One of the many ridiculous things from the Greenspan put and Bernanke put era is that Bernanke was named the Time Magazine person of the year in 2009. The good thing about 2011 (and hopefully subsequent years) is that people are gradually realising that: (1) it doesn't take much genius to press the "easy money" button and more importantly (2) you can relax monetary conditions all you like, but if that happens, it's hard to stop that money flowing into oil and other commodities.
Alright I got out of this one at 1.4275. With Goldman cutting tomorrow's payrolls estimate and S&P acting weak today, don't want to be too greedy. I am going to buy some physical gold tomorrow. Gold at 1200 seemed high, but I should have invested then - I bought some but not much, same story at gold 1500. If things keep on moving the way they are, there is a possibility (however small) that gold goes to 6000/10000 (3x/5x its current value. So upside over next 10 years could be 4000/8000 USD, whereas downside could be 1000 USD at max.
You'd better buy the miners at this stage, next to establishing some physical position obviously. Some of the miners are trading at the same levels when gold was at 1K or below.
I bought some gold and silver this week. Mainly because I was forced to, I had a portion of my networth in USD unhedged, being a brazilian citizen I can't have that kind of exposure for long. So I bought some AUD, NZD, CAD, JPY plus IAU and SIVR(They seem to be better ETFs due smaller fees). I dont like the way gold is going, seems parabolic to me, but I can't run the risk of the econ data getting the Fed to announce QE3 at the next meeting At this point I'm on the camp that thinks a new recession is quite likely if its not already here
Good point. I remember having read it somewhere else also. If my memory serves me right, probably you yourself mentioned it in Paulson's context! I honestly don't know much about specific minors, also taking the idiosyncratic risk associated with miners, when gold is a much purer play is kind of question. However, I will like to point out from Marty Schwartz book (page 76) that during 1980 and 81, he made 600k and 1.2 mm trading ASA options (gold investment company's stock). So definitely there is value in playing minors, I just don't know much about them. Do you have any recommendations ? My only caveat is that I will be a bit careful if simple things like Canadian/US gold minors leading gold prices like stuff work this day also (that Marty explains in his book - page 74).
I'm also thinking about buying these but the last thing I would do is to try to stock pick, for a few reasons -The numbers say its quite unlikely one can beat the benchmark -Its time consuming to research a ton of companies -The people who do that time have more experience in the gold industry than I have So I might just buy a gold stock ETF at the next market collapse/VIX spike
Yeah that was me. As far as the miners go you have the Coca Cola's and Microsofts. Giants that will never go bankrupt but you can forget about getting rich buying them. Like, AU, Newmont, Goldcorp... Then you have the mid sized ones like HL or AUY that offer fair upside potential in contrast with a relative amount of risk. Then finally you have the juniors or explorators....who can make you go broke or rich overnight. Myself I have been largely postioned in the third category. I have done ok and I could tell you the talk of risk in these kind of stocks is way overblown and its the ultimate play to profit today but really that could be a Pet.com investor talking in 1999 so it's really up to each and ones risk profile to decide what suits him best. If you are really interested and you start to dig names will pop up themselves and then it's all about deciding which one and for how much... I have posted my mining positions here previously: AUY, HL, GBG, SPM, SLX, AVR, MDW. Out of them SPM is my favourite but that simply must be cause it outperformed significantly. If you would ask me which miner I would buy today that I didnt own it would be Drooy simply cause it has been such a gigantic turd this last decade. Cheers. Edit: And the ETF's indeed offer a great exposure and probably best suited for most.
Yes, I would have to agree that unless we have time to do significant research on gold miners, probably Gold ETF is a much better option. At least, by buying an ETF, we are not trying to beat a benchmark (which in itself is a v. hard thing to do long run). To Debaser, It seems that you are the gold specialist here Thanks for writing about your picks. Making an investing decision on the premise that something has under-performed over a decade is surely Jimmy Rogers way of thinking - which has certainly made him rich.
Jim Rogers hates goldstocks btw. He says no asset has lost investors more money in history. So be carefull.