'It just sits there doing nothing.' - well yes, and no, at the same time -
1. yes, gold is sitting there doing nothing in a very good way - it never goes up in value, it never goes down in value, it pays no interest, it carries no credit risk, it carries political risk only if another Rooseveldt comes along and then that wouldn't be gold's fault either would it
2. and no, gold is not just sitting there doing nothing - it is performing its function as a stable standard by which the price of all else is judged ... i refer you to Chapter 1, Verse 1, of the first volume of your La Filosofía Azteca -
'The value of gold never changes, by definition it cannot change; one troy ounce of fine gold is always precisely equal in value to one troy ounce of fine gold. Like, duh. Thusly, when the yet-to-be-converted non-azteca speak of 'the price of gold', they are merely exhibiting to the world their delusions in thinking that some other standard could exist, a standard in which gold could be 'priced'. From approximately the 1940s onward, this 'other standard' has most commonly been a construct called the 'US dollar', and not the limited edition collector's version of confederacy notes either, but a plain-green issue to whose production large factories are reputedly devoted, possibly a make-work project. In reality, the phenomenon to which these poor souls are referring is the tendency of this 'US dollar' to fluctuate in value, therefore what they really mean is 'the price of the US dollar' '
A cyber-currency backed by sharepaper, you suggest eh ... well everybody would want to make their own picks of companies in that case, wouldn't they ... selected by sector, perhaps ... i'll take a gold card, please -g- ... here are what are to my knowledge the four largest golds on the planet - ca.finance.yahoo.com
.. rounding off their market caps as posted there in USD, we have abx 8.9b, au 4.0b, nem 3.7b, gold 2.3b ... adds up to 18.9 billions US ... these four comprise roughly half of all gold company market cap in the world, i believe, there are many more companies but in the tail end of the list [my favourite part] individual companies go for very little, especially in the tail end [oooo, again!-g-] of this five-year gold bear
If it eases your mind any, Mqurice, my largest position is not a gold, not even in resources ... financial services i guess you'd call it, its largest subsidiary anyway .... but the majority of stocks in portfolio, nearly all, and the majority of value, are at this date in resources, principally sturdy little gold juniors with proven survival ability and in most cases proven reserves for which the market has yet to accord them a little value [or re-accord, in many cases] .... but something like eighty per cent of net worth in BC real estate, right across the Pacific from you, so not eager to see any kind of financial collapse or even a near-miss, i don't think we'll get one either ... neither will there come a new tech bubble right off imho, we'll just muddle on through for years in most sectors, some winners some losers, investors looking at valuation based on traditional fundamentals for a while mostly ... they abound in resources, imho, fwiw ... cheers |
