Gold

Gold-Bull Breakout Potential

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By Adam Hamilton – Re-Blogged From Gold Eagle

Gold has faded from interest in the past couple months, overshadowed by the monster stock-market rally.  But gold has been consolidating high, quietly basing before its next challenge to major $1350 bull-market resistance.  A decisive breakout above will really catch investors’ attention, greatly improving sentiment and driving major capital inflows.  With gold-futures speculators not very long yet, plenty of buying power exists.

Last August gold was pummeled to a 19.3-month low near $1174 by extreme all-time-record short selling in gold futures.  The speculators trading these derivatives command a wildly-disproportional influence on short-term gold price action, especially when investors aren’t buying.  Gold-futures trading bullies gold’s price around considerably to majorly, which can really distort psychology surrounding the gold market.

The main reason is the incredible leverage inherent in gold futures.  This week the maintenance margin required to trade a single 100-troy-ounce gold-futures contract is just $3400.  That’s the minimum cash traders have to keep in their accounts.  Yet at the recent $1300 gold price, each contract controls gold worth $130,000.  So gold-futures speculators are legally allowed to run extreme leverage up to 38.2x!

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Straws In The Wind

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By Alasdair Macleod – Re-Blogged From Gold Eagle

Life is full of mysteries. Each mystery is like a straw in the wind, which individually means little, but tempting us to speculate there’s a greater meaning behind it all. Yes, there is a far greater game in play, taking Kipling’s aphorism to a higher level.

One of those straws is Russia’s continuing accumulation of gold reserves. Financial pundits tell us that this is to avoid being beholden to the US dollar, and undoubtedly there is truth in it. But why gold? Here, the pundits are silent. There is an answer, and that is Russia understands in principal the virtues of sound money relative to possession of another country’s paper promises. Hence, they sell dollars and buy gold.

But Russia is now going a step further. Izvestia reported the Russian Finance Ministry is considering abolition of VAT on private purchases of gold bullion. We read that this could generate private Russian annual demand of between fifty and a hundred tonnes. More importantly, it paves the way for gold to circulate in Russia as money.

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Sprout-less Gold Now Tier 1 Capital

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By Rick Mills – Re-Blogged From Gold Eagle

Gold Is Often Criticized By Wall Street As Being Kind Of A Useless Investment.

Institutional investors tend to prefer investments that are thought to contain the potential for growth, growth = sprouts. An investment has to produce a growing revenue stream – if it doesn’t grow it doesn’t compound. Gold is rejected as an investment because it doesn’t produce sprouts, meaning the steady income and systematic growth so sought after by institutional investors just isn’t there.

But gold performs two jobs that fiat currencies, or any other financial innovation, cannot do; gold acts as a safe haven in times of turmoil. Indeed, gold’s status as store of value, as money, the only currency available when yours is worthless, has come into play with respect to the drama that has been unfolding in Venezuela over the last couple of years. Hyperinflation and shortages of basic foods and medicine have led to a political crisis.

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Russia Dumps U.S. Dollars

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By Mark O’Byrne – Re-Blogged From Gold Eagle

(Bloomberg) — Vladimir Putin’s quest to break Russia’s reliance on the U.S. dollar has set off a literal gold rush. Within the span of a decade, the country quadrupled its bullion reserves, and 2018 marked the most ambitious year yet.

And the pace is keeping up so far this year. Data from the central bank show that holdings rose by 1 million ounces in February, the most since November.

The data shows that Russia is making rapid progress in its effort to diversify away from American assets. Analysts, who have coined the term de-dollarization, speculate about the global economic impacts if more countries adopt a similar philosophy and what it could mean for the dollar’s desirability compared with other assets, such as gold or the Chinese yuan.

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What Ballooning Corporate Debt Means for Investors

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By Frank Holmes – Re-Blogged From Gold Eagle

Few people know the risks in today’s economy and marketplace as much as David Rosenberg, chief economist and strategist at Canadian wealth management firm Gluskin Sheff & Associates. For years he’s educated investors with his popular “Breakfast with Dave” newsletter, which you can subscribe to here. He’s also a regular contributor to the Globe and Mail and the Financial Post.

Considered by many to be a Wall Street permabear, Rosenberg successfully predicted the 2007-2008 financial crisis.

Now he’s predicting another recession to make landfall as soon as the second half of this year. Why? In short, the Fed has been too aggressive tightening liquidity at a time when corporate debt is at an all-time high. What’s more, the Trump administration has already enacted fiscal stimulus in the form of tax reform, which has historically been reserved for times of economic turmoil, not expansion.

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West Virginia Joins Growing Sound Money Movement

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By JP Cortez – Re-Blogged From Gold Eagle

Six Other States Now Weighing Their Own Bills to End Taxes on Gold And Silver.

Before the ink could even dry on West Virginia Governor Jim Justice’s signature on a repeal of sales taxation on gold, silver, platinum, and palladium bullion and coins, legislators in Wisconsin and Maine introduced similar measures in their own states.

All told, 39 states have now reduced or eliminated sales taxes on the monetary metals, and Wisconsin, Maine, Kansas, Arkansas, Minnesota, and Tennessee are all actively considering bills of their own this month.

West Virginia’s Senate Bill 502 enjoyed tremendous popularity, passing through the State Senate unanimously before passing out of the House 90-9. Starting July 1, investors, savers, and small businesses in the state are no longer required to pay sales and use tax on the exchange of dollars for the monetary metals.

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GDP-B Doesn’t Cut It Either

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By Alasdair Macleod – Re-Blogged From Gold Eagle

GDP is hyped-up to be an all-important measure of economic activity. It does not measure economic activity, instead recording meaningless money-totals spent in unsound currency over a given period. A bad statistic such as GDP is wide open to official manipulation, and there is always a desire to enhance it. GDP-B, which includes an estimated consumer surplus, appears to conform with this desire. If it is successfully introduced, GDP would be substantially increased, making governments look good, and reducing their debt to GDP ratios. However, it is no more than a statistical cheat.

Gross Domestic Product-B attempts to capture the added value of things we don’t pay for, such as Facebook, WhatsApp, Google and other digital services free to the user. B stands for benefits; the benefits consumers receive from free and subsidised services. It was devised by Erik Brynjolfsson, a professor at MIT, and is a work-in-progress. He points out that according to the US Bureau of Economic Affairs, the information sector in GDP statistics has been stuck at between four and five per cent of GDP for the last twenty-five years. Yet, the importance of this mainly digital sector now dominates both work and leisure activities, benefits not recorded in GDP.

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