of course, but nothing assumption-challenging. In fact, since October 2008, gold’s largest price drop is 10.6% (based on London PM fix prices), and yet the average of all declines since 2001 is 13% (of those greater than 5%). The biggest pullback we’ve seen this summer is 8.2%. Technically the summer’s not over, but I’ll admit I’m surprised we haven’t had a better buying opportunity.
So, is now the time to buy? It depends on your honest answer to another question: “Do you own enough gold?” By “enough” I mean an amount that lends meaningful protection on your assets. By ”meaningful” I mean that no matter what happens next – another financial blow-up, accelerating inflation, crushing deflation, war, a plummeting dollar, more reckless government spending – you won’t worry about your investments.
Whether you should buy now is almost irrelevant if you don’t already own a meaningful amount of gold. If you earn $50,000 a year, how is one gold Eagle coin going to protect you if the dollar plummets and sends inflation soaring? If your investable assets total $100,000, is your nest egg sufficiently protected owning two gold Maple Leafs? This is all akin to buying a $50,000 insurance policy for a $500,000 home.
Today we face the prospect of prolonged economic stagnation, and most governments are administering grossly abusive monetary policy as a remedy. While some of the consequences are already being felt, the full ramifications have not hit your wallet yet. But they will.
If you don’t have at least 10% of your investable assets in physical gold, or at least two months of living expenses, you have your answer: Buy. Don’t use leverage, don’t borrow money, and don’t buy with reckless abandon, but yes, get your asset insurance policy and tuck it away. And then start working toward 20% (we recommend a third of assets be in various forms of gold in Casey’s Gold & Resource Report).
Back to the original question: should we buy now, or wait for a pullback?
The answer comes when you look at the big picture. If you pull up a 9-year chart of gold, what sticks out is that the price is near its all-time nominal high. One could be forgiven for thinking it looks toppy or at least ripe for a pullback. But I assert that the highs for gold have yet to be charted.
What will a gold chart look like after adding five years to it?
When projecting gold’s potential price peak, there are many ways to measure it. Conservatively, gold reaching its inflation-adjusted 1980 high would have it topping around $2,400 an ounce. More radically, if the U.S. tried to cover its cumulative foreign trade deficit with its current gold holdings, gold would need to hit about $32,000/oz.
Let’s take something more middle of the road, and apply the same trough-to-peak percentage advance gold underwent in the 1970s. (I think there’s a greater than 50/50 chance it does more than that, given the precarious nature of the U.S. dollar.) Gold rose from $35 in 1970 to $850 in 1980, a factor of 24.28. Our price bottomed in 2001 at $255.95; multiply that by 24.28 and you get a gold price of $6,214 per ounce.
Sound too high? Well, would it feel high if you had to pay $12.50 for a Big Mac? At $3.39 today at my local McDonald’s, that’s about what it would cost ten years from now if we get the same rate of inflation we had in the late 1970s.
So if gold hits $6,214, what might it look like on a chart if you bought today around $1,200?


$1,200 doesn’t seem so pricey, does it?
I’m not saying there won’t be pullbacks or that you shouldn’t try to buy at lower prices. Just keep a big-picture perspective. Let’s say gold falls to $1,100 and you’re kicking yourself for having bought at $1,200… if gold reaches $6,200 an ounce, the profit difference between buying at $1,200 and buying at $1,100 is only 1.6%. If gold gets whacked to $1,000 (at which point I’ll be buying with both hands) the difference is still only 3.2%.
Heck, even if gold peaks at $2,400, you still get a double from current levels. (But unless government monetary policies immediately reverse course, gold isn’t stopping at $2,400.)
So there’s my answer. Yes, you have to accept my projection of gold’s ultimate price plateau. And you have to sell at some point to realize the profit. But if the final chapter of this bull market looks anything like the chart above, I don’t think you’ll be too upset having bought at $1,200.
Carpe gold.
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As high as we think gold could go, it’s gold producers that will gain three and four times more, bringing us potentially life-changing profits. Check out the new issue of Casey’s Gold & Resource Report, where we’ve identified the easiest and cheapest way to buy gold stocks, even for smaller wallets. It’s only $39 per year – try it risk-free here.

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Sun, Aug 22 2010

Gold – the Shadow Currency

Tim Iacono

What you read in the mainstream financial media about gold never ceases to amaze and amuse. About a week ago, in this item at the Wall Street Journal MarketBeat blog, Matt Phillips said he was pretty, pretty, pretty skeptical about the shiny rock save for his belief that it’s a bubble. Today, sitting in for Jason Zweig in writing the Weekend Investor column, Jeff Opdyke thinks that the shiny rock is some sort of a shadow currency.

Rethinking Gold: What if It Isn’t a Commodity After All?

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This won’t sit well with some people: Gold isn’t a commodity. There. I’ve said it.

But before you fire off an angry response, hear me out. The facts might change your view of gold’s role in a portfolio.

For a long time, we’ve all heard that gold is a commodity—no different, really, from silver or wheat or pork bellies. Its price ebbs and flows (supposedly) with inflation, which historically drives commodity prices.

Odd, then, that gold’s elevated price hasn’t fallen in response to tepid U.S. inflation numbers. The Consumer Price Index as of July pegged inflation at just 1.2% for the previous 12 months, not counting seasonal adjustments. Nor has gold reacted to what Mohamed El-Erian, Pimco’s chief executive, recently called “the road to deflation” on which he sees the U.S. traveling.

The conventional wisdom holds that neither of those scenarios—low inflation or deflation—should be good for gold. And yet it refuses to abandon record highs in the $1,200-an-ounce range. Something seems amiss.

Yes, something is definitely amiss, but it’s not gold. Gold just sits there, waiting to be dug up out of the ground or pulled out of some vault and sent off to some other vault while central bankers run their printing presses non-stop in order to get the ailing economy – its ills widely believed to be a result of too much easy money – back on its feet.

It is truly remarkable that there is such great interest in a metal whose only real purpose in the world is to make paper money look bad in comparison.

Actually, it’s not remarkable at all – unless you’re part of the mainstream financial media.

After seeing only a modest correlation between inflation and gold and the much stronger inverse relationship between gold and the trade-weighted dollar, Opdyke figures the yellow metal is some sort of an anti-dollar or a shadow currency of some kind that is sending off signals about the “potential diminishment” of the purchasing power of paper money.

That sound plausible…

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Wed, Aug 18 2010

Updated Forecasts for Gold and SP 500

In my last article a few weeks ago for Kitco.com, I was concerned that the market could have a hangover after the recent rally.  Apparently, my concern was not un-founded as we dropped from a rising bearish wedge near 1130, to the 1070 Fibonacci pivot earlier this week.  Although my subscribers were prepared for this drop by shorting the SP 500 in advance of that move, we covered our short near 1070 on the SP this week.

Bringing things up to speed, the market rallied up from July 1st to near 1130, which was a maximum target I mentioned in my last article.  This completed a 3-3-5 elliott wave pattern that I identified, and broke the rising wedge on cue.  At 1130, the SP 500 had re-traced a Fibonacci 61% of the April highs to Jul 1st lows, and had completed that re-tracement over a Fibonacci 5 week window. At TMTF, we believe that markets move in extremely reliable patterns and are not at all random.  At the 1221 SP 500 top in April, it landed exactly at a 61% Fibonacci upward re-tracement of the 2007 highs and the 2009 lows.  At the 2009 lows, the SP 500 had corrected 61% of the 1974 lows to 2000 highs right on the nose at 666!

What I forecast now is for a re-test of the 1011 area on the SP 500 to be completed likely by the end of August, and potentially a drop to 942 by the end of September and early October.  I realize this is not a popular forecast right now, but at a bare minimum we should expect the market to go back and bounce off the 1011 area where it bottomed on July 1st.  What would negate this view is if the SP 500 can rally past 1105 this week and hold into next week, then we may expect the bulls to re-take control.  Another interesting point is when the market did in fact bottom at 1011, it was a Fibonacci Intersection.  By that I mean it re-traced 38% of the 2009 lows to 2010 highs, and also was at the exact 38% pivot of the 2007 highs to 2009 lows at the same time. This gives pretty strong support for a 2010 market bottom, with the re-test possible.

I expect Gold to complete it’s “B wave” bounce at 1225-1238 ranges, and pull back to re-test the $1,155 recent low, but possibly stopping around $1177.  That recent pivot low was a 50% Fibonacci re-tracement of the February lows and June highs of this year.  Again, markets actually move in reliable patterns as they are largely controlled by the crowd’s sentimental reactions to news and events, which tend to be the same over time no matter the conditions.  The downside to Gold is that we have had 8 consecutive years of Gold ending the calendar year in positive territory, and somewhere along the line that trend is likely to be interrupted.  The lower level projections I have for gold are a deeper re-tracement to as low as $1,040 by the end of this year, correcting a recent 21 Fibonacci month advance.  The probabilities as outlined on my chart below are for $1,177, a 38% Fibonacci figure.

If you enjoy our work, please consider subscribing to our forecast service while the “Charter Rates” are still in effect through August.  Prices will be increasing in early September. Also, you may sign up for free updates which are limited at www.markettrendforecast.com

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Wed, Aug 18 2010

GLD Adds 7.9 Tonnes to the Trust

Tim Iacono

Reversing the trend that began in early-July and then accelerated later in the month, the “tonnes in the trust” at the popular SPDR Gold Shares ETF (NYSE:GLD) has been rising in recent weeks, the largest addition in over two months occurring just yesterday.

Some of this new buying could have come from Eton Park Capital Management as they recently disclosed via regulatory filings that their hedge fund holdings of GLD went from zero in the first quarter to nearly $800 million in the second quarter. John Paulson reported that his hedge funds now own 31.5 million shares of GLD,  unchanged from the first quarter, and he remains the ETF’s largest holder at just under $4 billion.

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Fri, Aug 13 2010

Vanguard Blog: You’re Too Late for Gold

Tim Iacono

Writing for the Vangaurd Blog, John Ameriks offers these thoughts about how the world’s smartest investors are foolishly piling into gold and how some of the richest people in the world are deluding themselves if they think the metal will help preserve their wealth.

We’ve been hearing a lot about gold over the last few months, related to concerns about inflation, the creditworthiness of various governments, and fallout from the financial crisis—all against the backdrop of what is the most significant increase in inflation-adjusted gold prices since the early 1980s.
…
Over this entire 140-year period, the average price of one ounce of gold was $480 (in 2010 dollars). If the gold price remains stable through the end of this year—not a given by any means—there will have been only one other year in the last 140 (1980) in which the inflation-adjusted average daily price of an ounce of gold was higher than in 2010.

In other words, there was only one year in the last 140 when it would have cost you more in terms of foregone alternative goods and services to become the owner of an ounce of gold. These data show that during some periods of extreme inflationary or broader economic distress, gold prices have increased sharply, only to recede back to lower levels as things return to normal.

Of course, what is conveniently omitted from the discussion above is that gold was money during 100 of those 140 years – that’s kind of important.  As for the future, somehow, it’s not clear to me that, this time, the gold price is going “back to lower levels as things return to normal” – whatever “normal” is these days.

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Thu, Aug 12 2010

If Deflation Wins, What Will Gold Stocks Do?

By Jeff Clark, Senior Editor, Casey’s Gold & Resource Report
The talk of a possible double dip is now common banter on TV investment programs. And indeed, deflationary forces seem to have the stronger grip right now than inflationary ones. So if deflation is the next reality we have to face, what happens to our favorite stock investments?
There’s lots of data about what gold does during periods of high inflation, but less so with deflation, partly because we don’t see a true deflation all that often. But of course we’ve got the biggie we can look at, and the seriousness of the Great Depression can give us a big clue as to how gold stocks behave in a true deflationary environment.
First, we know what happened to the stock market in 1929, and in that initial shock, gold stocks crashed too. A rally ensued in most equities until the following April, including gold stocks. Then the Dow took a one-way elevator ride down for the next two and a half years.
What did gold stocks do?


From 1929 until January 1933, the stock of Homestake Mining, the largest gold producer in the U.S., rose 474%. Dome Mines, the largest Canadian producer, advanced 558%. In spite of the gold price being fixed at the time, gold stocks rose dramatically.
At the same time, the DJIA lost 73% of its value.
And the chart doesn’t show that you could have bought both stocks at half their 1929 price five years earlier, which would have led to gains of around 1,000%. That’s not all: both companies paid healthy and rising dividends as the depression wore on; Homestake’s dividend went from $7 to $15 per share, and Dome’s from $1 to $1.80.
Yes, volatility was high in the gold stocks throughout the depression, with occasional wild price swings. But after the 1929 crash, much of the volatility was to the upside.
The bottom line is that the two largest gold producers – during a time of soup lines and falling standards of living – handed investors five and six times their money in four years.
What about gold itself? On April 5, 1933, President Roosevelt issued an executive order forcing delivery (i.e., confiscation) of gold owned by private citizens to the government in exchange for compensation at the fixed price of $20.67/oz (you can read the original order here). And less than nine months later, he raised the gold price to $35, effectively diluting every dollar 41% overnight and swindling everyone who had turned in his gold.
We don’t know exactly what an untethered gold price would have done during the depression, but given its distinction in history as a store of value, we believe it would retain its purchasing power in a deflationary setting regardless of its nominal price. In other words, while the price of gold might not rise, or could even fall, your best protection is still gold.
But with all this said, the overriding concern isn’t deflation. Yes, economic growth will likely be flat for years, and many Americans will see some hard times ahead. But deflation won’t win; in a fiat money system, any deflation will be met with an inflationary overreaction (as we’ve seen). And the worse the deflation, the more extreme the overreaction will be.
In fact, I think there’s another round of money printing before this year is over. And sooner or later, that extra money is going to dilute every dollar you own, giving us an inflationary hit as bad as the deflationary one we got during the Great Depression.
It’s for this reason that I continue to urge you to own physical gold, in your possession and under your control, given its reliability as a store of value in both inflationary and deflationary environments. If you don’t have a meaningful portion of your investments in physical gold, I think you’re playing with fire. And those who play with fire eventually get burnt.
Want an easy way to start buying physical gold? I arranged for some seriously discounted bullion in the current issue of Casey’s Gold & Resource Report, which you can check out risk-free here…

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Wed, Aug 11 2010

And The Obligatory “Selloff Day” Gold Plunge Is Here

by Tyler Durden

Just when you thought gold could go through at least one major selloff day without some remarkable fireworks, here comes a perfectly natural $10 selloff in the span of under a minute, because that is precisely how a quantized and “deep” order book looks like. Just how related this is with the reopening of the ECB’s FX swap lines with the US is unclear. We are confident the BIS will be perfectly happy to provide commentary on the issue.

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Wed, Jul 21 2010

Proof Of Gold Price Suppression

by Tyler Durden

Adrian Douglas, board member of GATA, once again takes a long hard look at the gold market and provides evidence of gold price manipulation. His conclusions:

  • the gold price is suppressed through fractional reserve bullion banking
  • the gold market is selling on average 45 ounces of gold for every one ounce of real physical gold via “unallocated gold” (fractional reserve bullion banking). In other words the gold market is backed by only 2.3% gold
  • The true price of physical gold is currently around $54,000/oz if fractional reserve bullion banking did not exist. In the presence of fractional reserve banking with 2.3% gold backing the market price of “gold” is reduced to $1200/oz
  • The US dollar has a purchasing power that is 45 times over valued
  • The way to end gold price suppression is for investors to ensure they have allocated physical bullion preferably held outside of the bullion banking system

The solution? Buy physical – “The sick joke of the Gold cartel is that whether you hold dollars or unallocated gold you only have 2.3% of gold backing! However, the trade of the century is to buy actual physical metal with your dollars, or if you have unallocated gold to demand physical delivery. In this way you can trade something with 2.3% gold backing for an investment that is 100% gold.”

Proof Of Gold Price Suppression, Submitted by Adrian Douglas of Market Force Analysis

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Tue, Jul 20 2010

Is Now a Good Time to Buy Gold?

By Jeff Clark, Senior Editor, Casey’s Gold & Resource Report
While we’re convinced gold and gold stocks are destined for much higher levels, buying when prices are low can mean the difference between a double or triple and a ten-bagger… a week in Malibu vs. a week in Milan.
There’s no secret formula to buying low, and we aren’t holding the right hand of Midas, but there are periods when prices tend to be lower than others. And if those tendencies play out, it can give us the opportunity to snag a high-quality asset at a bargain price.
So, how do you get a bargain price? You cheat.
I think the secret to getting a low-cost basis on all your gold and gold stocks is this: only buy on significant price pullbacks.
And this can be done without trading or using technical analysis.
I think there’s a good chance we can cheat this summer. For example, here are the average monthly increases in gold since our bull market began in 2001.


In our current 9-year bull market, June and August have seen the lowest average return for gold, representing one of the best times to buy.

You’ll see that in the bull market of the 1970s, summer was also a good time to buy gold.


What about gold stocks? Since 2001, June and July have been among the weakest months and thus one of the best times to buy.


Obviously, these are price tendencies and not certainties. There were Junes when gold was up, and some Julys when gold stocks were up. Meaning, we’d avoid using these charts for trading purposes or in anticipation of an immediate gain. Instead, use these “trendencies” to look for possible price weakness. And if it arrives, use the opportunity to add to your holdings and position yourself for the next leg up in the bull market.
What are the odds of a correction in gold and gold stocks this summer?
►Since 2001, almost every precious metal stock, in every summer, has moved lower from its May high. This includes gold and silver. There’s no guarantee this won’t be the summer of galloping unicorn herds, but the record is hard to argue with.
Here are the buy zones I identified for gold and silver, based on a tally of how far they’ve corrected from their May high to their summer low, in each year of the current bull market.


You’ll see that the average price of all pullbacks in gold, from the May highs to the summer lows, is 8.9%, and would take the price to $1,126.98. That’s not to say this price will be hit, but it tips you off that a fall to that level would not be out of the ordinary – and would also be an invitation to buy. You can also see the smallest summer decline, which we’ve already exceeded. We wouldn’t wait for the largest drop to materialize; there’s a good chance you’d be left empty-handed and chasing the stock higher.


Silver is naturally more volatile, allowing us perhaps a better opportunity to buy low. The average summer decline for silver is 16.6%, which would take the price to $16.39. However, the furthest its fallen so far this summer is $17.36, meaning strictly on a historical price basis, a 10% correction from current levels would be perfectly normal. And again, an invitation to buy.
Whatever price (or prices) you select, I’d only use the charts to add to current positions, not for trading. The currency crisis Casey Research believes is inevitable could strike suddenly again and will eventually hit the U.S. dollar, and the last thing you want is to be left standing on the sidelines if gold and gold stocks surge higher. In our opinion, being completely out of precious metals in the middle of a once-in-a-generation bull market would be a mistake. Instead, keep adding to your savings every month and buy when it feels like you’re cheating.
See you in Milan?

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Want to see the buy zones for all our recommended gold and silver stocks? Our Summer Buying Guide is an invaluable resource for buying low. And check out our just-released July issue, where a respected bullion seller tells you why in the near future you may not be able to buy gold, at ANY price. Try a risk-free subscription for only $39 per year. Details here.

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Tue, Jul 20 2010

Is it time to buy Gold?

It would appear that the euphoria over gold has quickly diminished and many of gold’s greatest proponents, who were calling for gold to go over $2,000 an ounce, appear to be disheartened and shell-shocked by the recent sharp downturn in gold There’s an old adage in trading and it goes like this, “they slide faster than they glide.” This is true of all markets and what it means is they go down faster than they go up. In my new video on gold, I share with you some of the thoughts I have right now on this market. We could be looking at some great buying opportunities if just a few components fall into place.

You are more than welcome to watch this video there is no charge and no registration requirement. Click The Chart To View The Video

All the best,
Adam Hewison
President of the INO.com
Co-founder of MarketClub

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