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

To: Enigma who wrote (56026)	7/10/2000 8:25:50 PM
From: Alex	Respond to of 116796

Drop in gold output By Gillian O'Connor Published: July 10 2000 21:44GMT \| Last Updated: July 10 2000 21:52GMT Gold production fell 2 per cent in first quarter of this year, compared with the last quarter of 1999. Paul Burton, editor of World Gold Analyst, which regularly surveys 50 companies accounting for around 65 per cent of world production, said that the March 2000 total - 12.12m ounces - is the lowest quarterly figure in almost two years. The reasons for the fall were the lower grades of ore treated by some mines plus some closures. The largest fall - of 6 per cent - came from US-based companies, and was primarily due to the 27 per cent drop at Freeport McMoRan's giant Grasberg copper/gold mine in Indonesia. Production costs also fell, by 2 per cent on a cash cost basis, although total costs were only down by 1 per cent. The South Africans had the highest cash costs at $228 per ounce, compared with just $160 for the Canadians. news.ft.com

To: Enigma who wrote (56026)	7/10/2000 8:40:48 PM
From: PAUL ROBERTSON	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 116796

Enigma, Commercials{producers} are 80-90%{volume and OI} of the market at any given time and are short roughly 80% of the time. Who might you ask are the commercials selling to? Hedge funds, floor traders-brokers etc... These figures are applicable to all commodity markets. Since they, as you guessed, rarely go long, it is not difficult to tell when they are covering their shorts, as is the case over the past week, as the open interest on the futures falls. If the physical market begins to get really tight, open interest should drop off the map until the price begins to rise and at the same time attracts specs. Once this begins, reading the OI becomes progressively more difficult. Now, as there is not a great deal of spec interest, the OI is quite easy to read. The drop in gold future OI is bullish. My personal feeling is that the public specs are so out of this market a final washout will not occur, just quiet bottoms until the specs of all sorts get more involved. A washout from higher levels is, however, not out of the question once the specs get more active. hope this helps, paul

To: Enigma who wrote (56026)	7/11/2000 9:08:12 AM
From: Rarebird	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 116796

< Your not reading my posts! ...however, I fail to see or remember when producers go long gold... Producers rarely go long gold..... I do read your posts. But the Producers do go long gold (at times) and there are methods where they indicate their bullishness: Producers can purchase shares of their own company, which is strongly bullish. They can also go long gold futures, and cover any outstanding hedges (i.e., cover short positions in gold futures). They can of course do more risky strategies like selling puts or buying calls on their own stock but they usually leave that to the high techie boys like Microsoft. We live in a sea of derivatives, Enigma, and many of the big producers or commercials are immersed in them.