Africa=Instability...ie, nationalization of assets...poof, you're done. Even ASA, a closed end mutual fund
with their largest holdings in platinum mines is obligated to invest ~75% last time I checked into African stocks.
Ashanti Gold fields is a lesson in hedging. I don't like it when one owns a company that has a huge
% of gold in the ground sold at fixed prices. If gold makes a major move (they lose big and so do you if you are holding theirstock) I supsect it will be over a very short period of time, so I want personally to be fixed in my seat before the vehicle starts moving. I am totally upfront
about who I am on my profile, and fess up right off the bat that only 4.28% at today's close is in gold stocks
the rest being in 90 day T-bills at varying interests rates, lackluster but as safe as any paper money can
be. I look back fondly a couple of years ago when I made 250k over about 4 months in Qualcomm
and sold way too early..Ii could have quadrupled! that (ouch, that would have been a million bucks in 401k!!)
but the valuation of it and everything else I owned was getting ridiculous. I am old enough to remember
the '72-'74 period...there were serious people saying we had seen the end to "equities as we know
them" and of course it was nonsense, but Christ Almighty! QCOM at a pe of 390 or even GE at 40!
There still is a bubble in stocks, an energy crisis longterm, debt, debT, deBT, dEBT, and DEBT
and everybody who buys at these levels is taking more risk than I can sleep with. Incidentally I don't really
LIKE gold as an investment...it is pure paranoid defensive posture with some and probably soon to be more
of my money. Good luck with Africa
jim black
PS I am also old enough to remember when folks have been suckered into losing their asses in foreign
assets when the locals got pissed enough at Westerners (of course that can only mean us and whomever
in Europe we can pull along...right now it is only Tony Blair, but I digress and begin to sound my age) |
