Posted on 04/04/2012 7:21:42 PM PDT by RC one
NEW YORK — The price of gold, which has climbed for years like a blood pressure reading for anxious investors, plunged Wednesday to its lowest level in three months.
Gold fell almost $58 to $1,614 per ounce. It has declined 15 percent since September, when it hit a peak of $1,907. It had more than doubled from the financial crisis three years earlier.
The decline Wednesday came on an ugly day in the stock market. The Dow Jones industrial average lost 125 points — a day that last year probably would have caused fearful investors to buy gold as a protective investment.
"It's difficult to forecast, but I think the gold bull market is over," said Cetin Ciner, a professor of finance at the University of North Carolina-Wilmington. He likened the surge in gold to dot-com stocks before they collapsed.
(Excerpt) Read more at cbsnews.com ...
I have been buying silver and copper coins and bullion for my collection. Long term in the next ten years or so, we all know. How this ends.
The problem with gold is it is an expensive hobby item (jewelry, coins, etc.). Once all the easily influenced buyers have exhausted their disposable income buying it at its relative tops it has no where to go but down again, until another promotion resumes. As long as women want it in jewelry it should keep pace with inflation but it is not a necessity.
Silver/copper/gold coins are a good investment, although it seems the market is small. Maybe because people don't have money to spend.
I found a great site that charge barely 2 dollars over spot for coins and I add it as I have other assets.
I like silver more than gold for the sole reason being that silver has more uses than gold.
gold have the hypnotic effect on les femmes, something that cannot be said of silver.
Gold seems to be coupled with the stock market for now. We are still seeing a lot of wealth destruction in this country as evidenced by home foreclosures, stagnant housing prices, stagnant wages with rising prices of staples such as food and energy. Our current environment of wealth
destruction is also depressing gold. However, gold has historically performed well even in the most dire times such as the Dark Ages. There is simply too much paper out there that will eventually have to be reconciled with something of value. But what will do the reconciling? A barrel of oil? Farmland? The company with the latest and greatest gadget, that is supplanted by the company with the latest and greatest gadget? Some investments are hard to liquidate and others are difficult to predict. Bet on the historical record which has been precious metals.
The other strategy is to bet against the dollar with long term treasury shorts, TBT
Only an idiot would believe that inflation is under control. It hasn’t even started yet. When inflation is over 20% Holders of gold and silver will think about selling. That would be when silver is over $100 and gold is near $5000. Yes it sounds impossible but so did $1900.
If and when the economy heats up the inflation will go to the moon faster than a Gingrich colony. Our economy is sick, very, very sick.
Capital gains, estate taxes. Gold is a winner with the emerging underground economy. If I am on my deathbed, I can still slide some gold pieces into my kids hands w/o them paying estate tax. Want to go on Medicaid or other government assistance, slowly convert your cash to gold at a gold show.
If BO is in there again, you know that he will try to shut down gold and silver dealers for this reason.
“The problem with gold is it is an expensive hobby item...”
With respect, I believe this is a parochial view. This does not account for the idea that there are thousands of Chinese, and Indians who have massive cultural involvement with gold and newfound wealth from selling us their crap for so long. Prior to the recent era, there was no way for them to participate in paper markets (which are paper markets, yes, but are not insignificant elements in the global pricing scheme) There’s in essence a whole new world of investors and (for whatever reason) holders of gold and PMs around the world that did not exist before the current era.
Nobody can predict the future. Banks sold kilotons of gold at the $275-$350 bottom ten or so years ago. Word is that they are buying it again, but media reports mean utterly nothing and are typically misdirection. Gold will always have some appeal. It takes a lot of effort and energy to extract it from the ground. This was actually far more massively so for silver circa Y2K. At that time, even though I liked silver but was agnostic about it, it struck me that one could not extract silver from the ground, smelt it, purify and assay it, and strike it into a coin or ingot for $5 or $6 or $7. It wan’t a fetish item...it was simply an item that was selling below its cost of production.
For the moment, I think silver is fully priced at $30.
I think there is an average world price to produce gold from ore. Goldcorp has some mines that produce $130 gold and $300 gold. Those are extreme outliers. My suspicion is that the avg world production price for gold is in the $600 range.
http://www.virtualmetals.co.uk/pdf/ABNGCQ111.pdf
This is a 2011 report. With higher fuel costs, this could be closer to $700.
So gold could maybe decline to $1000-$1200 in a worst case scenario. Hard to say. Meanwhile world markets appear to be entirely dependent upon the fabrication of more money from central bank sources (the inflation argument)
By the time gold hits $5000 or $6000 like the big dudes say, life will be incredibly different from how it is now. I’ve heard all the arguments, I don’t subscribe religiously to any of them. I think of this as only one dynamic: When I buy gold or lettuce or a hamburger with my green cash, I am expressing a preference. I’d rather have a hamburger than my money. Nobody has to own gold, but not all people will be at the bottom of the economic ladder, and, the people at that economic stratum never did buy gold other than one-time purchases of jewelry and the like.
I agree with 'sten' in post #6.
You need to ween yourself off of the DNC kool-aid that you apparently are guzzling by the gallons.
Fiat currency has most of the attributes of money, but it does not act as a store of value. After a few years a dollar bill has only a fraction of its original buying power. However an oz of Gold from (e.g.) the time of the Incas retains its buying power.
Something that has the attributes of money is valuable because it has those attributes. Would-be barterers can use money to overcome the otherwise insuperable problem of discovering a Coincidence_of_wants .
Trade requires money. Let's examine this vital function of money with respect to the coincidence of wants:
Chicken farm example:
You run a chicken farm, and you need to buy a great many things to keep your farm and family going.
In a given month you need - for instance - to buy chicken feed, to hire someone to repair your generator, to buy a nailgun to allow you to mend chicken barn #9, to hire a midwife to help give birth to your widowed daughter’s baby, to buy milk and bacon - and so on.
Some of these resources will be buyable with chickens or eggs. And some of them will not - there's no coincidence of wants if the midwife or the nailgun owner don't want chicken meat or eggs.
But all or most of these resources will be buyable with money - with Gold or Silver. Because offering money in a transaction vastly improves the chance of a coincidence of wants
Chicken farm example - continued:
You’ve had a successful month at the farm, and you now have loads of chicken meat and/or eggs to sell.
100 people line up to buy what you’ve got.
* 50 of them have horribly devalued fiat money, food-stamps and a bad attitude
* 40 of them have plans for barter - some of which are better than others. One is willing to work on your farm for food: another is willing to sell you their body, another has a stack of AA duracell batteries, another has some miniature bottles of scotch - and so on, with dozens of variations. You have to gauge each transaction on its own merits - an exhausting process - and half of the barter offers are simply going to be unworkable.
* 10 of them have Gold and/or Silver.
Which customers will you prefer selling your produce to? They all want what you've got - but do you want what they've got? Again: real money vastly increases the chance of a coincidence of wants.
Only Gold and Silver fulfill all of the prerequisites of money. This gives them inherent value - useful (for instance) in a survival situation.
(Of course Fiat currency can also be used to run a chicken farm - but historically it breaks down the moment that price inflation reaches ~50% a month).
Hope this was helpful.
The Nightmare German Inflation
One day everything was fine.
The next day hell was unleashed
http://www.usagold.com/germannightmare.html
With $16 trillion in debt now, no prospect of staunching further accumulation and already $100 trillion in off books unfunded liabilities The BenBernank has no way out but to inflate. Problem is, the banksters, keynesians and politicians have all become addicted to debt, the “painless” tax. They will fight tooth and claw to keep gold from rising but it will, it must. As has been said, buy the dips.
[ You need to ween yourself off of the DNC kool-aid that you apparently are guzzling by the gallons. ]
Romney-Aid is not KOOL.. to believe a Massachusetts liberal is a conservative is brain washing not thirst quenching..
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