Gold Prices, SUPPLY & DEMAND, Uncategorized

GOLD AS UNIQUE PROTECTION AGAINST LEGISLATIVE GRIDLOCK AND ADVERSE FINANCIAL CONSEQUENCES

It’s a while since I last posted on this website and  suggested investors follow  two of Keynes’s pithy suggestions:

1: Anticipate the actions of others and 2:  follow Keynes’s advice and, when,  the facts change, change your strategies..

When Trump was elected President in 2016 the Republicans won both Houses of Congress.  Subject to meeting the objections of elected Republicans Trump could achieve  his policy objectives.

Since  the Democrats won the House in the mid term elections,  the facts  have changed big time. Contentious issues will now face legislative  gridlock and from  January 2nd 2019, next Wednesday,   Trump will have to answer to House Democrats with subpoena powers. 

Small surprise that financial markets are tanking . Investors are changing their strategies. With increased demand the gold  price has risen by about 5%  recently  and,  with renewed interest in gold,  I am being urged  to develop again an   independent  and unbiased source of information on the  range of issues affecting demand for gold  and gold prices. A resource  without the hype or information overload found in many gold related information sources

Please let me know if you have any suggestions for content on this web site that you would find useful.

Best wishes to all friends and followers for a happy New Year.

John Katz

email Thegoldwatcher@icloud.com

Twitter: @johnkatzgoldwatcher

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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CENTRAL BANKS, DEBT SUPERCYCLE, Gold Prices, INFLATION & DEFLATION, SUPPLY & DEMAND

TIME FOR GOLDWATCHERS TO FOLLOW KEYNES

# NOTE ADDED 25th March 2018 UPDATING DECEMBER 30th 2016 POSTING

 Chart illustrating $ gold price since 2010

Courtesy www.kitco.com

gold Technical chart [Kitco Inc.]

 The LBMA annual forecasting competition, an essential and free information resource, has now been published for 2018 and is accessible on the following link.

LINK TO LBMA 2018 FORECASTING COMPETITION WITH DETAILS OF FORECASTS AND EXPLANATIONS  FOR OPINIONS

  All forecasts are, of course, only guesses and  depend on how domestic, political  and geopolitical events will play out on the world stage. The forecasts for 2018 reveal strongly divided expectations with forecasts as low as $1120 and as high as $1510.

 

 THE  NOTE ON MY PROPOSED  NEW BOOK ON GOLD HAS BEEN DELETED FROM THE DECEMBER 2016  POSTING THAT FOLLOWS:

 

Sound motivation, good timing, good  strategies and reliable current information are essential for all investment decisions. Gold is no exception.

 My suggestions for now are to  follow two of the late Maynard Keynes’s pithy suggestions:

1: Successful investing is anticipating the anticipations of others.

 2: When the facts  change I change my mind. What do you do Sir ? 

Goldwatcher 8th October comment re-posted:

Keynes on The Economic Consequences of the Peace:

“Lenin is said to have declared that the best way to destroy the Capitalist System was to debauch the currency. By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens.

“By this method they not only confiscate, but they confiscate arbitrarily; and, while the process impoverishes many, it actually enriches some. The sight of this arbitrary rearrangement of riches strikes not only at security, but at confidence in the equity of the existing distribution of wealth.”

 

 Chart £ – $

Chart of exchange rate values over time

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CENTRAL BANKS, DEBT SUPERCYCLE, GLOBAL, Gold Prices, SUPPLY & DEMAND

GOLD AND AN AMERICAN NIGHTMARE

Picture credit Boomberg

#CONTENT ADDED 11th NOVEMBER 2016

President elect Donald Trump has spoken to the nation shortly after winning a bitterly contested campaign. His message included a call for binding up campaign wounds, national unity and even a tribute to Hilary Clinton, the lady he was going to jail,  for her outstanding service to the nation.

Trump’s victory is testament to his ability to get things done. With the election having brought Republican control to both Houses of Congress he will be free of politics blocking his plans for economic growth if his p[ans make sense. 

It will be a while before we have any real light  from the Trump administration on  what his plans actually are, if they make sense and what consequences to expect for the US and Global economies .

 Gold remains on the agenda for investors.

 11th November 2016 Goldwatcher comment follows:

 Will the American Dream survive the Clinton Trump Presidential election?  Whoever is elected we expect the time honoured response “THE KING IS DEAD LONG LIVE THE KING” will  accompany any transition of power after the election.

But what about the world monetary system dominated by the US dollar?

 If the world monetary system is challenged by a  loss of faith in the new U.S. President there is no other national currency that will fill the void following  a loss of faith in the dollar. If the American Dream becomes a  Nightmare  gold will again be of utility to investors hedging against  currency risks – as it has already been this year for investors in the United Kingdom following the plunge in the value of the £ sterling that followed the Brexit upset.

As I have written for this blog  before and since the beginning of this year, for Investor Literacy.com and in a long series of Tweets  gold belongs on the agenda for investors when decisions are being made on asset allocation and on hedging against currency risks.

 

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GLOBAL, Gold Prices, SUPPLY & DEMAND, Uncategorized

El-Erian on Gold and Risk Mitigation

 

The World Gold Council report El-Erian commenting:

“A growing number of investors are recognising the potential of gold to increase returns and improve risk-mitigation attributes of well-diversified portfolios.”

Mohamed El-Erian  is Chairman of  The White House Global Development Council, Chief Economist at global insurer Allianz,  one of the the world’s premier bond investment firms and a leading commentator and author on investing, economics and finance.

GLOBAL, Gold Prices, INFLATION & DEFLATION, Uncategorized

ARE WE SEEING THE FIRST SIGNS OF a RETURN TO INFLATION?

Simon Baptist, Chief Economist for the Economist Intelligence Unit raises the question whether we are seeing  first signs of a return to inflation  in a Twitter posting on @baptist_simon  with a link to his current Newsletter headlined The Return of Inflation where he writes:

…”1 Chinese Factory Gate prices ended their near five year run of declines, while in the UK producer price inflation reached a five year high of 1.2%. In bad news for UK firms producer input prices rose by an astonishing 7.2% implying a huge compression in average profit margins – and significant consumer price inflation (or bankruptcies) to come.”

CENTRAL BANKS, Gold Prices

UK 1% INFLATION RISE – THE TIP OF AN INFLATIONARY ICEBERG

Commenting on the latest UK inflation figures Dr Andrew Sentance,senior economic adviser at PwC, and former Bank of England Monetary Policy Committee member said:

“Inflation has risen to 1.0 percent this month, as expected. Higher import prices are feeding through to consumers because of the fall in sterling since the EU referendum vote. This latest rise, however, is just the tip of the inflationary iceberg which is coming our way. Since the beginning of September, sterling has fallen a further 8 percent or so against the euro and the dollar. This will continue to push up inflation in the months ahead. A stronger oil price will add further to price rises for energy and transport.

“Over the course of next year, we should expect inflation to rise above the Bank of England’s 2 percent target. This will squeeze household spending power and add to the slowdown in the economy in 2017. PwC is forecasting a slowdown in growth to around 1% next year, with investment cutbacks reinforcing the slowdown in consumer spending.”

LINK TO PwC PRESSROOM

 

 

Uncategorized

FRANK HOLMES WINS BEST FUND MANAGER AWARD

 

The 2016 winners of the prestigious Mining Journal’s best America’s based Fund Manager Award are Goldwatcher co author Frank Holmes ,   Chief Executive and Investment officer of US Global Investments/US Funds  with the Fund’s portfolio manager Ralph Aldis CFA  The award was decided based on fund metrics provided by  Morningstar.

 

Updating his long standing advice  to investors  to “anticipate before you participate” Holmes quotes Marcus du Sautoy, Professor of Mathematics at the University of Oxford  : “Although the world looks messy and chaotic, if you translate it into the world of numbers and shapes, patterns emerge and you start to understand why things are the way they are.” 

Here is the link to Frank Holmes’s recent Anticipate Before You Participate presentation sub titled  Managing Expectations.  

The mantra for this blog is Information + Simple Arithmetic = Common Sense.  Holmes explains why.

DEBT SUPERCYCLE, GLOBAL

HOW TO DESTROY THE CAPITALIST SYSTEM

 
Keynes on The Economic Consequences of the Peace:
“Lenin is said to have declared that the best way to destroy the Capitalist System was to debauch the currency. By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens.

“By this method they not only confiscate, but they confiscate arbitrarily; and, while the process impoverishes many, it actually enriches some. The sight of this arbitrary rearrangement of riches strikes not only at security, but at confidence in the equity of the existing distribution of wealth.”

 

 Chart £ – $

Chart of exchange rate values over time

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DEBT SUPERCYCLE, GLOBAL, Gold Prices

CENTRAL BANKERS PUSHING ON A STRING, ALGORITHMS & MOMENTUM

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GOLD PRICES FROM JANUARY 2016 TO 10th MARCH

CHART COURTESY WWW.KITCO.COM

LINK to comment on Central Bankers Pushing on a string

# LINK Added 14th June 2016: INVESTOR LITERACY COMMENT ON BREXIT AS A BAD TRADE

In the first west week of this January I posted this Goldwatcher note

 “Gold is insurance against the unexpected and the unthinkable. Gold is  poised to breach the psychologically and technically important $1100 threshold…Gold pundits like to punt gold demand as coming from fear or love trades. But they ignore the more important trade trades  – i.e. the speculative punts that  can account for most the money flowing in and out of gold”

The global risk landscape this time last year was fairly tame  and I posted several comments on gold price prospects for the year that proved to be useful.  The landscape this year has been different and recent posts on gold have included  Ray Dalio on Central Banks Risk Pushing on a string 

Messages from The Goldwatcher Book:

goldbook-book.png

The manuscript for The Goldwatcher was submitted to the publisher, at the end of 2007. At the time the gold price was a little over $800 – about double the where it was when I first submitted the book proposal to Wiley.

 The Goldwatcher (Page 186)    included this comment under the heading

Messages From History

.”…Pundits had been calling for the Gold Price to reach $850, the level it spiked to in 1980. That’s equivalent to about $1900 in 2007 money. However a price spike and a price average over a longer period are very different situations. “

As we all know the price  spiked to above $1900 in September 2011, fell again below $1100 in January this year and is now in sight of breaching $1300.

Motivation, Strategy & Timing

My contribution to investing in gold has been based on motivation strategy & timing. Yesterday’s dramatic responses to ECB President Draghi’s package of stimulus measures was followed by dramatic prices movements  that are settling down today  with these among  other price changes:

GOLD +0.60%,   COPPER+  0.68%  OIL + 2.27%, LEAD +1.15%,, ZINC +1.61%

 

MOMENTUM, ALGORITHMS & ANIMAL SPIRITS:

Price overshoots and undershoots are par for the course in currency and commodity markets.  As it’s likely that  future  price  movements will also be driven by momentum, algorithms and animal spirits it will make sense for  investors to monitor these influences themselves or keep well informed  from a reliable information source.

The Goldwatcher. Page 187 following, addresses past consequences of price overshoots.

 

All postings on this blog will remain freely accessible in the public domain but new postings will be on the Investor Literacy blog

For further Goldwatcher comments please follow Investor Literacy

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