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Gold/Mining/Energy : Gold Price Monitor -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Eashoa' M'sheekha who wrote (49356)	2/19/2000 4:26:00 PM
From: Eashoa' M'sheekha	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 116753

Plenty of reasons to sell U.S. investors get nervous ahead of the long weekend William Hanley Financial Post A 300-point decline in the Dow Jones industrial average isn't what it used to be: It translates into an average loss of a couple of bucks on each of the 30 blue-chip stocks. And indeed, when the Dow was off more than 300 points around 3:20 ET yesterday and threatening to fall through 10,200, not even all heck was about to break loose. The retreat had been orderly because no one was particularly shocked that the Dow and even the Nasdaq composite were heading south. As it happened, a seven-minute trading halt in the Standard & Poor's 500 futures market when the contract hit the 35-point limit down helped to give traders some breathing room and the cash markets stabilized somewhat, with the Dow finally closing off 295. But if you were looking for reasons to sell, there were plenty enough: - By general consensus, technology stocks are overbought, some super-speculative issues trading at ludicrous prices. - Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan had warned investors on Thursday that more interest rate increases are likely, which is not good news for equity prices. - The 30-year treasury bond price rose for the fourth straight week, which has taken some liquidity out of stocks. - It's the Presidents' Day long weekend in the U.S., so many traders don't want to go into the three-day break holding stock. - The technical glitch at Nasdaq did nothing to help the tone of the day. It will be interesting to see how the Canadian market does flying solo on Monday. The Toronto Stock Exchange 300 composite fell 168 points yesterday, but it is still up 10.5% on the year while the Dow is down 11.1% in correction territory. Yet the TSE 300 is suffering from the same bad breadth that is plaguing U.S. markets. Only four of the TSE's 14 sectors are up this year. Only five of the Dow's 30 stocks are ahead and just 11 of the S&P's 89 sectors have gains. As Toronto-based trader Steven Nowack says: "This market is the emperor with no clothes market. What happens when people realize that the emperor has no clothes?" Nowack is betting that gold is going to come shining through all the financial market turmoil. To have and have not: It may be simplistic to say the hot-money technology stocks have been sucking cash and the life out of the stone-cold old-line issues. But that about sums it up for us and examples of this two-tiered have and have-not market abound. Take the differing tales of Sears, Roebuck & Co. (S/NYSE), which finds itself tossed out of the Dow and into the bargain basement of the stock market, and Avanex Corp. (AVNX/NASDAQ), which had revenue of about $500,000 (all in U.S. dollars) in the latest fiscal year ended June 30. Sears had sales of about $40-billion in 1999, sports a forward price-to-earnings ratio of less than 7:1 and market capitalization of $10-billion. Avanex has a market cap of $11.8-billion and a price-to-sales ratio of 6,700:1. Sears is basically a department-store chain. Avanex, brought to our attention by Bloomberg News columnist John Dorfman, makes photonic processors, which increase the capacity of fibre-optic cable networks. Enough said. Welcome to the club: Of the 12 stocks that joined the TSE 300 yesterday in the annual revision of the index, 11 fell on the day -- a move that was not unexpected by index specialists. The shares had been bid up to artificially high prices at the close on Thursday, a specialist explains, because index clients benchmark the stocks at that closing price. Conversely, many of the 12 stocks pushed out of the TSE 300 rose because they had been oversold going into the close on Thursday. Overall, of course, inclusion in the TSE 300, which is still the Canadian market benchmark of performance, is a positive for a stock. When the next revisions are made due to mergers and acquisitions knocking out stocks such as Donohue Inc., Teleglobe Inc. and, say, Newbridge Networks Corp., expect to see some of the new technology high-flyers such as Wi-LAN Inc., 724 Solutions Inc., Informission Inc. and Creo Products Inc. moving up and giving the index even more volatility and a bigger industrial products subindex weighting.

To: Eashoa' M'sheekha who wrote (49356)	2/20/2000 1:45:00 PM
From: Alex	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 116753

Gold producers seen changing hedge profile-analysts DUBAI, Feb 20 (Reuters) - Gold producers are likely to make changes to the way they hedge as well as cutting back positions, but the process will not disappear altogether, bankers and analysts said on Sunday. "I am anticipating a less complex but longer-dated hedge book to begin emerging in the near future. Thus the profile, rather than mere hedging volumes, could well change," Jessica Cross, director at Virtual Metals, told a London Bullion Market Association meeting in the regional gold trading hub of Dubai. Gold producers have traditionally been active hedgers, protecting themselves against possible falls in prices by selling future production forward at a fixed price. But if the price of gold rises, as it has in recent months, this can backfire. "Producers attitudes towards hedging may be changing...and shareholder pressure post-Ashanti is having an impact," Philip Klapwijk, managing director of Gold Fields Mineral Services, said. Ghanaian mining company Ashanti Goldfields Co Ltd is suffering financial problems after it was caught out by spike up in gold prices last September. It was rescued from collapse last week after agreeing a deal with the Ghanaian government, its bankers, its major shareholder and dissident investors after two days of talks. In recent weeks, some major producers have already said they intend to cut back their hedge positions -- a move which could result in less metal on the market and push up prices. BUYBACKS CHANGE GOLD MARKET MOOD "Gold producer buybacks have changed sentiment for the moment," said LBMA Chairman Martin Stokes. International spot gold was last traded at $304.00/5.50 a troy ounce. "Positions contracted quite substantially in the last quarter of last year and much the same has happened in the first quarter of this year," Klapwijk said. "But gold won't stay above $300 if producers turn around and start hedging again," he added. Cross said gold producers were now extremely wary of the way in which derivatives are created, marketed, priced and then later, managed. But she did not envisage hedging practices disappearing altogether. Instead, she said she saw a renaissance of hedge programmes dominated by simpler products, rather than the more exotic instruments favoured in the past. "I also expect that it is going to become more difficult for the producers to secure the gold prices that command a markedly substantial premium over spot," Cross told the conference. Analysts said that despite the recent announcements of producers reducing or closing forward sales, hedging would remain a significant factor on the gold market. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- canoe.ca