Friday, December 31, 2010
Happy New Year
Tuesday, December 28, 2010
Gold futures jumped as much as 1.7% on Tuesday, reclaiming the $1,400-an-ounce level, as the dollar fell against a broad range of currencies.
The came under pressure earlier in the day after the Case-Shiller index tracking home prices in 20 U.S. metropolitan areas fell in October by more than analysts had predicted. See story on home prices.
Metals, along with other commodities priced in dollars, often trade inversely to moves in the greenback because otherwise the currency move would reduce the value of the commodities. Investors have flocked to metals, especially gold, this year, on a combination of their desirability as an alternative asset and as a hedge against the risk of future inflation.
Gold hit a record high earlier this year and is up 28% for the year.
Silver — a cheaper alternative to gold — has skyrocketed nearly 77%.
Copper also has appeal as an industrial metal that tends to benefit from global economic growth. It’s gained 29% this year.
Friday, December 17, 2010
Silver Forecast to Rise to $40/oz in 2011 and $400/oz by 2015
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| Gold Gold has fallen in dollars but is flat in sterling and euros this morning. Moody's has cut Spain's debt rating on contagion concerns which has seen the euro fall. Germany's opposition to further government financed aid is leading to tensions with the ECB, which is itself now under financial pressure and may need an increase in capital if it is to continue buying sovereign European debt. Gold is currently trading at $1,388.70/oz, €1,042.18/oz and £886.54/oz. Gold in USD – 30 Day (Tick) The risk of contagion is real and many analysts believe the crisis will escalate early in 2011. This will lead to continued safe haven demand for gold and should see gold once again perform well in 2011. The growing threat of inflation due to significant increase in commodity prices will also support gold. Cotton soared by its daily limit yesterday and copper reached new record nominal highs. Sugar prices have reached a 30 year nominal high and Portugal is experiencing a sugar shortage - the first European country to do so in 30 years. Food and energy prices are rising internationally and the much heralded "wave of inflation" warned of for months may be gradually coming to pass. Gold in USD – 1 Year (Daily) Last night, the Federal Reserve, in a policy statement, said the economic recovery was still too slow to bring down unemployment, and reaffirmed its commitment to buy $600 million in government bonds. This will not do anything to restore faith in the dollar and will likely lead to commodity and precious metals making further gains. Silver Predictions of higher silver prices in 2011 and continuing into 2015 came overnight. Standard Bank Plc said that they see silver at over $40/oz due to new applications and increased industrial demand. James Turk of Gold Money said that he believed silver would reach over $400/oz in 2015. Turk believes that this price will be reached due to massive investment demand in silver due to a possible crash in the dollar and the emergence of inflation and potentially hyperinflation. Turk also believes that the massive concentrated short positions on the COMEX held by JP Morgan as alleged by GATA and Ted Butler will propel silver prices higher in a huge short squeeze. Silver is currently trading $28.99/oz, €21.76/oz and £18.51/oz. Platinum Group Metals Platinum is currently trading at $1,689.75, palladium at $744.00/oz and rhodium at $2,225/oz. |
Wednesday, December 15, 2010
Buy Gold and Silver Through a Commercial Bank and You May End Up With a Vault Full of Air by JS Kim
Recent news this week again proves that bankers are among the largest charlatans in the universe.
First Jim Rickards reported that a Swiss bank refused to deliver roughly $40 million of gold bullion to a wealthy client for 30 days and only finally physically delivered his gold when the client brought in his lawyers and threatened to take his story to Reuters and other syndicated financial news networks. Then later this week, James Turk reported that he is aware of another individual that has been trying to take physical possession of approximately $550,000 of silver for two months now from a Swiss bank with zero luck. Turk further elaborated that the bank has been trying to pressure the client into accepting the cash equivalent market value of the silver rather than deliver the physical silver to the client. In both of these cases, I presume that neither of these Swiss banks ever held allocated gold and silver for their clients or if they did, had then leased out the gold/silver or sold the same gold/silver to multiple clients, and thus were forced to stonewall their clients until they could secure the physical metal. Why else would a bank take 30 days to deliver something that was supposed to be sitting in a vault in an allocated account?
Of course, none of this is really shocking as the two above cases merely mirror the circumstances of the 2005 class-action lawsuit against Morgan Stanley in which Morgan Stanley told its clients it was selling them silver in allocated accounts and storing it in its vaults. However, when one of their clients, Selwyn Silberblatt, demanded physical delivery, Morgan Stanley failed to deliver, prompting the class-action lawsuit. Morgan Stanley eventually settled the lawsuit for $4.4 million. Time after time, bankers have been caught committing likely fraud regarding the sales of gold and silver. This likely fraud extends to more than physical sales. In the futures markets, bankers have been discovered to be selling 100 ounces of paper gold for every one ounce of physical gold that actually exists in the market. With PM ETFs, it is highly likely that multiple claims exist on whatever physical gold and silver back the GLD and SLV, if any physical gold and silver even back them at all.
In addition, it’s not just banks you have to worry about these days. The incidence of counterfeit gold coins and silver coins is on the rise along with the recent steep rise in the gold and silver price. The Financial Times recently reported that a wave of hard to detect counterfeit gold coins is now coming out of China. Say goodbye to the days of gold-plated tungsten and say hello to a more complex counterfeit gold alloy consisting of 51% gold mixed with osmium, iridium, ruthenium, copper, nickel, iron, and rhodium. Tungsten is a hard, brittle grey metal that has the same density as gold but none of gold’s characteristic softness. The new fake gold apparently not only has a density similar to the real thing but also has a near identical softness and color, qualities that suggest that metal smiths with an extensive knowledge of metallurgy are producing the new fakes. In fact, Haywood Cheung, president of the Chinese Gold & Silver Exchange Society, Hong Kong’s century-old bullion exchange, said goldsmiths and jewelers in Hong Kong had recently been duped into buying between 200 and 2,000 ounces of the new fake gold.
In conclusion, if you want to ensure that you actually possess real physical gold and real physical silver, take two steps.
(2) When you buy from an independent dealer, perform your due diligence to avoid purchasing fakes.
Friday, December 3, 2010
Price of Gold and Silver
Gold is once again above the 1400 mark coming in at $1413.69 / oz
Silver is making it way up to 40 mark coming in at $29.39 /oz
Got to love this market!!
Tuesday, November 30, 2010
Junk Silver Coins
Sunday, November 28, 2010
Buying silver, buying silver bullion for survival purposes
Small gold coins for barter
Another differene between 1-oz silver rounds and junk silver coins: With junk silver coins, you get many more pieces of silver. For example, a $1000 face value bag of junk silver contains right at 715 ounces of silver. Buy a bag of dimes, and you get 10,000 dimes; buy a bag of quarters, and you get 4,000 quarters. Buy 715 one-ounce silver rounds, and you get 715 pieces of silver.
Friday, November 5, 2010
Gold rallies to record, a whisper from $1,400
Gold rallies to record, a whisper from $1,400 and Silver’s at 30-year high; copper at its best in more than two years...
If you want to get in to the precious metals market you then should look at GLTR which is made up of 50% Gold, 30% Silver and 20% Platinum. Closed at $82.46 / per share..
Last week marked the launch of ETF Securities' Physical Precious Metal Basket of Shares (GLTR), a fund created to allow investors to obtain exposure to four precious metals in one go. To do this, 0.03 ounces of gold, 1.1 ounces of silver, 0.004 ounces of platinum and 0.006 ounces of palladium will back each share of the fund.
Given how stellar all the precious metals have performed as of late, the new fund sounds like a great deal. But is it?
Well, to understand that, first we must look at the metals themselves.
These days, the headlines analyze each up and down move in gold in excruciating detail — and for good reason: Gold is up 25 percent in the past 12 months. But it's not the only precious metal that is enjoying fabulous returns:
(Click to enlarge)
Platinum is the worst performer of the group, but even still, it's up almost 23 percent year-over-year. Silver has risen 31 percent, while palladium has jumped an astonishing 75 percent since this time last year.
Platinum
Let's look at platinum first. Platinum futures closed at $1,673 on Friday, up 11.5 percent since the beginning of the year, but not quite returning to their $1,731 highs, struck back on April 22.
Platinum prices are highly influenced by gold's moves, but increases in car sales, as well as general recoveries in both the stock market and jewelry sales, have helped rebuild demand for the metal.
On the supply side, a couple of strikes in South Africa have helped support prices upward. One strike at Northam Platinum (NOPLF.PK) had cut production to the tune of 1,000 ounces of metals a day (platinum, palladium, rhodium and gold) for 43 days. While the strike has since ended, the company expects it will take weeks to get the mine back to producing at full capacity. (Granted, Northam Platinum isn't anywhere near as large as other producers in the industry, but when the world's total annual supply of platinum is just 6 million ounces, any supply disruption will be felt.)
But increased supply could help pressure prices downward, too. For example, top platinum producer Anglo Platinum (AGPPY.PK) remains on target to meet its production target of 2.5 million ounces this year. The company, a unit of Anglo American, expanded its production in the third quarter by 11 percent, in an attempt to take advantage of platinum's increasing prices.
Anglo Platium isn't the only one bumping production in response to rising prices; a number of South African mines are planning on increasing production in the next few years. This includes Anooraq Resources (ANO), a junior miner in the country, which expects to double production at one mine, and already has plans to start a new mine forecasted to produce 300,000-400,000 ounces each year. Anooraq already owns the third-largest platinum reserve in South Africa, most of which is, at this point, largely untouched.
Silver
On Friday, silver closed at $23.290 — almost halfway back to its all-time high of $50/oz, hit back in 1980 when the Hunt Brothers attempted to corner the market. This time, however, silver prices are buoyed by a combination of factors, including gold prices, industrial demand and demand from investors.
In 2009, silver demand came mainly from jewelry demand (17.6 percent) and industrial demand (39.6 percent). According to the Silver Institute, investment demand for the metal (coins, bars, ETFs and so on) had grown by leaps and bounds last year, increasing over 180 percent from 2008 to 2009—but it still only made up 15 percent of total demand.
Still, silver investment continues to grow. As of Oct. 22, iShares Silver Trust (SLV) held 10,224 tonnes of silver in its vaults, whereas one month earlier, the trust had held 9,613.02 tonnes. That's a 6 percent increase in just 30 days.
As we've said so many times on HAI, silver is in a unique position compared to gold, because its demand is fueled not just by safe-haven paranoia, but also by industrial needs — so as the economy recovers, silver prices should maintain their rise.
And now that the investment community is increasingly interested in silver, that could also help support prices. An article from the Financial Times recently noted:
Hedge funds that are bullish about gold have begun taking positions in the silver market, aiming to profit from its higher volatility.Palladium
Palladium is platinum's relatively cheaper sibling, and as such is used primarily in automotive and industrial uses. On Friday it closed at $598/oz, but many familiar with the metal are expecting prices to continue to rise in the coming months due to supply constraints — primarily from Russia.
In 2009, Russia supplied about around 42 percent of global palladium production — roughly 2.7 million ounces — some of which came from stockpiles the country had built up back when palladium was not yet in such high demand. But since Russian stockpile levels are state secrets, the question now is: How much of that stockpile remains?
Norilsk Nickel, itself responsible for around 39 percent of the world's palladium, doesn't think much remains of the Russian stockpile. "This year will be the last year when any substantial quantity from this stock has any chance to enter the market," said Norilsk Nickel's deputy general director for sales and distribution Viktor Sprogis in an article by Reuters.
Do You Need a Little GLTR?
Back to GLTR. So is it worth the metal it's based on?
First off, you need to look at why you want to invest in these metals. After all, the four metals are fairly well correlated, so holding all four won't give you much in diversification:
Security | PLATINUM | SILVER | GOLD | PALLADIUM | S&P 500 |
PLATINUM | 1 | 0.754 | 0.638 | 0.803 | 0.536 |
SILVER | 0.754 | 1 | 0.8 | 0.688 | 0.477 |
GOLD | 0.638 | 0.8 | 1 | 0.52 | 0.23 |
PALLADIUM | 0.803 | 0.688 | 0.52 | 1 | 0.588 |
S&P 500 | 0.536 | 0.477 | 0.23 | 0.588 | 1 |
Many investors choose to invest in silver, platinum and palladium because they believe these metals are undervalued compared to gold, and they want to play off that relationship. But by tossing gold into the basket, large gains (or losses) in the other metals may be tempered by even the smallest movements in the gold behemoth.
That's not even counting the fact that ounce for ounce, there isn't nearly as much platinum or palladium in the basket — meaning GLTR doesn't exactly offer much in the way of exposure to these metals, comparatively.
Besides, many silver, platinum and palladium investors want to work these metals' volatility, hoping to buy low and sell high on any given transaction. But going with a basket of metals just doesn't allow you to capitalize on the metals' underlying movements in the same way as playing the individual metals could.
Now, if you're looking to buy all four metals just to have them, then this may be an ideal product. But if you're driven by other motivations — for example, you think palladium still has a way to go before topping — then you may be better served by purchasing each metal individually, whether in physical bullion or via a physically backed ETF, like SIVR, PPLT or PALL.
But one thing all metals investors should keep their eyes on is how large GLTR grows. Each 50,000-share creation unit of GLTR is backed by 1,500 ounces of gold, 55,000 ounces of silver, 200 ounces of platinum and 300 ounces of palladium. While as of now, those amounts comprise just a small part of demand for each of the underlying metals, should the fund take off, it could theoretically become a much larger demand driver — and even influence prices down the road.