those seem to be for US only. Im from europe tho (estonia).

Some decent stuff on ZH: Timing The End of the Gold Bull Market

My only concern is that he says a big cash position is fine right now during turbulence, and there will be future opportunities to get into gold when you see price inflation heating up. IMO in the event of massive currency depreciation, there will be a sprint through a tiny door into hard, tangible assets. Many won't make it in time. Better be a little early than too late.

lol, yeah, I liked that too

This means it is a good time to buy.

Harvey Organ - Tuesday, May 18
Dav K - Tuesday, May 18
Jesse

Safe to say that even maneuvering around 1175-1185 would snuff most of the calls.



EDIT: but this downtrend is coming off of a double top from Dec. 09 highs and would lead us to believe that gold would find strong support at $1145-1155 (if it makes it down there). I concurred with Binions a bit ago on his blog that we could see a big correction, I thought it would occur after the double top of gold breaching $1225 and trending down to previous support. We will see if it makes it that low in the short term. Depends on the news at this point (and the commercial puts oc), plenty of raging bulls in the gold pits.

FWIW Platinum's been getting killed the past few days. On 11 May was trading at $1740. Today it's down another $80 to $1520. $220 drop...shows how volatile the dual precious/industrial metals markets are.

Gold down some more today to $1184ish

OMG Rick Santelli with an insta-classic pro-gold bug rant just now...will post clip as soon as it comes up. Highlights which can't come close to doing it justice:

-Big run for physical gold in Europe

-Recent dip constitutes folks selling most profitable positions (gold) to cover losses elsewhere.

-Hilarious analogy: "What if I had a garage full of cattle, and sold receipts for those cattle, but never let you inside my garage to see if they are actually there? Well that's what's happening with gold."

-A little later: "Here's a better idea: Why don't we lock up all the people who print fiat money in my garage and put the cattle in charge!"

Seriously, this is the best Santelli since the original epic tea-party rant.

Today looking to be awful. European markets getting crushed--Germany off 3% and the FTSE off 2%. DOW futures down 150.

Gold down, but not quite so much. Silver getting killed.

I don't get this, you are agreeing with the author.

He is talking about silver as a store of value, so why would he talk about industrial demand. Store of value is monetary demand, which is different from industrial demand.

Silver is not purely an industrial metal like copper:

http://www.worldofwallstreet.us/2010...per-ratio.html

But silver is not a purely monetary metal. More needs to be said on this but please grasp this fundamental point.

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/11...easing-780205/

partial industrial, partial monetary demand v. much more pure monetary demand

yup yup

(yes i know... buying and holding long term so this is all irrelevant etc etc)

Lord, if you're up there, please let my house sale close before you let the financial world blow up. Oh, and it wouldn't hurt to let gold "correct" by 30% until the closing check clears and I can buy some. After that, have at it.

Amen.

page 14 of BIS Working Papers - No 300 - The future of public debt: prospects and implications

A store of value is just that, something that stores value. (gold, copper, stocks, paper money) The value stored depends on monetary demand for that particular asset. Silver value come's from industrial, investment and jewelry applications. Copper who's demand is industrial is a store of value. The point has been thoroughly grasped. The industrial supply side of silver is it's shining glory imo. I assumed the author would cover the industrial demand to illustrate it's value beyond the monetary and speculative use.

Needless to say, I did like the piece.

EDIT: GL Boro, shuffle up and sell.

Anything can be a store of value (so long as others value it), but not all stores of value are equal. The best stores of value are those that derive their value from monetary demand. Gold is more monetary less industrial than silver, silver is more monetary less industrial than copper,...

Some argue that silver is a better store of value in the face of a deteriorating monetary system because there is industrial demand for silver. Others aren't talking about industrial demand because they believe monetary demand, not industrial demand, is what matters in the face of a deteriorating monetary system.

=========

FOFOA thoughts

A serious question:
I have talked to some folks that have lived through the German depression (carts full of money for a loaf of bread, 1 billion and if it takes you 30 minutes to get to the store you can't buy it anymore because the price is now 1.5 billion etc.) recently and they told me that gold, silver and any sort of jewelry didn't really work as a store of value because masses of people traded whatever they could find for food.

Is it just empirical confirmation for the marginal revolution (i.e. you rank the last piece of food you can get higher than a chunk of gold)?

Persistent hyperinflation not only causes nominal prices to skyrocket, but real prices as well. That's because businesses have a ridiculously hard time using inputs efficiently, and end up generating a ton of waste in the process. For example, even the $US cost of things like petrol, meat, vegetable oil, bread, and so on were astronomical in Zimbabwe, even at black market exchange rates. Paradoxically, people who as a result of hyperinflation were making vastly more money (in $US terms!) than they ever normally could have we still made much worse off by the hyperinflation. This dries up real wealth very quickly, and stores of value are almost irrelevant for most people.

Transaction costs also get brutal--people spend hours and lose tons of money trying to make their savings more liquid. I guess that's where the marginal utility of gold/USD comes into play.

Someone who was 20 durinng the Weimar hyperinflation (early 1920s) would be 107 now, so you must have talked to them many years ago?

Gold may not have much utility in a "Mad Max' scenario, but I'm hoping for more of a soft landing, where we (the US) end up like Argentina (they've lurched from one fiscal crsis to another for ~100 years). In that case, an ounce of gold will buy a lot of tango lessons.

i don't know what the odds of me and you ever bumping into one another, but if it happens, beers are on me.

interesting, and i'd like to know too. enough to wiki 'Weimar hyperinflation' right now to read more.

my favorite story: woman puts basket full of paper money on a stoop and goes inside a store to grab her friend. comes back, and a thief stole the basket, leaving the money.

During a collapse, many expect gold to go into hiding, or as FOFOA sometime puts it, gold becomes effectively unpriceable. It will re-emerge as things settle down. Gold is not for the transition, but for preserving wealth on the way to the other side of the waterfall.

Russina collapse
Zimbabwe collapse

yeah invest in

Sure when you are in danger of dying of starvation you rather take a bread than a gold coin. this is really a no brainer.

Unless your gold coin would buy you a few hundred loaves of bread, or if gold really crashed in real terms a hundred loaves.

If we saw a real financial collapse, there's a good chance we'd see a window of time in which nobody would be accepting any currency, including gold. It def makes sense to have a bit of food stocked up IMO.

I agree that gold is a better store of value in a deteriorating monetary system, ours included. In a deteriorating economy with rising costs less base metals may be mined and roughly 70% of silver mined is a by-product of base metals or gold mining ops disturbing already delicate imbalances. In short: I understand what you are saying and the above is a good explanation of why he wouldn't bring address ind. demand.