Gold coins: buy or bye?
By Vic de Klerk – MiningMx
THE prices of gold coins, especially the Protea series and the Nelson Mandela ones, have risen very sharply over the past couple of years – particularly the 2004 commemorative coin of South Africa’s former President, with its price increasing by more than 500%. The doubling plus in the gold price, especially in rand, obviously helped to push up the return on collector coins to a level stock market investors can only dream about. But just as with shares – regardless of whether they’re banks, IT or resources – investors must remember such a sharp increase is very often followed by an equally sharp correction.
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Gold Standard Fans Yearn for Great Depression
Commentary by Michael R. Sesit – Bloomberg
Gold can be worn as jewelry, used as an investment and deployed as a hedge against economic and political risk. It can also serve as the anchor of a country’s monetary and exchange-rate policy. The first is a matter of personal taste. Investments and hedges are often related; their success boils down to the price initially paid for the metal. History shows that as a hedge and investment, bullion over the years has performed both spectacularly and miserably, depending on the time frame.
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How Will Radical Change in Gold Markets Affect Gold Prices?
Seeking Alpha
The gold market is undergoing radical change with investments in Europe and US taking a lead over the traditional market – Jewelry in India. While Indian Jewelry is still the world’s biggest consumer, the market seems more diverse now. The Gold ETF (GLD) has become the biggest market mover and there has been heavy demand for coins and bars. If this fundamental change in consumer/investor choices continues, Gold could see a significant upward movement in price in the short to medium term, and even a $1200/ounce is likely. It remains to be seen how this change in behavior would continue after the end of this crisis (in 3-5 years).
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Silver Beats Gold for First Time Since 2006 on Refuge
Bloomberg
Silver’s biggest discount to gold in 13 years has investors betting on the best annual return for silver since the Hunt brothers’ bid to corner the market in 1979. Money managers are buying precious metals as a refuge from the 47 percent drop in the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index in the past year and growing concerns that Treasuries will fall as the U.S. government pledges $9.7 trillion to revive the economy.
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Depression and Inflation
By: Steve Saville, The Speculative Investor
Although we are anticipating another great depression we want to emphasize that we are NOT anticipating a replay of the 1930s. We are anticipating a drawn-out period of economic contraction, but the details will almost certainly differ markedly from previous depressions. One of the most important differences between the coming — actually, “current” is a more appropriate word since it has probably already begun — great depression and the 1930-1945 episode is that today’s version is likely to be inflationary.
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Gold continues its correction towards $900
By Chris Flood , Financial Times
Gold tumbled towards the $900 an ounce level on Tuesday while oil prices staged a rebound after a sharp fall in the previous session but confidence among commodity investors remained fragile amid ongoing weakness across equity markets. Gold continued its correction, dropping 2 per cent to $907 a troy ounce, moving between a low of $906.30 and a high of $932.30.After reaching an 11 month high of $1,005.40 on February 20, gold has sunk 8.6 per cent over the past seven sessions because investor inflows into gold exchange traded funds have stalled.
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Revisiting the Weimar Gold and Silver Ratio
Seeking Alpha
I wrote an article some years back pointing out an interesting fact about gold and silver during the great Weimar hyperinflation. That article lay dormant for some time until last October when I suddenly received dozens of emails about it from gold investors. As it turned out, the article had been mentioned on the website of one of gold’s well known commentators and hence the rush of emails. The point of that article is summarized in the chart below which displays the gold-silver ratio for German Marks between 1919 and 1923.
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Gold Thoughts
by Ned W. Schmidt – Safehaven
Two things happened in the 1960s. Most importantly, that decade ended. Second, consumers and investors began learning to not be fooled by governmental policies and actions. That learning experienced was reinforced by the many policy errors of the 1970s. At the start of those two decades, consumers and investors did not understand the future effects of excessive government spending. Monetization of debt and price increases was not part of their experience. Only after inflation ravaged their investments down into bottom in 1974 did they fully comprehend how damaging governments might be.
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