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Strategies & Market Trends : The Epic American Credit and Bond Bubble Laboratory -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: ild who wrote (48940)	1/6/2006 4:04:22 PM
From: ild	Respond to of 110194

Date: Fri Jan 06 2006 15:41 trotsky (kitkat@GLD) ID#248269: Copyright © 2002 trotsky/Kitco Inc. All rights reserved well, the ETF's custodian is HSBC, which holds the physical in its vaults. due to the way the gold market operates, sometimes gold is stored at sub-custodians, but part of HSBC's duties is to see to it that gold held at sub-custodians is transferred as soon as is practicable to its own vaults. the system of holding gold in allocated accounts has worked without a hiccup ever since it's been established...there's no reason to suspect any hanky panky. the worst that could conceivably happen is that a sub-custodian goes bankrupt while some gold is stored there. however, i rate the probability of something untoward happening with gold held in allocated accounts at an LBMA member's vault as close to zero as it gets. short of London being levelled by an asteroid the gold is imo as safe as can be. Date: Fri Jan 06 2006 13:58 trotsky (flash, 13:01) ID#248269: in other words, China's economy is even bigger than hitherto thought. Date: Fri Jan 06 2006 12:56 trotsky (kitkat@Turk and GLD) ID#248269: Copyright © 2002 trotsky/Kitco Inc. All rights reserved as i've mentioned before, Turk has a strong personal motive for denigrating the gold ETF - namely that his own product ( goldmoney ) is a competitor of the fund. since the ETF holds allocated gold and even publishes the details of its holdings ( i.e. down to the individual numbers of the good delivery bars it holds ) , i think Turk is all wet on this one. does anybody really believe that institutions would back ETF shares with physical gold if they hadn't made 100% sure that the fund is kosher? one must always take these hobby conspiracists with a big pinch of salt imo. still waiting for that 'gold derivatives neutron bomb' or whatever they called it ( my guess is we'll wait forever ) . Date: Fri Jan 06 2006 12:43 trotsky (playwrightman@MNEAF) ID#248269: Copyright © 2002 trotsky/Kitco Inc. All rights reserved i actually don't deem this one extremely speculative. the reason is that the San Jose project will no doubt get developed ( Hochschildt's involvement in this project is by itself telling as it were ) , and as far as i can tell from the drill results they have published thus far, this one's a gift that will keep giving. high grade narrow vein systems close to surface are usually good cash cows, as they tend to be not as input cost sensitive as e.g. large open pit low grade operations. with the money MNEAF stands to make from San Jose it can explore its many other land holdings in Argentina, some of which look quite promising. McEwen's involvement doesn't hurt of course. Date: Fri Jan 06 2006 12:30 trotsky (ellix@the venerable Russell) ID#248269: Copyright © 2002 trotsky/Kitco Inc. All rights reserved unfortunately technical stuff like the 50% principle only works with nominal prices. for some reason the psychology of market participants ( or the observer-participant feedback loop if you prefer, the term Bob Bronson likes to use ) does not take into account the erosion of the currency by inflation. this is not to say that it doesn't matter, only that it has no influence on technical analysis theory and practice. a good example would be crude oil's busting of the $40 level, a level that had stood unviolated since 1980, but was tested on 3 occasions thereafter. the market's elephant memory for nominal price highs was proven in 1990, when on the eve of Gulf War 1, crude rose exactly to $40 before falling back. when this level finally gave way, we heard a lot of talk about how it wasn't really all that high when measured in real terms. true, but from a technical perspective, it was the violation of the 25 year old nominal price high that foretold much bigger price gains to follow. gold busting through first the high of 1996, and recently the high of 1983/87 is a similarly important event. and no doubt the 50% level mentioned by Russell is once again a major milestone worth watching. Date: Fri Jan 06 2006 11:54 trotsky (@BGO) ID#248269: Copyright © 2002 trotsky/Kitco Inc. All rights reserved those shorts must be smarting. this is one of the most heavily shorted stocks on the TSE, and there's probably an element of covering adding to the gains after the recent break-out. next major resistance in the 3.75 area. Date: Fri Jan 06 2006 11:43 trotsky (Dave D.@Ivanhoe) ID#248269: Copyright © 2002 trotsky/Kitco Inc. All rights reserved to be sure, Ivanhoe's Mongolian deposit has impressive grades ad even more impressive widths. but as i see it, there's a major problem with it, and that's the capital cost involved in getting it developed. the drawback of the deposit is its depth. most of it it some 900 metres to a kilometer below surface. by contrast, if a copper porphyry has say grades between 0.4 to 0.5% and lies close to surface, it is usually well worth developing. e.g. Newmont's Indonesian copper mine has somewhere between 0.35-0.45% if i recall correctly. in short, whether Pan's copper deposit grades are sufficient to make it economic mostly depends on how easily accessible the deposit is.