Tag: Precious Metals

Another Step Forward for Sound Money: Location Picked for Texas Gold Depository

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The Texas Bullion Depository took a step closer becoming operational earlier this month when officials announced the location of the new facility. The creation of a state bullion depository in Texas represents a power shift away from the federal government to the state, and it provides a blueprint that could ultimately end the Federal Reserve’s monopoly on money.
Gov. Greg Abbot signed legislation creating the state gold bullion and precious metal depository in June of 2015. The facility will not only provide a secure place for individuals, business, cities, counties, government agencies and even other countries to store gold and other precious metals, the law also creates a mechanism to facilitate the everyday use of gold and silver in business transactions. In short, a person will be able to deposit gold or silver in the depository and pay other people through electronic means or checks – in sound money.
Earlier this summer, Texas Comptroller Glenn Hegar announced Austin-based Lone Star Tangible Assets will build and operate the Texas Bullion Depository. On Nov. 3, the company announced it will construct the facility in the city of Leander, located about 30 miles northwest of Austin. According to the Community Impact Newspaper, the Leander City Council has approved an economic development agreement with Lone Star. Construction of the depository is expected to begin in early 2018. Lone Star officials say it will take about a year to complete construction of the 60,000-square-foot secure facility located on a 10-acre campus.

This post was published at Schiffgold on NOVEMBER 16, 2017.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts – Stock Options Expiration on Friday – As If Maybe Someone Could Hear

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We will have a stock option expiration on Friday.
I believe that this is driving some of the action in the precious metals.
Not in the metal itself, but by extension to the miners which follow the price of the metals, and tend to be a favorite of options players, and a rather volatile crew.

This post was published at Jesses Crossroads Cafe on 15 NOVEMBER 2017.

Gold Bounces Off Key Technical Support On Massive Volume

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The last 48 hours has been quite a chaotic one in precious metals markets with massive volumes of ‘paper’ gold flushed in and out of the futures markets. This morning – shortly after the US open failed to spark a panic-bid in stocks – gold futures bounced off their 200-day moving average on huge volume (around $4.5 billion notional) breaking above the 100DMA…

This post was published at Zero Hedge on Nov 14, 2017.

Precious Metals: Patience Is Golden

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Without growth in Western gold ETF holdings, the ‘decent but not spectacular’ demand from China and India is not strong enough to move the gold price higher. Please click here now. The SPDR (GLD-nyse) fund gold holdings currently sit at about 843 tonnes. There has been very little change in the total tonnage for several months. That’s neutral for the gold price. Governments don’t like their citizens to own much gold. Restrictions they impose (like India’s import duty as a recent example) dampen demand enough so that the price rises very slowly most of the time. Economic growth in China and India are increasing demand (the love trade) and mine supply is contracting, but the process is essentially ‘Chindian water torture’ for investors who want to see the price skyrocket like it did in the late 1970s. Investors that want ‘big action’ in the gold price need to wait patiently for the US business cycle to peak. For the price of gold to really sizzle, the business cycle needs to have aninflationary peak. That hasn’t happened since the 1970s. Many gold price analysts have used overlap charts that suggest the gold market now is akin to the 1976-1978 period. I look at fundamentals first, and charts second. From an inflationary standpoint, the US economy looks more akin to the late 1960s than the late 1970s. The winds of inflation are beginning to blow, but they won’t become a hurricane for some time. Having said that, I’ve noted that the St. Louis Fed has calculated that the QE program would have sent the US inflation rate above 30% if money velocity had been at normal levels.

This post was published at GoldSeek on 14 November 2017.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts – The Wild Life

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“You may be sure that no sordid compromises nor carrying of waters on both shoulders will see you through. Those who have the faith had better keep in the state of grace, and those who have neither had better find out what they mean, for in the coming age there will be only one way to stop your trembling knees, and that will be to get down on them and pray. The most important problem in the world today is your soul, for that is what the struggle is about.”
F. J. Sheen
“He prompts you what to say, and then listens to you, and praises you, and encourages you. He bids you mount aloft. He shows you how to become as gods. Then he laughs and jokes with you, and gets intimate with you; he takes your hand, and gets his fingers between yours, and grasps them, and then you are his.”
J. H. Newman, The Times of Antichrist
Stocks have been showing an interesting pattern, of rolling over and falling in the morning, and then rising again in the afternoon, led by purchasing of the SP futures it appears.
And gold and silver and the VIX and all other havens and alarms of risk and being tightly capped and suppressed, as is also visible on the charts.
We will see what the Consumer Price Inflation data has to say about things tomorrow.
Duc l’Orange will be back, and he promised even more fabulous news of his achievements.

This post was published at Jesses Crossroads Cafe on 14 NOVEMBER 2017.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts – The Yellow Sign

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“In reality, though, it was never about us and our economy at all. Today it is obvious that all of this had only one rationale: to raise up a class of supermen above us. It had nothing to do with jobs or growth. Or freedom either. The only person’s freedom to be enhanced by these tax havens was the billionaire’s freedom. It was all to make his life even better, not ours…
We endure potholes and live in fear of collapsing highway bridges because our leaders wanted these very special people to have an even larger second yacht. Our kids sit in overcrowded classrooms in underfunded schools so that a handful of exalted individuals can relax on their own private beach.
Today it is these same golden figures with their offshore billions who host the fundraisers, hire the lobbyists, bankroll the think tanks and subsidize the artists and intellectuals.
This is their democracy today. We just happen to live in it.”
Thomas Frank, We Built a Paradise For Offshore Billionaires
“I opened the box. On the pink cotton inside lay a clasp of black onyx, on which was inlaid a curious symbol or letter in gold. It was neither Arabic nor Chinese, nor as I found afterwards did it belong to any human script.”
Robert W. Chambers, The Yellow Sign
As the commentators on Bloomberg TV noted, someone literally dumped a $4 billion block trade at market in the gold futures shortly before noon. And as one would assume with such an obvious and clumsy bludgeoning, it knocked the wind out of the price down to the mid-70s. Oops?

This post was published at Jesses Crossroads Cafe on 10 NOVEMBER 2017.

Gold Slammed After Someone Pukes $4 Billion Notional In Gold Futures

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As we approach the European close, the dolar index just spiked and precious metals (and crude) were pummeled. Gold futures tumbled on massive volume as over $4 billion notional was purged instantaneously…
Over 30,000 contracts ripped through gold futures – over $4.2 billion notional – in the space of a minute. That’s around 10% of a normal days’ volume.

This post was published at Zero Hedge on Nov 10, 2017.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts – The Repairer of Reputations

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“A growing economy with related worries about increases in future inflation would typically produce rising yields on longer-term notes and bonds, not declining yields. A dramatic flattening in the yield curve is seen as a red flag for an economic slowdown, sagging inflation and as a potential precursor to the onset of recession. None of that would be consistent with the Federal Reserve continuing to tighten interest rates – which it is expected to do again in December.”
Pam and Russ Martens, Does Jay Powell Hear the Alarm Bells From a Flattening of the Yield Curve<

‘The ambition of Caesar and of Napoleon pales before that which could not rest until it had seized the minds of men and controlled even their unborn thoughts.’
Robert W. Chambers, The King In Yellow: Repairer of Reputations
We *almost* had a correction in the US equity markets today. Imagine that!
However, crisis was averted as determined buying of the SP 500 futures stepped in this afternoon after the European traders went home to their schatzies.

This post was published at Jesses Crossroads Cafe on 09 NOVEMBER 2017.

Why Doesn’t Gold Get The Respect It Deserves?

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A longstanding curiosity in the investment business has been the disinterest in precious metals among institutional investors. Whether from the handful of consultants now leading the institutional space, or directly from the stewards of our nation’s pension, endowment, and family-office wealth, skepticism over gold’s portfolio relevance remains fairly pervasive. Because investment professionals are generally well informed, competing in an industry in which performance is king, one would assume any asset class deserving of rightful consideration would enjoy a fair hearing.
In this report, we present a collection of empirical evidence we view as compelling support of gold’s productive role as a portfolio-diversifying asset.
Gold Has Generated Consistently Positive Returns in This Millennium
Eight years of zero interest rate policy (ZIRP) have compressed returns across a wide spectrum of institutional investment regimens. Especially in the pension and endowment world, few portfolios are achieving chartered rates of return. In this environment, we find it puzzling that institutional investors still choose to ignore gold’s market-leading returns. As shown in Figure 1, gold has generated positive annual returns in 14 of the past 17 years. What is even more impressive is gold’s performance compared to the S&P 500 Index, the benchmark for broad U. S. equity performance. Gold’s compound annual growth rate (CAGR) for the 16.75 years (2001 to September 30, 2017) stands at 9.68 percent versus 6.01 percent for the S&P 500 Index (dividends reinvested). Indeed, it is fair to say that since the turn of the millennium, any long-term allocation to gold would have improved total returns for the vast majority of pension and endowment portfolios.
What is it about gold’s performance that is so difficult to embrace?

This post was published at GoldSeek on NOVEMBER 9, 2017.