Precious Metals

UPDATE: Spot Gold $1426 (from $1564 highs Friday)

As Asia opens to the bloodbath that occurred in precious metals on Friday in the US, it would appear that more than a few traders got the 'tap on the shoulder'. Shanghai futures are limit-down and spot gold and silver prices are plunging once again as we suspect forced margin-calls and the raising of cash (to cover extreme variation margin - or capital reserves) needed in JGB positions, as we explained here. Liquidation is certainly the theme of the evening - investors are selling JGBs (6th day in a row of multiple-sigma moves in long-dated Japanese bonds 30Y +56bps off its post-BoJ lows at 1.60%!), selling Japanese stocks (Nikkei -128 pts, second biggest down day post-BoJ), selling US Treasuries (futures down), selling gold and silver (gold spot down over $100 from Friday's highs), and despite selling JPY early (retracing 30% of the weakness post-BoJ), JPY is practically unchanged (jerking lower only on the US futures open and Asian equity open) - it seems Mrs.Watanabe is struggling and unwinding some her excessively short JPY and long NKY positions... and post the China data (4-for-4 misses), everything is red - JGBs down, Japanese stocks down, US Stocks down, US Treasuries down, Gold and Silver down, Copper down, Oil down, Rubber futures limit down.

Mike believes that the monetary system will collapse under the weight of too many claims on a limited pool of sound money; and that we will witness the birth of a new monetary regime within the next ten years. What makes this moment in history unique is that all past monetary regime collapses have happened regionally. This is the first time in human history in which all the world's major currencies are collapsing together. Which is why he is so passionate about owning gold and silver. In his opinion, we will soon witness the greatest transfer of wealth ever seen, as countries worldwide realize they need to revert to monetary systems backed by sound money (i.e., the precious metals). Those acquiring gold and silver beforehand will not only preserve their wealth as existing fiat currencies are extinguished, but will see staggering increases in their purchasing power.

Getting a second passport is just part of a larger "permanent traveler" strategy. The ideal is to live in one place, have your citizenship in another, your banks and brokers in other jurisdictions, and your business dealings in yet others. That makes it very inconvenient for any one government to control you. You don't want all your eggs in one basket – that just makes it easier for them to grab them all. I understand it may not be easy for most people to structure their affairs that way. That's exactly why most serfs stayed serfs; it was hard and scary to think of anything other than what they were told they should do.

Gold may decline further to US$1,300-1,400/oz, but that will set up a significant buying opportunity.

Gold was Bitcoin'd (or Baumgartner'd) as it suffered its biggest daily drop since LTRO2 on 2/29/12. The JPY rallied over 1% - its biggest rise in 7 weeks. 10Y Treasuries had their best day in 7 weeks. Macro data was absymal. But it was evident that the only thing mattered was a new high close for the Dow - as we noted 10 minutes before the close:

EURUSD must ramp over 1.31 for green DJIA

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) April 12, 2013

And thanks to some help from the old ramp standbys - HYG and VIX - they nearly made it (but not quite) as the Dow ended -0.08 points rallying 75 points off the lows on the worst macro data day in months, with the EURUSD ramping just the right amount over 1.31.

It's been a few days since the once ubiquitous morning take-down in precious metals showed its face but this morning with the USD leaking only modestly higher and Treasuries notably bid, gold and silver are gapping down in a hurry. Gold (-2%) is back to the May 2012 lows (within $10 of July 2011 (pre-QE2) levels and silver (-3%) is testing down to recent lows also. Other commodities (like Oil and Copper) are also in pain this morning...

Soros’ yen “avalanche” would appear to have begun with the yen having fallen by 9.5% against gold in 5 trading days since last Thursday leading to record nominal highs in the yen at over 0.1577 million yen per ounce this morning.

The higher gold prices have led to a curious anomaly in Japan where the public has again been selling gold in cash for gold schemes, often due to being under financial pressure, while some Japanese investors and savers have diversified into gold coins and bars both of which have seen an increase in demand in recent days.

Now that the 3:30 pm pump has been exposed to the world, and having been priced in and frontran (such as yesterday) it changed to the 3:30 dump, algos are desperately searching for another daily calendar trading opportunity. It appears the opening of Europe and Japan for trading are just these two much needed "fundamental" catalysts. As the charts below show, it appears there is nothing more bullish for the two key carry pairs, the USDJPY and the EURUSD, than Japan opening at 8pm Eastern, and then Europe opening next, at 3:30 am Eastern.

Bitcoin has been all the rage lately. The stuff, or lack thereof, runs on peer-to-peer technology, is fully decentralized, has no patents, and is open source. Currently, there are almost 11 million bitcoin units in existence and the maximum amount of bitcoin units that will ever be created by the logic of its design are 21 million. While bitcoins are designed so that they cannot be hyperinflated in name, they certainly can be hyperinflated in substance. There is no doubt that bitcoin is a spontaneous answer to the monetary instability that we see all around us today. On one side of the pond people are worried about the glorified currency peg known as the Euro and on the other about the amount of damage that Bernanke is willing to inflict upon the world’s reserve currency. However, let us not become so enamored of an innovative stateless solution that we forget Austrian economics and hitch libertarianism’s wagon to something heading for a crash.

The 'down-up' streak is over, long live the next streak. Precious metals had a big day with Silver and Gold surging 1-2% (among the biggest moves in 7 months); Treasuries pushed higher in yield from the open but faded rapidly into the close to end unchanged ay 1.75%; Commodities in general were bid on the back (supposedly) of China's lower inflation print; IG credit was bid while HY credit (spreads not the HYG ETF) rolled over into the close. What was most evident was the total and utter failure of the 3:30pm Ramp - it seems our discussion of the farce last night brought a world of front-runners to the game and ruined the Algos day as instead rallying S&P 500 futures dropped 4 points in the last 30 minutes - this is the biggest 3:30-to-4:00 loss in six week (and 3rd biggest of year). The world was celebrating another new all-time high in the Dow and the S&P gave back half its gains to close +4 points; but the Dow Transports closed -0.3%, and the Russell 2000 (for so long Bernanke's policy tool) ended -0.23%.

Are bitcoins better than fiat currencies? Of course. Are they immune from banker manipulation? Possibly but the verdict is still out. Are BTCs sound money? No.

April 5th, 1933, FDR confiscated every gold coin, bar, or certificate and people had to turn in their gold to the Federal Government or else they would face a fine of $10,000 or 10 years in jail. That is about $179,000 in today’s money.  You were able to keep a small amount or some rare coins and those that did give up their gold received about $20/oz.  “Why would the government do that?” asks Ms. Steel.  They did this for the following reasons:

1. To prevent hoarding.
2. To devalue the dollar during the Great Depression.
3. The government set the gold price at $35/oz and pegged it to the dollar.

“But this could never happen again, right?” asks Ms. Steel. “Well tell that to Texas.” 

With every modestly positive datapoint being desperately clung to, now that even Goldman's Hatzius has once more thrown in the economic towel after proclaiming an economic renaissance in late 2012 just like he did in late 2010 only to issue a mea culpa a few months later (and just as we predicted - post coming up shortly), the key prerogative is to ignore the elephant in the room. That, of course, is that the JPY 1 quadrillion bond market had to be halted for the second day in a row as the Japanese capital markets are fast becoming a very big and sad joke. The resulting flight to safety from Japanese investors, who sense that their own bond market is on the verge of breaking down completely, has managed to send French and Belgian bonds to record lows, the Spanish 2 Year to sub 2%, the German 6 month bill negative in the primary market, the US 10/30 year constantly bid and so on. The immediate result is that the bond-equity disconnect continues to diverge until one day we may get negative 10 Year rates coupled with an all time high stock market. Gotta love the fake New Normal market, in which the Japanese penny stock market was up another 2.8% to well over 13,000 even as the Shanghai Composite plumbs ever redder territory for 2013 on fears the birdflu contagion will hurt the already struggling economy even more.

There's never been coordinated global money printing of the scale of today and it's likely to end badly. Here's how you can protect your investment portoflios from what's to come.

There's never been coordinated global money printing of the scale of today. It will end badly and investors need to prepare accordingly.