Posts Tagged ‘Gold News’

China's Gold Investment

Friday, March 12th, 2010

How can China build its gold reserves if it doesn’t Buy Gold…?

"A FEW FACTORS
limit our ability to increase [our] Gold Investment," said China’s chief foreign exchange manager, Yi Gang, in a speech this week, notes Steve Sjuggerud in his Daily Wealth email.

Western investors have long speculated China will start Buying Gold and selling its hoard of US Dollars at some point. (China’s hoard could be literally trillions of US Dollars.) It would be the first step in a "Doomsday" scenario for the greenback.

Just imagine – China trades in its Dollar reserves for Gold Bullion. The value of the Dollar crashes…and US interest rates soar, as China is no longer willing to buy US government Treasury bonds.

Some investors have said China has a perfect way to do it, available right now. The International Monetary Fund (the IMF) has a near-200-tonne hoard of gold that it wants to unload.

But if China actually used all its Dollar reserves to Buy Physical Gold, it would completely overwhelm the market. It would end up trying to buy about a third of all the gold ever mined in the history of the world. There’s no way it could get all that gold without sending the price to outrageous levels.

It seems Mr. Yi recognizes that. He essentially said gold is too volatile, the historic returns aren’t that great, and any gold buying by China would "certainly" increase Gold Prices.

If Mr. Yi is to be taken at his word, in short, China doesn’t have plans to Buy Gold in the open market. And Mr. Yi’s comments are in line with recent comments from the China Gold Association, who told the China Daily newspaper that it is "not feasible for China to buy the IMF bullion, as any purchase or even intent to do so would trigger market speculation and volatility."

So how would China acquire gold if it doesn’t buy it? This is where it gets interesting…

An official from the China Gold Association told the China Daily that rather than acquiring Gold from the IMF, China would Buy Gold directly by buying gold mines "abroad". Rather than buying physical gold in the open market (where China would be the 800-pound gorilla in the room), China plans to buy future production instead.

If that’s true (and there is some sense to it), then how should you play it? Dennis Gartman reported on this yesterday, in his Gartman Letter:

Perhaps we are to begin owning gold mines rather than Gold Futures or Gold ETFs. We have avoided owning mines for years, preferring the "purer" play of owning gold rather than the mines, for we fear being exposed to poor mine management, or accidents in a mine that might do damage to the equity while gold itself moves higher. But if the Chinese authorities want to own mines, perhaps we have to consider doing so also…

I’ve done more than consider buying Gold Mining companies. In the latest issue of True Wealth, my subscription newsletter, I recommended Buying Gold mines as the best way to have exposure to gold right now.

The reason is simple. This chart sums it up…

Gold is up 70% since the summer of 2006. Meanwhile, gold stocks (as measured by the Gold BUGS Index) have done nothing.

Usually, a 10% move in gold would mean a 20% move in gold stocks. But this relationship broke down in the financial crisis. Now, either the price of gold needs to crash… or the price of gold stocks needs to soar to correct this anomaly.

The timing might be just right. Gold mining stocks are down, and it’s just coming to light that the Chinese authorities could prefer acquiring gold mines – which give the country a permanent supply – over Buying Gold in the open market.

Building your personal gold reserves today? Make it cheap, safe and simple by using BullionVault

Source:China's Gold Investment

Gold Cycle Broken?

Friday, March 12th, 2010

Yes, kind of, says one analyst. The seasonality of gold has broken down…

DON’T COUNT
out the US Dollar just yet, not as the Euro waivers.

So says Louis Paquette, who launched Emerging Growth Stocks in 1995 to provide investors and speculators with a unique alternative to what he saw was a growing problem with corporate governance and conflict of interest on Wall Street.

Here he speaks to The Gold Report about the outlook for the US currency, plus the fact that the "seasonality" of Gold Prices and gold-mining stocks has broken down…

The Gold Report: In your February newsletter, you noted the negative sentiment towards the Euro driven by fears of the PIIGS’s defaults. But you pointed out that states such as California are fairing far worse potentially than Greece, Italy, Spain or Portugal. So why is this boosting the Dollar and depressing Gold Prices?

Louis Paquette: For a while now, the Euro has been the currency that’s weak. The attention has gone to Greece and people are thinking, well what’s going to happen if this contagion spreads to Spain and other countries that are looking bad over there? We’ve just seen this shift after a whole year of the US Dollar falling. It got really overdone. It got to be a really crowded trade and now sentiment has shifted negative against the Euro, which has allowed the US Dollar to recover.

Interesting note on a technical basis, the US Dollar Index has now had a 50% retracement of the negative down move that took place in 2009. So who knows? Maybe we’ve seen enough of a rebound now of the US Dollar, and the Euro has come down enough that we’re going to see a reversal now. Maybe the US Dollar will have a downturn now but, at the moment, all the attention – the negative attention – is towards the Euro.

TGR: Well factoring into the US Dollar I’m sure, California’s population is well over three times the population of Greece. It’s the largest US state and it’s in serious trouble financially, many say much more than Greece. Are the eyes of the world investment/finance community just in the wrong place right now?

Louis Paquette: I don’t know if it’s the wrong place because the Euro has a really serious problem. The ratios – the debt per gross national product and the debt ratios – in many countries in Europe and England are terrible. I don’t know if the investment community is looking at the wrong place. These things ebb and flow. For a while, the negative sentiment and the selling has been on the Euro; and that’ll continue until it gets to be too much, and then something will happen. Some news event will take place regarding the US Dollar, and then it will have a decline. That’s just the nature of markets. They move back and forth.

TGR: When the US Dollar declines, are we expecting to see a focus back onto the Euro, or would we start seeing focus on other currencies such as the Yuan or Rupee?

Louis Paquette: I think the focus will go back on the US Dollar because it will have had a pretty darn good move up and the short sellers will probably swoop down on the Dollar again. In terms of other currencies, we just keep hearing good things about the Canadian, Australian and Indian currencies. So I think the bears will circle the US Dollar again sometime later this year.

TGR: How do you think the Chinese Yuan factors into the equation right now?

Louis Paquette: Well you can’t pressure the Chinese to do anything. Telling them to let their Yuan rise is almost counterproductive. They may not let it happen just because you want it to. They’re going to do whatever they want no matter what.

TGR: As we move into this bear focus on the US Dollar, and we know there are issues with the Euro, are we going to see a decoupling from the Euro-goes-up-Dollar-goes-down (or vice-versa) mindset, to Euro-and-Dollar-go-down, and Canadian, Australian Dollars go up?

Louis Paquette: That’s what I think is going to happen.

TGR: How does an investor play that?

Louis Paquette: It’s kind of a race to the bottom with most of these currencies, even with Canada’s. I hear the big, big investors saying, Canada’s such a great place, and we’re supposed to have a conservative government, yet they’re going to have a huge massive deficit this year. Even the most favorable countries are now spending beyond their means and I guess the only way to play this is to have some gold in your portfolio. Have some raw gold, have some bullion and have some shares of good mining companies. If you’re really aggressive, talented and you know how to short and play the futures markets, then you can try and time these, the bigger declines. Sooner or later the US Dollar will top out again. If you’re really comfortable with doing that you could do a short sell on the Dollar with the futures markets but I’m not that comfortable doing that kind of thing. So I just hold gold.

TGR: Do you feel confident that the Canadian banking system is going to remain strong given what you’ve just said, or do you just see that waning a bit too?

Louis Paquette: Well the corporations themselves have run themselves fairly well. But sadly with – it seems like anytime the population figures out it can vote someone in who spends more, that’s when you run into trouble. It seems like every country is doing that. Perhaps China and India aren’t, but here in the West that’s happening. I’m not comfortable with the government, but the Canadian banking sector is still being run fairly prudently.

TGR: There’s a growing belief of a double dip recession for the second half of 2010. You refer to Dan Arnold’s work, The Great Bust Ahead, predicting the bust will begin in 2013. If there is a bust ahead, how should the typical investor play a busting market? Some feel the prudent strategy is to go long in cash/gold avoiding equities whose value will fall during a bust. Is this your opinion?

Louis Paquette: I would stick with holding some gold equities of really good companies. If we do get a real meltdown in the currencies, it’s going to impact the price of gold – and the companies should make terrific profits. But will they melt down, too, in a big meltdown? I really don’t know, but I would just hold some. The one thing I would be confident in doing is saving a lot of cash. I would short stuff and own more cash. I would not buy luxury items and I would save cash.

TGR: In our last interview with you, we discussed the Typical Seasonality in Gold, especially gold stocks, both of which have a fall and a spring rally, followed by a typically quiet summer. At that time, you were uncertain if the climate had truly shifted for gold, and were unsure whether or not that seasonality was breaking down. A year later, do you think it has? Also, has the psyche for accumulation of the metal itself moved into the acquisition of promising junior or mid-tier Gold Mining company stocks?

Louis Paquette: Let me answer the second question first. For the last year, the emphasis has moved toward the metal. The Gold Mining shares? I’m looking at a chart right now of appreciation of gold and gold shares, and the gold shares have gone sideways for the past two years and gold has gone up. So for the moment, there’s better value in the gold producers, in the shares of the companies, and people have been buying the bullion price.

The first question, has Gold Seasonality broken down? I think the answer is yes, kind of. The last buy time for seasonality was last August. That did work. The price of gold started to take off after that. But now when it comes to the high point, gold peaked on December 3rd; it hit a parabolic high at that point – and looks like a cyclical high now – and it’s not strong. It’s supposed to be peaking around now, and we’re $100 or so below the peak. I would say the seasonality is breaking down because the price is now being driven by Gold Investment demand as opposed to physical demand for jewelry. So the answer is yes. The seasonality is breaking down and you have to revert to other methods to pick your highs and lows now.

TGR: To what extent do you believe news and the news media can make a market? And has the gold market yet to be made?

Louis Paquette: I think it has a lot to do with it. And I don’t think we’ve seen the full extent of it yet. We haven’t seen a media-driven parabolic rise yet. You don’t see the average person lining up to Buy Gold coins at this point. I think that day is going to come, but I don’t believe we’ve seen it yet.

TGR: What are you recommending for portfolio diversification with regard to gold stocks, Gold ETFs, and the physical metal?

Louis Paquette: The leveraged two-times ETFs were really popular here in Canada, and I’m completely avoiding them. They experienced time decay. So zero for the leveraged ETFs. And the main focus is on junior mining companies, exploration situations and near producers with growing reserves. I’m not Buying Gold anymore. I used to buy it years ago in the beginning first few years of the bull market, but I just sit on that. That’s 5%, 10% of one’s portfolio in the metal, in the Gold Bullion, and for me a lot larger than that with the gold share (but I specialize in that). So I don’t know what the good number is for the average investor, but I’d say maybe 5-10% of the gold shares of selected junior mining companies.

TGR: Earlier on we were talking about a double dip recession. You said people should short stop and go long on cash. So the suggestion is to hold cash; but really early on we were talking about the devaluation of the Dollar and the Euro. How is this a good strategy?

Louis Paquette: Well, all I can tell you is what I’m also doing – taking a fair number of those Dollars and owning stocks that pay good dividends. At least I’m making an income with that money. I guess that’s where you have a portion in the gold sector too, if the currencies are going to devaluate. Consumer goods are going to fall in value even faster than everything else.

TGR: Value declines as soon as you take it out of the store.

Louis Paquette: Exactly. So I’m not in a big hurry to buy brand new cars. They’re going to be cheaper in the future.

TGR: So you were talking also a bit about having 5-10% of your portfolio in metals, which leaves another 90% of your portfolio in other types of things. Given that there are significant reports of green shoots and some positive economic news, at least coming out of the US, what other sectors would recommend our subscribers invest in so they have a balanced portfolio?

Louis Paquette:
The areas I like are gold and energy. On weakness, I have been purchasing shares of these income trusts that pay 5-10% yields. So I’m about 50% cash and about 5-10% in the metal, say 20% in Gold Mining shares and the balance in energy shares. Also in special little situations, I’ve got the odd investments – biotech and even a social media company. Some very small micro cap situations are also in there, not specific to any sector, but "bottom up" selections based on the merits of the company.

TGR: In terms of energy, are there specific subsectors of energy that you’re focusing in on?

Louis Paquette: Yes. I’ve got a love/hate relationship with natural gas right now. The production community seems to be determined to drive the price to zero. But sooner or later, this natural gas situation is going to turn around. They’re going to deplete all these new reserves they’ve found and there’s going to be a shortage of it. I’m not saying in the next month or so, but in the coming years there may be a great opportunity in natural gas.

TGR: Lou, thank you so much for joining us.

Building your physical Gold Investment today? Get the safest gold at the lowest prices by using BullionVault

Source:Gold Cycle Broken?

Screaming Outrage at the FDIC

Friday, March 12th, 2010

Use TME for an MDZOS to escape SFOO. Oh, and Buy Gold to escape the FDIC, says the Mogambo…

PEOPLE SEEM TO think that Daily Reckoning publisher Addison Wiggin is just another talented, intelligent, pretty face who secretly thrills to hear people say things like, "You’re a lot better looking than The Mogambo!" says the Mogambo Guru himself in, ummm, The Daily Reckoning.

"And you’re younger and smarter, too!" they tell him. Yet he is much, much more than that.

His story starts off that "The FDIC is even more broke than it was three months ago" to which most people rudely say, "Welcome to the club! Waddya think, we got some kind of picnic at the beach going on out here in the real world while you pretty-face hotshots talk about who is smarter and about some idiot named Mogambo who must be an idiot because otherwise he would not have such a stupid name!"

Mr. Wiggin goes on undaunted, perhaps buoyed by the knowledge that no matter what happens, he’ll still be better looking than The Mogambo. And smarter, too. And younger.

Maybe that’s why he did not seem to be registering horror at the news of the bankruptcy of the FDIC. And, as if to underscore my suspicions, you can almost hear the confidence in his voice as he explains:

"The fund the FDIC uses to ‘insure’ your [US] bank account went $20.9 billion in the red during the fourth quarter of 2009. That’s more than twice the deficit reported when the fund first entered negative territory in the previous quarter."

Naturally, if these were the old days when the money supply was more-or-less constant, this would cause panic:

"Our bank deposits are uninsured! Yikes! The Mogambo said we’d be wiped out and here it is, and he said to buy gold, silver and oil, and we didn’t, and now look at us! Oh, woe!"

But nowadays? Relax! We have a fiat currency that the Federal Reserve can, literally, create at will, at a stroke, all the money necessary to make sure that every Last Freaking Dollar (LFD) dollar in your account is fully protected against actual nominal loss; you had an electronic or paper buck, you will still have and electronic or paper buck!

Unfortunately (and you can tell there is a "catch" by the way the soundtrack suddenly turns gloomy and there seems to be the sound of somebody, in the distance, throwing up into a toilet) this huge, sustained increase in the money supply guarantees – guarantees! – that you will lose buying power in every one of your precious dollars, so you are kind of screwed, either way, when you stop and think about it, by Federal Reserve policies.

My Sensitive Mogambo Nose (SMN) detects (sniff, sniff, sniff!) detects panic. So, desperate for money, I look to prey on the superstitious, and suggest that maybe you should just send all of your "tainted" money to me so that my hoodlum friends and I can have a big ol’ party, where we will raise our glasses in a long series of toasts to you, to your health, and to your good luck because – hey! – attracting the attention of deities, paranormal powers, transcendental influences and cosmic forces could, conceivably, work!

Mr. Wiggin is not enthusiastic about my latest rip-off scam, which I suggest only because I am out of ideas and I am desperate for money. He suggests a perfectly legal and good way to get some money, which is, "As long as banks can continue to borrow from the Fed at 0.25% and park it in 10-year Treasuries for nearly 3.7% (and leverage it up, of course), we don’t see this changing."

He’s right, of course, but before you rush out to start a bank and get your piece of this Federal Reserve stupidity, perhaps you should consider something along the lines of buying gold, silver and oil in some kind of wild, paranoid, knee-jerk reflex as a small, small part of a whole constellation of symptoms known collectively as Screaming Fear Of Outrage (SFOO) of the inflation that will be caused by such massive increases in the money supply, now additionally caused by the needs of the FDIC, but he goes on that it will get worse than that, as, "On top of that, the FDIC’s list of ‘problem banks’ grew during the fourth quarter from 552 to 702" he says! Yikes!

A long, haunting howl of dismay escapes my lips, perhaps not unlike the sound of ravenous, starving wolves howling, "oooOOOOOOooooooooh!" as they close in on your bloody trail as you crawl along, dressed in rags, wounded, bleeding, in the snow, at night, in the mountains, in a snow storm, with freezing sleet, and you realize that you can’t buy them off with your paper fiat money, but with a flash of True Mogambo Enlightenment (TME) that has come tragically too late, you realize that with the heft of a kilogram of gold in your hand, you can beat the living hell out of anything that comes near you that is metaphorically wolf-like in economic nature, or, with literal wolves, something spewing out .45 caliber bullets in a semi-auto fashion, putting us one more leg-up (as if we needed it!) on wolves of the literal kind, with politicians being of the metaphorical kind of ravenous wolves, thus mixing up literal with figurative, back and forth, up and down until you are in a panic, all confused and bewildered, wondering what’s real and what’s not, and your first instinct is to just start blasting, blasting, blasting until your trigger finger is bloody and cramped, and you manage to clear out a "Mogambo Dead Zone Of Safety (MDZOS)" all around you.

And you probably would have, too, if you had not remembered that you bought a lot of gold, silver and oil just to take care of situations like this! And it’s working perfectly! Ahhh!

But this thing about how the "FDIC’s list of ‘problem banks’ grew during the fourth quarter from 552 to 702" is, as I notice with alarm, not only a number that is a huge (almost 50% higher in just one quarter), a statistic which sets my Sensitive Mogambo Senses (SMS) tingling, some kind of Trend Of The Ugly Kind (TOTUK), to which I am particularly alert ever since I noticed that the entire freaking course of human history in the world, a world you call Earth, is the sad, stupid story of one stupid country after another borrowing money and getting into debt that they can’t repay, which is always resolved with inflation in prices, a bankruptcy of assets, and a ruinous war with somebody as we attempt to shift the cost of victim-hood from ourselves to foreigners so that there is, indeed, a free lunch for us.

Mr. Wiggin is not impressed with my penetrating analysis, which is in line with what everyone else agrees is pretty stupid and not worth reading or even admitting that they had even read, even in part, but I notice that he immediately takes up on my idea of "trend" that just I mentioned, and – surprise! – he finds, "Hmmm, let’s see. The number grew 27% in just one quarter. At this pace, every bank in the country will be on the problem list by the fourth quarter of 2012."

An involuntary "Yikes!" escapes my lips. That’s a trend!

I, as are most normal people who understand how this "economics thing" works, am horrified by all of this, and the only saving graces were that I had gold, I had silver, I had oil, and I had enough firepower – within reach! – to provide calming relief to an otherwise paranoid, screaming, hysterical man, such as myself, pumping adrenaline from every pore in his primal outrage at the sheer terror that is being created by the Federal Reserve.

For some reason, I can actually feel your scorn, as you deride what you think is just another paranoid gold-bug gun nut Loonie-Tunes weirdo since the Federal Reserve can just create all the money and credit that the FDIC needs, so why don’t I, as I asked my kids, just shut up?

With that, I thought it was all over, until he went on, "Another tidbit from the FDIC’s report: Bank lending last year dropped at the biggest clip since 1942", which was the year after we entered World War II, which seems important, but was a long time ago, and we don’t get to watch watching terrific war footage with things blowing up and – blam blam blam blam! – guns are firing! Things are on fire! It’s all exciting as hell!

Instead, we will note, much more soberly, that this is today we are talking about, not some ancient yesterday, and Americans are not the "good guys" bravely freeing Europe by destroying it all so that our industrial advantages are completely spared, but are, instead, the biggest bunch of feel-good, hyper-leftist morons that the world has ever seen where, despite a national emphasis on education, ample historical evidence, and the Constitution of the United States requiring that money be only of gold and silver, the citizens have allowed a pure fiat money and every kind of slimy flim-flammery that such unbridled money supply would allow, which was, as you would guess, anything you could imagine.

The bad news is actually beyond that of mere bank lending being down, since nobody (except governments) wants to borrow money, since nobody has the money to buy anything anybody makes, so why invest money to make something that nobody will buy. The worse news is that bank lending is how money is created.

Money is, by definition, being destroyed, so that there is less money around with which to pay debts.

You know, without me telling you, that all this ain’t good! And these are the times when you are glad that you are safely invested in gold, silver and oil, and the only thing you have to worry about is, for instance, the usual stuff of keeping an eye out for party-killing suspicious strangers who may know your wife or boss, checking for suspicious pods growing near where you sleep, and protecting yourself against vampires, werewolves, and other blood-suckers, which leads us back to politicians deficit-spending, which leads us back to the Federal Reserve creating more money, which leads us back to Buying Gold, silver and oil in fearful response, which leads me back to, "Whee! This investing stuff is easy!"

How best to Buy Gold today? Slash your costs and own the safest gold possible by using BullionVault

Source:Screaming Outrage at the FDIC

Copper, Gold End With Slight Gains (Fox News)

Thursday, March 11th, 2010

Copper, Gold End With Slight Gains

Source:Copper, Gold End With Slight Gains (Fox News)

Gold: How Much is Enough?

Thursday, March 11th, 2010

Five per cent…? Ten per cent…? Try nearer 20% says this four decades’ veteran…

The GOLD REPORT
recently caught up with John Embry, chief investment strategist at Sprott Asset Management, to get his thoughts on gold and Gold Mining stocks.

An industry expert in precious metals, John Embry has worked as portfolio management specialist for  more than 45 years; he’s simultaneously researched the gold sector for 30-plus of those years. He joined Sprott in 2003, after 15 years as Vice-President Equities at RBC Global Investment.

Here he tells the Gold Report about his outlook for strong Gold Price gains in 2010…

The Gold Report: John, in Investors Digest of Canada you recently said you’re expecting gold to gain another 30% this year…

John Embry: I would say at least 30%. I said that I thought it would be the best year to date. We’ve had nine years consecutive higher year-end prices and the best year in that span for a year’s return was 31%. I think this will be the year that we exceed it in this, the 10th year of the bull market.

TGR: Why is this year going to be the best year?

John Embry: I think we’re getting very close to the point when a greater proportion of the public realizes the degree of difficulty that sovereign debt is in. And at that point, when you can’t depend on your government paper as a safe haven, I think that fact puts gold in a much better light in more people’s eyes.

TGR: You might say the first leg down were the individuals who couldn’t pay their mortgages and that caused part of the ‘08 collapse. And now it looks like it’s the government…

John Embry: It’s very simple, actually. Private demand, as you know, was so weak that governments had to step in to maintain order in the economy and in so doing, they spent an enormous amount of money, at the same time that revenue streams fell because of the weakness in the private sector. Governments spent dramatically more money and the results are a budget deficit I never thought I’d see in my life. I’m shocked at the numbers in many places.

TGR: When you talk about gold, you’re talking about Gold Bullion. But how do you see the gold stocks? Do you think we’re going to have a pullback? Ian Gordon of Longwave Analytics and Richard Russell (Dow Theory) predict the Dow will go to 1000.

John Embry:
I don’t agree with them. As much as I love Richard Russell – he’s probably been as big an influence in my career as anyone – I don’t think that deflation is necessarily the outcome when you have a pure fiat currency system. I think the far greater risk is hyperinflation because I believe that these guys that are in control today have seen the depressionary ’30s, and they will move heaven and earth to prevent that outcome. And when you’ve got the capacity to create unlimited money, I believe you can do it. So I hear Gordon and Russell and I respect them, but I’m in the camp that thinks we’ll get hyperinflation first. We’ll eventually have to clean out the debt, but I think we go hyper before that.

TGR: So hyperinflation. Would that include stocks as well?

John Embry: I think stocks will do fine. They may have a violent correction first because a lot of people don’t know what the heck we’re talking about here. And when they see inflation mounting and economic conditions being less than ideal, they’ll sell their stocks. But the fact is that if you go back and look at any hyperinflationary environment anywhere, stocks did infinitely better than paper instruments. So precious metals first, stocks second.

TGR: When you’re talking about stocks, you’re not talking just about Gold Mining stocks…?

John Embry: No, I’m talking about good businesses. I’m not talking necessarily about banks and other stuff that’s more dubious, based all on paper, but businesses like breweries, for example. People are always going to drink beer and a good brewing company will do exceptionally well in the debased currency of whatever country it’s in.

TGR: So you think that we might have a sell-off and in that sell-off all equities, including gold stocks, would go down.

John Embry: Gold stocks, maybe. I believe the next time everything goes down, gold isn’t going down. And if that were to be the case, I think gold stocks might surprise. They’ve been awful. Given what the Gold Price has done, gold stocks, by and large, have been awful.

Well, the well-promoted ones and the odd good one have done okay, but across the whole list, it’s been pretty hard slog over the last three or four years, particularly 16 to 17 months ago when it we hit bottom. I thought they were going to zero.

So many of them are trading at less than they were back in November 2003, which was the real peak of the excitement in gold stocks, if you can imagine. Six and half years ago. The Gold Price has done nothing but go up in that time.

TGR: In this next cycle are you seeing better returns for producers or the juniors that have pounds in the ground?

John Embry: Oh, I think the juniors. The whole thing is a matter of confidence. They’ve got so much volatility in the Gold Price. You get a good thrust up and you got a violent correction and I think they’ve got so many people discouraged and going the wrong way on these gold stocks that right now the degree of confidence is very low. If I’m right and the Gold Price stages a dramatic breakout in the next 12 months – and I’m talking hundreds and hundreds of Dollars on the upside – then I think the confidence will return and people will seek an outlet in gold stocks because so many of them have been beaten up. More importantly, the overall market cap of all the gold stocks is really small in the context of all the money around.

TGR: What’s the seasonality of this year?

John Embry: I think that probably we may continue to wallow around here for maybe the better part of another month. Maybe not quite that long. But, historically, mid-March to mid-May has been a really good period. When I look at the fundamentals and everything that’s going on, I see no reason why it shouldn’t be a very good period this time. And there’s one other development. I don’t know whether it will come to fruition, but on March 25th the CFTC is going to be investigating position limits in gold and silver on the Comex futures market. And if they ever put any teeth into those things and kept these bullion banks from what they’re doing on the short side with their large positions, I think that could have a salutary impact on gold and silver prices.

They’re finally going to have to address this because there’s been so many complaints about the bizarre price action on the Comex in both gold and silver.

TGR: The International Monetary Fund is going to be selling some gold, and India stepped up earlier. What are your thoughts on that?

John Embry: The whole thing irritates me. The IMF has announced the sale of this gold 500 times and every time with the express purpose of knocking the price of gold down. It was interesting the last time when the Indians actually relieved them of over 200 tons because that was what basically vaulted the market from about $1,045, which the Indians paid, up to $1,225 in the space of less than a month. That has been followed by the third significant correction in the last three or four years.

I think we’ve seen the vast proportion of the correction and I think what may be one of the factors that could get this thing going again is when somebody does relieve the IMF of the gold, the 191 tonnes still to be sold.

There’s speculation that India might be prepared to go to the plate again because the Chinese have been reluctant to step up. Number one, I don’t think they want to be seen publicly doing it. They’d probably rather do it more clandestinely because they’ve got so much money to convert into hard assets. And, secondly, as somebody pointed out, the Chinese at least have a domestic supply of gold. They can buy all their domestic output to augment their reserves, where the Indians really don’t have that.

So I think the Indians conceivably have a bigger vested interest here in taking that IMF gold. And there’s also sort of the suggestion that the Chinese wouldn’t want to be seen to be paying more than the Indians did. So they’re reluctant to step up with the Gold Price some $50 higher currently than the Indians paid.

If gold really was a free market, if they were really prepared to sell it to anybody, I think I could name any number of institutions, organizations, individuals that would be more than glad to relieve them of it. It’s not much money. It’s $6 billion. They throw it around as if it’s a big deal. Heck, given the budget deficits in some of these countries, $6 billion is literally a piss in the ocean.

TGR: What did you think when George Soros came out and said that gold was a bubble?

John Embry: I wrote about that and I got it right. I was very pleased about that because some people got all upset. The people that were negative on gold thought this was great, brilliant George Soros doesn’t like gold. But if you read between the lines, if you read really what he said, he said gold is the ultimate bubble, but he didn’t say gold is currently the ultimate bubble. I believe that it will be the ultimate bubble. I think the Gold Price is going to go crazy and at that point I’d be worried. And then it came out after the fact that Soros had been a major buyer of gold for his funds in the fourth quarter. So who knows what he was doing? The fact is, depending how you interpreted his remark, he was speaking at Davos, which is a very mainstream event, and he said something that can be interpreted any number of ways.

TGR: And, again, I think the financial talking heads used it as the negative.

John Embry: Absolutely. The mainstream guys were all over it. The guys who have never like gold have been wrong all the way up and said, oh, my god, George Soros doesn’t like gold. But I think George Soros’ remarks were misinterpreted and if you saw what he was doing, not what he was saying, he was Buying Gold

TGR: Any last comments?

John Embry: The only comment I’d make is I really think things are sufficiently serious here in a financial or monetary debasement sense that everybody – and I have never been a table pounder – but I think every single person with a serious portfolio has got to have a reasonably significant exposure to precious metals. This isn’t something that’s just insurance for those who’ve got cold feet. This is something I think is a mainstream thing that people must have.

TGR: When you say a significant portion, what percentages are you thinking?

John Embry: I used to say 5% to 10% when it was just an insurance thing and the market was pretty sanguine. I say at least 20% now. I see the other assets as being less attractive. I wouldn’t buy a bond if you gifted me with the money to do it.

TGR: John, once again, I appreciate it.

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Source:Gold: How Much is Enough?