Precious Metals

Audio - There were some very interesting insights and we believe high net worth and institutional investors and indeed all listeners will get useful information with which to protect and grow their wealth.

We think the market may have gotten ahead of itself, accepting the narrative that the Fed will raise rates as many other countries ease. We believe the market is gradually realizing that the Fed is far less flexible than it hoped it would be, thus causing a re-pricing of expectations. We don't think this will necessarily change the Fed's "desire" to pursue an exit. This re-pricing of expectations may have profound implications for the U.S. dollar, and with it, the price of gold.

This. Will. Not. End. Well. As WSJ reports, "retailers such as Kmart and Office Depot this week are starting to roll out cards that give the recipients small amounts of stock in some of the country’s best-known companies." "I have always wanted to get into the stock market business, but I honestly don’t have the time to explore what’s going on in the market trends of the day"...

As Asia opened last night, gold and silver came under pressure (ahead of China's biggest Yuan strengthening since November 2014). As US re-awakens from Columbus Day vacation, it appears demand is back (and in heavy volume) for precious metals...

"It's really beginning to 'feel' close. The first major event could happen anytime now." The coming storm promises to be the largest of our lifetime. We shall all be affected by it. A few will profit from it. Some will be mildly negatively impacted; most will be hit hard, due to being unprepared.

“Tis the part of the wise man to keep himself today for tomorrow, and not venture all his eggs in one basket” - Cervantes in Don Quixote in 1605

The key to successful long term investing is diversification and owning a range of different quality assets.

Gold has been shown to enhance returns and to reduce overall volatility over the long term. This was clearly seen during the financial crisis when gold was one of the very few assets to surge in value.

“Capitalism is not primarily an incentive system but an information system.” Prices are the information. And the price of time itself is the single most valuable piece of information. Time, as we intuitively know, is money; they are two sides of the same coin. Mess with time and money, and you mess with everything else. Yet as with central planning in general, the central planning of either money, or time, cannot possibly work. Hayek warned the economics profession of precisely this in the 1970s. They didn’t listen, ensconced as they still remain within their interventionist Keynesian paradigm. Well that paradigm is about to be blown apart, time and money are about to return to the market, where they belong, and real, sustainable economic progress is about to restart once again.

Investors should hope for the best while making preparations for less benign scenarios. This can be achieved by reducing leverage and speculation and having a healthy allocation to physical precious metals in the safest vaults in the world.

Several days ago, when pointing out the record NYSE short-interest, we noted this move may simply mean the following: "a central bank intervenes, or a massive forced buy-in event occurs, and unleashes the mother of all short squeezes, sending the S&P500 to new all time highs." Today, we have confirmation that the rally has been precisely that: a massive short-covering squeeze, when Bank of America's Mike Hartnett looked at the latest weekly fund flow data and noted a "monster $53bn MMF inflows vs redemptions from equity ($4.3bn) & fixed income funds ($2.4bn)...rising cash levels indicate big risk rally (from intraday lows last week SPX +7.7%, EEM +13.5%, HYG +4.2%) driven primarily by short-covering rather than fresh risk-on."

In the real world, any casino (legal or otherwise) which refused to pay when the “house” lost would quickly be driven out of business

Precious metals are angrily bid this morning (even as copper and crude tumble) after the dismal US jobs data sent the USD reeling and raised expectations for moar QE down the line. Silver is up 5% on the day - the biggest daily jump since Dec 1st 2014 and gold is up 2.2% - its best day since April.

Having recently pointed out the surging premiums for physical gold and silver relative to the 'paper' prices spewed forth by the mainstream media, it will likely come as no surprise that, as Reuters reports, "silver [coin] demand is absolutely through the roof," according to the Perth Mint. Confirming the demand side is the U.S. Mint sold 14.26 million ounces of American Eagle silver coins in the third quarter, the highest on records going back to 1986. Dealers and mints trace the supply squeeze to a burst of buying by mom-and-pop investors in the United States, who scrambled to scoop up coins they considered to be at bargain levels after spot silver prices in early July sank to six-year lows.

What do Big Businesses do best?.....Corporate Blackmail

Most foreign countries have similar regulations concerning the import and export of gold bullion and collectible coins. These regulations tend to track U.S. rules closely, and generally, as long as people follow them, there isn’t much friction over international travel with precious metals. Recently, however, we’ve been hearing reports that some foreign countries are starting to ask more questions, and require more searches, when someone declares that they are transporting gold or other precious-metal coins.

This is an important story and shows how China and Russia are increasingly close and strong allies who are flexing their muscles and asserting themselves as rival superpowers to the U.S.