wren
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Posts posted by wren
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also, why the hell should i allow some poxy bank to re-lend MY deposits in order to fuel the very BTL thats pricing the life out of the housing market.
id rather stuff it under the mattress.
Owning gold is a form of rebullion.
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If the inflation numbers in the US are being rigged as much as gold sites and many here contend, then gold needs to hit $1000 this year just to maintain its purchasing power. You can't have it both ways.
I don't get the constant "gold has set a new record price in [GBP/USD/JPY/CAD]" posts. If gold doesn't keep setting new highs against fiat then it's losing real value. You can't compare gold price to a nominal currency value. You must compare total return on gold to total return on cash. Since gold pays no interest but incurs a carrying cost unless held in unsecure physical possession (i.e. every year someone comes along and takes a small slice of your gold away from you), then it's extremely unlikely that gold can outperform compounded cash over a protracted period of time.
What sort of comments would I get thrown at me if I posted: "My Treasury 2016 Index-Linked gilts hit a new high against sterling today!!!!!!"
"An ounce of gold has always been able to buy you a good suit," I'm told. Well big deal - I'd be pretty pi$$sed if I held an investment for ten years or so and all I had at the end of it was the same purchasing power I had a decade before. Savings is deferred consumption - and the reward for that deferment is conventionally the receipt of real interest.
Gold is a safety play and a bubble play, and as soon as the reasons for holding it recede then gold will sell off fast - there are ten thousand investments out there that will do better than gold over time. I'm no different than the rest here - I'm holding gold as insurance against CB stupidity, with the kicker that I might even make a healthy profit from it (insurance normally incurs a cost rather than giving a payoff).
Yes, I'm familiar with all that and agree. Except perhaps the "good suit" bit. Could you buy a good suit for two hundred pounds in, say, 2001? I think "good suit" in this context means very high quality.
Let's not kid ourselves otherwise, okay? Gold is just about the worst friggin' 'investment' I can think of.As others have commented, there are bad times to hold gold and there are good times.
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Gold commentators, such as Jim Sinclair, seem to think that US$ 1 050 will be a very important milestone which might be hard to cross. I don't know why really, maybe there are technical reasons. I'd be very surprised if gold does not see 1 000 this year. But I reckon it might just see 800 again before the year's out. High volatitlity is to be expected, so don't be surprised.
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I've installed it and it's pretty neat. Shame it's only personal, but we could post examples of price drops here.
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In the last two days I've made about £2500 from simply taking increasing positions in gold as the price gets periodically smacked down, and then taking profits on the inevitable upswing. I've been over the same ground between 870-890 several times.
Congratulations on your good gains!
Might I enquire what commisions you incur and with whom?
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Here we go.
Oooh, gold versus Footsie. Hmm... looks a bit unexciting till the last couple of days ('sept for old geezers). Good stuff, GF, give us more Brit stuff (so much American, you know. Can you get older data?).
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Not a lot really. How will the gold standard work then?
Being a relative newcomer to this thread, I don't know how much a gold standard might previously have been discussed. I'm not advocating such myself, and think it highly unlikely it would come about in the forseeable future.
But if a "hard" currency were backed by something real, it would be something that could not be readily inflated or faked. The quantities would be as appropriate. How many hectares of decent farmland are there per capita globally?
Here's a little question for all participants of this thread, proponents, opponents and neutralists concerning gold:
What do you think is the "fair" value of gold?
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I used the term patriotic advisedly. IMO to attempt to promote the good of one's own country (or indeed the local country, if a non-native) is a positive thing, which need not be negative to other nations (might even be positive!).Why?I've always found an exaggerated love for one's own abstract collectivity (combined with more or less contempt and hostility toward
outsiders) to be truly repugnant.
Patriotism is a thought control device deployed by governments to discourage the populations from questioning foreign policy & in the UK & America's case; imperialist atrocities.
About thought control, you might consider might post again.
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For quick off the top of my head numbers, there are about six thousand five hundred million people in the world today. Mined ounces of gold are perhaps five thousand five hundred million. So, just a bit short of one ounce per person. Newly mined gold is about eighty million ounces a year while population increase about seventy million per year.How many people are there in the US, Europe, Asia, well the world actually? . How much gold is in existance?What Im asking is how much gold would everyone worldwide have if it was divided equally? A few grammes, an ounce or two?.
Maybe, back when there was a gold standard there was enough gold to actually back the paper/money in existance given the number of people that were using money and it was in balance kind of. Now the world has many more millions of people in it there just isnt enough gold to go around in the doomsday scenario back to gold times some of you seem to crave.
I personally dont have a scrap of gold, no jewelry or anything, just doesnt appeal to me.
Don't ask about silver.
Edit:typos.
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Is there any chance they could provide a VAT free service? I don't know the laws of the various nations, but Zurich? Is goldmoney.com the only such service for VAT free silver?It would be good if there was a silver bullion vault as well if it got round the VAT. -
Your point (3) prompts my response:1) I spend and earn in sterling, I'm not going to leave the country2) The problem is global
3) I'm not interested in speculating against my own country
4) I think that making money by swapping it for other money is immoral
I certainly respect a truly patriotic spirit. However, given that you are a true patriot, any loss in your personal economic strength would be a loss for your country.
An important ruse of fiat currencies is to confabulate some currency with some name with some country, playing to the patriotic sentiment (admittedly, in this respect the Euro is a new trick with a somewhat differing objective). National sovereignty and currency are not the same.
Concerning your point (4), trying to protect yourself from being robbed is not immoral in my book.
Of course, considering (1) you need your ready cash in Sterling.
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GF beat me to it, but I believe the bullion itself is audited every trading day and the relevant documents posted at the site. Same with the bank account totals - however, individual accounts are listed under the user names on the site, not the paper document.Check out their public audits.The story behind BV is interesting in itself. I believe the Managing Director once wanted to buy some allocated gold and found the process so difficult (interviewed 3 or 4 times, I think he said) that it gave him the idea for that business.
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Okay, it might have been a technical fault. Are you quite sure you were selling from the right vault though? It's an easily made mistake, e.g. trying to sell from London while your stuff is in Zurich, or whatever. Thanks to people like you telling us about the nitty-gritty experiences.I had enough gold, it worked later with the same numbers -
If you were selling, that would have happened because you personally did not own as much gold in that vault as you were trying to sell. Check your stocks and make sure it's in the right vault.I took some profits from BV on Monday morning. Had me sweating for a few minutes when each time I tried to sell I got a Not enough gold in the vault message. It was obviously peak demand at the time. -
It would be interesting to hear how this logarithmic forecast is made.I'm sticking to my logorythmic forecast of $20500. -
GF might be onto something.Goldfinger beats the credit crunchLast Updated: 2:53pm GMT 22/01/2008
Graham Birch's Gold & General fund is trouncing its rivals, says Charlie Parker
Fund managers across the City have been struggling to deliver profits for investors as markets seesaw through turbulent times. But despite their best efforts there has been only one investment that has stood out during the credit crunch: gold.
Link: telegraph.co.uk
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NYSE Invokes Rule 48
Posted By:Bob Pisani
Topics:Investment Strategy | Stock Market
This morning the NYSE has invoked Rule 48, a rarely-used rule that allows the NYSE to suspend the requirement to disseminate price indications at the open. This makes it easier and faster to open stocks.
This was only approved by the SEC on December 6, and was only used once--on December 12, 2007. The rule suspends the requirement to disseminate price indications at the open. This makes it easier and faster to open stocks.
Link: cnbc.com
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I am not suggesting that Bulliuon Vault do not offer a great service. Indeed they do. However, can you directly adress my concern that, should they want to, they could flood the bullion vault or vice versa, thereby manipulating the price out of line with the real world markets?
I'm not suggesting that they would. I am simply positing the suggestion that they could. Am I factually incorrect in this assertion?
These are good points you bring up about BV. I think they could do that but it would involve their buying outside BV at the going rate and selling at BV below the going rate and losing money in the process. Those buying at BV in the process would be getting a bargain.
If they try to sell within BV above market price at any time usually somebody else within BV is willing to sell closer to the market price, so the higher priced offer doesn't sell and doesn't affect the price.
Have you checked their site about this? I think they address the connection between BV and the outside markets somewhere in their documentation
My worry would be about liquidity if prices are dropping rapidly - what if there's no buyer at all? GF, any thoughts on that?
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Please correct me if my memory fails, but was it really the case that the BoE accepted the lower offers in favour of higher ones?Well history proves me right I'm afraid. Like I said, read up on the Brown's gold sales and what happened to the price of Gold when he announced the auctions.@goldopponents
But, anyway, surely preannouncement must only *reduce* the dollars received? Thinking sneekily (and surely a banker does), might that have been the purpose?
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So, because they value it as money. Which is harder to produce: one troy ounce of gold or US$ 920?For all its flaws as an investment class, gold is portable - and, historically, at least, has always had a value. It captivated ancients because it was never-changing.You might equally well ask why people buy into multi-level-sales schemes.
Therein lies the real reason. People avoid fiat (= let it be done) when they no longer trust that it can retain value relative to alternative means of investment (in the extreme the quantities of fiat currrency which can be produced are limitless).
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All the more reason to question *why* they do not sell all of it, if it's so valueless. And yet in countries such as Russia with enormously greater natural resources, the central bank increases its holding (which latter question you failed to address).how much gold do they keep in comparision to other fiat, in comparision to GDP, in comparision to anual tax collected?UK 320-ton reserves
at todays very high £450 an ounce.
£4.5billion??
less than 1% of yearly tax the goverment pulls in.
so the uk holds 3 tax days worth of gold.
wow gold must be important if the uk hordes a whole 3 days of gold!
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So why don't they just sell the whole lot? if it's merely a fairly useless metal (and I know it's industrial use is very limited).Central banks have been selling gold... the problem is that it must be sold slowly, at a retail level, since it's value is only a consequence of its scarcity.The Russian central bank and some others have been increasing their gold stocks. Why do these central banks do this if they do not regard it as money? Why do they buy a metal like gold, which has only limited industrial use? Why do they buy metal at all?
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Yes, but why do central banks keep so much gold? They still have tons and tons of the stuff. Why do they keep such a barbaric relic if it is not money?It can, however, be dismissed as non-essential.Also, I'd really like to know how gold fares against, say, the average monthly wage or the average house in a prolonged deflationary depression. Does anyone have data?
Gold
in Gold and other precious metals
Posted
When I finally concluded that there would be a gold bull (back in late '02) one factor was my worries about future energy supplies. To some extent I view gold as a surrogate for energy: I can't have my own Strategic Petroleum Reserve or my own gas field. I know gold is a non-performing asset. But the stuff is quite expensive to make, and energy is a significant component of that cost which will only be going up in price. That's fundamental.