Dear Friend of GATA and Gold:
  Can you handle even more encouragement tonight? If so,  here's a bulletin posted at the web site of the Tocqueville  Fund, www.tocqueville.com, by John Hathaway, whose  masterful essay, "The Golden Pyramid," defined and  predicted the gold market a few weeks ago.
  Please post this as seems useful.
  CHRIS POWELL, Secretary Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee Inc.
  * * *
  By John Hathaway  www.Tocqueville.com
  September 24, 1999 
  The gold market has bottomed! 
  We are in the early stages of a short squeeze. 
  The short interest was hoping that the gold market  would collapse after the recent UK gold auction, as it  did in early July. But the bids were strong and the  market traded higher. 
  In the minds of the shorts, this might have been their  last hope to get out. 
  I estimate the speculative short interest in the New  York macro hedge funds alone to be at least 1,000 tons  and possibly 75 percent more. As I just wrote in "The  Golden Pyramid," there will be no easy way out for  these speculators because there is simply no physical  gold with which to cover. The pool of liquidity  supplied by central bank leasing is frozen until well  into the new year. 
  Meanwhile, the stock market appears to be entering a  bear phase, with a confirmed Dow Theory sell signal  achieved yesterday. Look for a painful time for run of  the mill equities. 
  Gold and gold shares should begin to attract investment  demand at the same time shorts are unable to cover. The  situation has the makings of a huge rally. 
  Please post this as seems useful.
  CHRIS POWELL, Secretary Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee Inc.
  * * *
  A technical take on -- oh no! -- gold 
  By Thom Calandra CBS MarketWatch 
  SAN FRANCISCO (CBS.MW) -- I ran into technical analyst  Mike Hurley at www.eoffering.com the other day. He's  got some news for the bugs -- the gold bugs. 
  Hurley scans charts for investment opportunities, then  publishes his findings at the San Francisco investment  bank's Web site. Hurley has "sizing up the technicals"  for 15 years at various San Francisco investment banks  and research firms. One-year: XAU gold index and BKX  bank index 
  Hurley was taking a look at the Philadelphia Gold and  Silver Index (XAU), a collection of the largest North  American gold companies. And why not? That big London  gold auction this week -- the second by the Bank of  England -- was more than eight times over-subscribed. 
  Gold prices, while in the dumps, have responded well to  the British central bank's firesale of the precious  metal. Gold sold for more than $270 an ounce in New  York futures trading on Friday. That's the active gold  contract's highest point since June 8. 
  Hurley sees "accumulation" in some gold stocks this  summer and now autumn. That means that Wall Street  institutions look like they are willing to buy the  stocks in increasingly large portions -- and on  upticks. That hasn't happened in a long, long time. 
  The so-called XAU gold and silver index, meanwhile, has  a chart that intrigues Hurley. 
  "The XAU looks extremely positive in its own right and  may be forming what technicians call a saucer bottom, a  pattern commonly found at major lows," he says. 
  Gold stocks such as Newmont Mining and Barrick Gold   often make sharp moves that are tied to the price of  the metal. Nothing new there. Hurley goes a step  further and contrasts the XAU with the New York Stock  Exchange's Financial Index of bank stocks. Financial  stocks generally lead the U.S. stock market up -- or  down. And gold stocks generally do the opposite of  financial stocks. 
  These days, the gold index and the bank index are going  their separate ways -- only the gold chart looks like  it's rising and the bank index looks like it's falling.  That means some investors might see trouble ahead for  the broad market -- for whatever reason (that's another  column, folks). 
  "Investors and traders seeking a hedge against a  stronger-than expected-economy and/or Y2K turmoil may  now be seeing the type of investment entry that rarely  comes along," Hurley says. 
  That would be gold. The yellow metal that has lost lots  of investors lots of money in the 1990s. Unless they  were short-selling the stuff. 
  Enough said. 
  -END- |