Archive - Jan 2011

You may feel that this is an odd time to write a piece about one of the riskiest sectors in the precious metal investment class, especially as gold and silver prices continue to plummet in the futures markets but the proper time to buy, of course, is when fear is high and prices are low.

RANsquawk European Morning Briefing - Stocks, Bonds, FX – 25/01/11

Retail traders are notoriously wrong at picking market direction/tops and bottoms. Most retail traders very naturally seem to adopt a counter-trend stance and this offers very accurate signals for individuals looking to trade against this group. This daily report is designed to help traders focus their efforts on higher probability pairs.

A visual interpretation...

The poker game ends when one person gets all the chips ...

As we explained in our previous article Seeking an interest rate solution, real interest rates are negative and nominal short term interest rates are near zero. That is not healthy. What is a healthy interest rate? My view is that short term rates should be above 1% to make them positive and closer to 2%. It has caused consumer credit to contract. Of course, banks would argue that a healthy spread is the key to a healthy banking sector. Raising the rate would likely flatten the yield curve. What gives?

Risk was back on to start the week today, with $25b in Fed liquidity helping the campaign. Though safe havens saw some inflows early in the day after reports of a terrorist bombing at Moscow’s Domodedovo Airport (killing 35 and reportedly linked to Caucasus separatists), the dip was bought with semiconductors and alternative energy stocks leading the way.

Global Wheat, China's drought and Historical Famine's

In what is merely the latest act in the neverending play of fraud and corruption, the bipartisan panel appointed by Congress to investigate the financial crisis has concluded that several financial industry figures appear to have broken the law and has referred multiple cases to state or federal authorities for potential prosecution reports the Huffington Post. "The sources, who spoke on condition they not be named, declined to identify the people implicated or the names of their institutions. But they characterized the panel's decision to make referrals to prosecutors as a significant escalation in the government's response to the financial crisis." Well, it would be so easy to believe that this is not merely the latest political attempt at cowardly subterfuge before their Wall Street overlords by the corrupt Congressional puppets if this same ploy had worked out a little better the last time, oh, precisely zero bankers were thrown in jail. That said, the semi-informed public who sees massive fraud and endless lies now on a daily basis will get more disclosure on Thursday when the "final report" is expected to be released. Said semi-informed people will be shortly disappointed when nothing at all comes out of this. As for the 99% of the less than semi-informed US population, well, they couldn't care less.

Let's see what Ben says on this Wednesday.

November 2008: the situation was dire. But was it ever really an apocalypse? We were all conditioned to think that without government intervention a waking hellscape of crappiness awaited. And it continues. Over and over, we are told of being just a step away from US government default if someone dares fiscal sensibility. Or some variation of bank implosion catastrophe, or everyone going into foreclosure immediately, or something else equally horrible. These outcomes are debatable, and they deserve to be debated. Everything that happens in the future is debatable. What is not debatable is that we continue to be threatened with imminent doom if politicos don’t get what they want. I’m not a believer in global conspiracy theories, much less a perpetual ruling class, but I am a believer that democracies are absolutely awash with propaganda, veiled threats, and fear-mongering. Why? Fear is where the power is.

Insider probe might impact some pension funds, but most are still pumping billions into hedge funds and that's one reason why risk assets are being bid up....

Russia has just announced it would proceed with price caps on a variety of foodstuffs, from buckwheat, to potatoes, assorted fruits and vegetables and all other commodities it deems "socially important" accoding to Russian newspaper gazeta.ru. And so the big margin crunch goes up several orders of magnitude, as companies, desperate to pass through surging input costs, but prohibited from raising selling prices, are forced to eliminate any and all overhead, most certainly including such trivialities as labor, in order to stay in business. More importantly, experts now predict that full year inflation in Russia will hit double digits. Just in the first 17 days of January, inflation hit 1.4%, or 9% annualized (according to gazeta... our calculation indicates a notably higher number but readers get the idea). Luckily, Russia does realize just how futile this task of price controls is: "as soon as we introduce price controls, once a deficit, the product disappears from the market, followed by an even higher rise in prices on the shadow, not covered by official supervision, market." And so a vicious circle in which high prices beget even higher prices begins. But don't worry - this could never happen in the US: see Americans only eat gold and their iPods. There is therefore massive slack in the food vertical, and, furthermore, as Steve Liesman explains so well today, a 100% rise in the price of wheat would only translate to a 10% hike in the price of bread. What happens to the other 90% (which incidentally annihilates the producer's margin but Steve didn't get to page two in that particular Inflation for Dummies book), is apparently unclear to the CNBC head economist.

It seems that not a day passes by without some major dealer running out of a precious metal in inventory. Last Thursday when we presented the most recent inventory at Scotia Mocatta (alongside the ongoing firesale at the US Mint where incidentally total silver sales in January are now at a fresh all time record 4,724,000 ounces), one of the ten market-making members of the London Bullion Market Association and one of only 5 banks to participate in the London gold fixing, we indicated that of all silver bar related products, the bank only had the 1kg Valcambi silver bar, that was listed 3 weeks ago, in stock. As of today, this object is no longer in inventory even at the unit price of CAD$980.11. Reader S. presents the two logical alternative for what is happening: "This can only conclude two things: 1. They purchased a limited amount (due to low supplies) and was sold off quickly. 2. They purchased a large amount and was sold off due to major purchases." Alternatively, the bank now has the 100 oz silver bar back in stock. We will keep tabs on how long before this also becomes "sold out." Our question is whether the ongoing shortage at most dealers, despite the so-called drubbing in PM prices, is nothing but definitive evidence that just like in stocks, precious metal investors are merely using every drop in prices as nothing more than a chance to "buy the fucking (fisical) dip"?

One of the oddest things about investment psychology is that people only want to load up on an asset class when it’s soaring. Rarely do they view a collapse as a good thing. In some cases, this mentality is beneficial (buying Tech stocks in 2001 when they began to collapse after soaring would have been a HORRENDOUS move). However, in the case of Gold and Silver today, a collapse right now would be absolutely FANTASTIC for investors.