what impact if any do we think this will have on bullion prices?

Not so much a run on bullion as a run on gold shares. Should restart the gold share market as other aquisitions are eyed. Barrick will now be the world's biggest gold miner and could save a considerable amount in mining costs.

yes no real impact on the gold price.

heavy selling seen today and yesterday by hedge funds liquidating long positions.

$458 / oz needs to hold or else ....

Would not be surprised to see a bottom of $440.

Have just bought some shares in Barrick (Gold miner). I know this is a mistake, I can feel it now, but sod it. My ill-thought out plan is to buy £500 worth now and when the share price drops (as it inevitably will beacuse I've bought shares in them), buy some more. Daft, eh?
So, the plan here is to buy in gold stocks in buckets of £500 every so often (say every 2 to 3 months) that way, if the shares go down, I buy more and if the shares go up, my strategy is nacked but my fund is up.

You're going to laugh aren't you ? My other forays into the stock market have ranged from terrible (ARM, BT and Alstom) to brilliant (Caterpillar and my equities ISA). The difference between terrible & brilliant is simple : on the terrible ones, I sunk a large sum in the 3 companies in one go and the market dropped on all 3 at the same time (but I didn't sell, I hung on hoping they'd go up). The market dropped & dropped & dropped and I lost 60% in the end. On the brilliant side of the hill, I put a little in every month and the results have been knockout (I think it's called pound-cost averaging) and I'm up 250% on CAT and 10% on the ISA
I'm sitting here thinking the economy is going down the loo so I want to be able to build a small gold portfolio slowly over the next 12-24 months or so by doing just that - £500 every 2 to 3 months depending on finances.

What do you think ?

I was fortunate with this, I bought Barrick just before the announcement,
but my order took ages to go through, so the initial big drop had already
occured (at least I hope so...) by the time it was executed. I expect
it to go down some more next days (looks like it will bounce down
the Bollinger band), but hopefully will recover strongly.

Then again I've only been buying shares for a week, so the shares
will probably go negative :-)

Pent