The Strange Case of Dr. GLD & Mr. Bullion 49 comments
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Gold’s been acting fishy…
Gold is somewhat unique amongst investments in that it trades both in physical form—bullion, or the actual metal—and as an equity—the Gold ETF (GLD). The differences between the two forms of gold are striking:
| Gold ETF | Bullion |
| Extremely liquid | Far less liquid |
| Requires an online brokerage account | Requires an actual dealer |
| You own a % of a trust that owns actual gold | You own actual gold |
| Can be manipulated by traders | Cannot be manipulated by traders |
| Is an equity-based inflation hedge | Catastrophe insurance |
As you can see, gold trades in two very different forms. And the differences between the two investments go a long way towards explaining the massive discrepancy occurring between the “paper” and “physical” gold markets today.
Gold, as you may or may not know, recently violated its 65-week moving average: a metric that is widely used to measure whether or not an investment is in a bull market. The pundits, seeing this, announced that gold was in serious trouble. Of course, no one bothered to mention that much of the selling in gold was the result of overleveraged hedge funds and others unloading their “paper” gold positions when the dollar rally began.
And while “paper” demand for gold has plunged, “physical” demand, particularly for coins, has exploded upwards. In fact, demand has been so high that the US Mint announced it was temporarily suspending sales of American Gold Eagles, a popular bullion coin, due to shortages.
David Beahm, VP of Blanchard and Co, one of the largest US bullion dealers, told Reuters that both the American Eagle and American Buffalo one-ounce gold coins are completely sold out. "Nobody has the Eagles or the Buffalos right now. We bought 2,000 ounces late last week, and those were the last 2,000 ounces that we can find in the marketplace," said Beahm.
Beahm’s not the only one.
I called up my friend Parket Vogt at Camino Coins. Camino’s been dealing bullion for 50 years and Parker says he’s never seen anything like the action of the last week. “Graham, people are going nuts. I actually had to stop selling Krugerrands because premiums are too high. One guy actually called up and bought 500 ounces of gold in one order. That is the single largest sale I’ve had in my entire career.”
In light of this, it’s tempting to assume gold will explode back up to $1,000 in no time at all. However, from a historical perspective gold could also continue a gradual slide for another year. I’ll explain…
During the last major gold bull market—1971-80—gold first exploded upwards from $35 to $200 in 3.5 years. It then followed this performance with a 19-month correction during which time gold retraced 50% of its initial gains. It didn’t retest its $200 highs until 1978, eventually topping out at $850 in 1980.
If gold were to follow this same pattern today, this current correction—starting March 2008 with gold’s peak at $1,030—would last until the fall of 2009. So we could well see gold tread water for another year.
On the other hand, today’s market and the market of the ‘70s are very different. Today there are several potential financial crises that could light gold’s fuse: a major bank could go under, Fannie and Freddie could be nationalized, the market could crash, etc. Any one of these could push gold back up to $1,000 in a matter of weeks.
Because of this, I view this current pullback in gold as a buying opportunity. I realize I may not make money for a year. But I’m not looking to trade gold. I’m looking to own it. And the current financial climate is such that I wouldn’t be surprised to see gold back at $1,000 before the year’s end.
Hedge funds can mess around with moving averages all they like. Gold is still a great storehouse of value. And while paper gold has dropped, physical gold isn’t showing any signs of a let-up.
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This article has 49 comments:
You mean take physical possession of coins and bullion and store it in a safety deposit box at your local bank.
Or do you mean something else?
CrossProfit
1 Gold just formed a beautiful double top (second top lower then first)
2 A credit crisis is disinflationary. (bad for gold)
3 The dollar has turned and is on its way up (gold NEVER goes up when the dollar goes up)
If you dont believe in the real world then live in the make believe world of the gold bugs.
Gold is never an investment but only a trade. Gold topped with a bubble in 1980 and it took 28 years for gold holders to break even.
I think not, you think again.
During exchange control times, the gov't confiscates everything of value and prohibits the use of any other notes than government issued. No, you cant, use euro, nor pound, nor gold.
If you can bury it in your garden then it could be 'Catastrophe insurance', just make sure there is no paper trail of your delivery home.
On May 28 11:32 AM he writes: "...Gold to me is going down. Dollar is going up. " seekingalpha.com/artic...
And what did actually happen? Gold up from $650, dollar down from 80.
On Jun 05 05:43 AM he writes: "This is last years news. Dollar going up and gold going down now." seekingalpha.com/artic...
And what did actually happen? Gold up from $650, dollar down from 80.
so in my view, it cannot be manipulated by much and not for long. cheers.
the scheme to suppress the price of gold is increasingly a matter of ordinary public record.
It was a matter of public record in January 1995, when the Federal Reserve's general counsel, J. Virgil Mattingly, told the Federal Open Market Committee, according to the committee's minutes, that the U.S. Treasury Department's Exchange Stabilization Fund had undertaken "gold swaps." Those minutes are still posted at the Fed's Internet site:
www.federalreserve.gov......
It was a matter of public record in July 1998, six months before GATA was formed, when Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan told Congress: "Central banks stand ready to lease gold in increasing quantities should the price rise." That is, Greenspan himself contradicted the usual central bank explanation for leasing gold -- supposedly to earn a little interest on a dead asset -- and admitted that gold leasing was all about suppressing the price. Greenspan's admission is still posted at the Fed’s Internet site:
www.federalreserve.gov...
Incidentally, while we gold bugs love to cite Greenspan's testimony from July 1998 because of its reference to gold leasing, that testimony was mainly about something else, for which it is far more important today. For with that testimony Greenspan persuaded Congress not to regulate the sort of financial derivatives that lately have devastated the world financial system.
The Washington Agreement on Gold, made by the European central banks in 1999, was another admission -- no, a proclamation that central banks were working together to control the gold price. The central banks in the Washington Agreement claimed that, by restricting their gold sales and leasing, they meant to prevent the gold price from falling too hard. But even if you believed that explanation, it was still collusive intervention in the gold market. You can find the Washington Agreement at the World Gold Council's Internet site:
www.reserveasset.gold..../
Barrick Gold, then the largest gold-mining company in the world, confessed to the gold price suppression scheme in U.S. District Court in New Orleans on February 28, 2003. On that date Barrick filed a motion to dismiss Blanchard & Co.'s anti-trust lawsuit against Barrick and its bullion banker, JPMorganChase, for rigging the gold market.
Barrick's motion said that in borrowing gold from central banks and selling it, the company had become the agent of the central banks in the gold market, and, as the agent of the central banks, Barrick should share their sovereign immunity and be exempt from suit. Barrick’s confession to the gold price suppression scheme is posted here:
www.lemetropolecafe.co...
The Reserve Bank of Australia confessed to the gold price suppression scheme in its annual report for 2003. "Foreign currency reserve assets and gold," the RBA's report said, "are held primarily to support intervention in the foreign exchange market." The RBA's report is still posted on the Internet at the central bank's site:
www.rba.gov.au/Publica.../...
Maybe the most brazen admission of the Western central bank scheme to suppress the gold price was made by the head of the monetary and economic department of the Bank for International Settlements, William S. White, in a speech to a BIS conference in Basel, Switzerland, in June 2005.
There are five main purposes of central bank cooperation, White announced, and one of them is "the provision of international credits and joint efforts to influence asset prices (especially gold and foreign exchange) in circumstances where this might be thought useful." White's speech is posted at GATA's Internet site here:
www.gata.org/node/4279
Last October the editor of the Freemarket Gold & Money Report and the founder of GoldMoney, James Turk, a longtime consultant to GATA who will be speaking at this conference, revealed some U.S. Treasury Department reports showing that since May last year the U.S. gold reserve has been mobilized for leasing to suppress the gold price. Those records are available on GATA's Internet site:
www.gata.org/node/5637
In complaining about the manipulation of the gold market, GATA has not been called "conspiracy nuts" by everyone. We have gained a good deal of institutional support over the years.
First came Sprott Asset Management in Toronto, our main sponsor for this conference. In 2004 Sprott issued a comprehensive report supporting GATA. The report was written by this conference's keynote speaker, Sprott's chief investment strategist, John Embry, and his assistant, Andrew Hepburn, and was titled "Not Free, Not Fair -- the Long-Term Manipulation of the Gold Price." It remains available at the Sprott Internet site here:
www.sprott.com/pdf/pre......
Then in 2006 the Cheuvreux brokerage house of Credit Agricole, the major French bank, issued its own report confirming GATA's findings of manipulation in the gold market. The Cheuvreux report was titled "Remonetization of Gold: Start Hoarding," and you can find it at GATA's Internet site:
www.gata.org/files/Che...
And in September last year Citigroup -- yes, Citigroup, a pillar of the American financial establishment -- joined the conspiracy nuts. It published a report titled "Gold: Riding the Reflationary Rescue," written by its analysts John H. Hill and Graham Wark, declaring: "Gold undoubtedly faced headwinds this year from resurgent central bank selling, which was clearly timed to cap the gold price." You can find the Citigroup report at GATA's Internet site here:
www.gata.org/files/Cit...
Even those authorities who don't want to run afoul of government institutions that with a few computer keystrokes can create virtually infinite amounts of money may have to admit the opportunity for central banks to manipulate the gold market. For it is widely acknowledged that annual world gold production is about 2,400 tonnes, that annual net world gold demand is about 3,400 tonnes, that gold production is falling as demand is rising, and that the thousand-tonne gap between production and net demand is being filled mainly by central bank dishoarding and leasing. What do you suppose the gold price would be if central banks were not supplying more than a quarter of annual demand?
Why would he have to stop selling?
If people are buying like nuts,willing to pay the premium,keep selling them.
Thats called the market price.
Hey CrossProfit,if you plan on keeping the gold for a long time take possession,coins or bullion.Keep it some place safe you can get at it fast,a safety deposit box is not the best place.Only use it as a last resort.
Classic straw man assertion. Most people I know who buy physical gold - and I know quite a few - do so as a long term insurance plan because they have learned the lessons of history when it comes to fiat currency and inflation. Hardly religious. In fact, it is much more indicative of magical thinking to place your faith in technical analysis based on a measly few decades than to draw conclusions based on an analysis of thousands of years of human history.
The 'real world' with which we are faced is unlike anything we have faced before, which means it is entirely plausible that we are moving into a new paradigm, in which case, the fundamental assumptions of technical analysis become invalid.
It is not proven, but certainly plausible that those investing in physical gold are the ones living in the 'really' real world, and posters like the one who posted this simple minded claptrap are among the deluded.
As to credit crises being 'disinflationary' [sic], while there are certainly deflationary *components*, this does not mean that the *net* effects of the current credit crisis - including Fed actions - will be so. Especially once you consider the $60T+ in unfunded liabilities due to governmental obligations over the next two decades. That money will have to come from somewhere and anyone with a marginal knowledge of history can tell you exactly what is going to happen. Because it is what has happened in every single case across 1000 years. Feel free to 'believe' we are somehow special, and that it can't happen here, but be aware that this is nothing more than a demonstration of historical ignorance and magical thinking.
That is, if you think we are in a long term deflationary trend, you really need to put your faith aside for a moment and study history. It tells a different tale.
Start here:
www.shadowstats.com/ar...
www.gata.org/node/5637
When GLD (the ETF) goes up, HSBC is supposed to issue more shares and buy more gold bullion. If my understanding is correct, this is necessary (as with all ETFs) to keep the share price consistent with the market price of gold, rather than having its own supply/demand dynamic (like a CEF). Thus, massive investments in GLD reduce the supply.
So, with the recent dive in gold prices, more investors are selling GLD. Did HSBC sell its bullion? If so, they might be hard-pressed to meet the demand when the market reverses suddenly (i.e., now?). If not--if they kept an extra supply as a hedge--it could explain some of the reported shortages.
I've seen the opposite argued, that brokers have issued shares of gold-related assets without actually collateralizing them with physical gold; they would then have a motive to manipulate the price downward, so they can buy the collateral more cheaply. But I haven't seen any hard evidence for either scenario.
I'm not making a bullish case for gold, but I am saying that you shouldn't read too much into a small (volume wise) and illiquid market. The headlines for gold are mixed, making a claim of a "contrarian" play simply a rationalization for a gamble. If you have other fundamental or technical reasons to be bearish on gold, that's fine, but let those be the justification for your trade. Here, I'll give you some reasons:
Bearish: Dollar has been declining for a while under the perception that other currencies would be shielded from the US decline. Decoupling was fantasy, the whole world is going to hell, so on a relative basis, the dollar is going to rise. Also, those invested in gold were over-leveraged, and the de-leveraging process is going to sink gold further.
Bullish: All currencies are going to hell, so even if the dollar outperforms relative to other fiat currencies, its purchasing power relative to commodities is going to be weaker (after the painful de-leveraging runs its course). Commodities are in a long secular bull market, and this is only a pothole in the road up. Furthermore, gold can be treated as a currency that can't be weakened by fiat.
Personally, I think that demand for gold will increase. The supply side of gold is well understood (close enough to constant).
It costs less than $200 per once to mine and smelt the metal, and producers can supply as much as the world can buy and then some, but not by tomorrow, hence the price fluctuations.
There is no discrepancy between gold and the GLD ETF. Any investor can buy 100,000 shares of GLD, take them plus a $2000 fee to the offices of World Gold Trust Services, LLC, and redeem them for 10,000 oz of gold bullion, delivered to a registered facility of your choice (there are a few of those in New York). Check the prospectus to see the procedure. This is why GLD always trades within 2% from the price of the spot price of the metal.
Did you try to reedeem 100,000 shares of GLD at the offices of WGTS? I bet they would not answer the door.
Who the hell really knows where gold, or any other market segment is going? Your best bet is to diversify like crazy, allocate to multiple asset classes, monitor your mix and re-balance when you get out of target range. Other than that, all of this stuff above, and most of the stuff on this site is just a lot of (entertaining) hot air.
kitco.com
Some of the comments are off the mark!
- Exactly. Gold has been money for thousands of years. Paper has been money for 37 years. Not to mention this is not the first time paper has attempted to replace gold as money, and each time before failed miserably. The poster is deluded by 4 decades of "common" thought and has not taken the time to read his history. When the world heads back to gold and the paper reverts back to ink and paper, he probably still won't get it.
- Faulty reasoning in regards to a monetary metal. Nearly all the gold ever mined is still out there, it has not been consumed as bagels are. Supply is nearly "infinite" and there is no shortage. What is happening is gold owners are increasing switching out FRNs for gold and hoarding the gold. Never to sell it back into the marketplace. The dollar value for gold is too low, these hoarders have no reason to take their uneaten bagel back to the bakery to be sold to someone else.
Shortages in monetary metals happening all the time in countries moving towards a worthless currency. They are a warning sign that eventually, even if you have a mountain of currency, you will not be able to exchange that currency for a monetary metal because the holders of the metal do not want the currency.
If you're diversifying but only putting a very small portion into inflation protection assets, then your money's real buying power will be evaporating fast in a high inflation environment. Gold has to be a larger component than 7% of your portfolio if you think inflation is a threat. Your nice 200% return on your small gold investment could be wiped out and then some in a high-inflation environment by your losses in stocks/bonds as their nominal returns are negative or even ok but fail to keep pace with inflation.
Merely diversifying and playing rope a dope is a rich man's tactic. Minimize the losses is the best to hope for. Fine if you have $10M in the bank. But even then I happen to think that US stocks and bonds are far riskier in the medium term than gold, oil, or any commodity.
Many investors are still stuck on the "business as usual" mentality, and that this is merely a hiccup in our economic future.
Tens of trillions of dollars in unfunded liabilities from our federal government say you're wrong. 2009 may see our first $1 Trillion deficit. The deflation caused by some loans going bad is outweighed by the money creation done just to pay the government's bills.
1) Spot Price. This is the over the counter (OTC) price for wholesale 400oz bars for immediate delivery (actually market works on 2 day settlement) usually ex-London. This is the "real" physical price. There is no shortage in this market.
2) Futures Price (ie COMEX). This is the price for delivery in the future (ie whenever the next contract is). It will equal the spot price +/- cost of borrowing cash/gold. Americans love to quote this price like it is "the" price of physical gold. It is not, get over yourselves.
3) GLD Price. This is a proxy for the spot price, because it is based on physical. Because any significant dealer can deliver physical (or take delivery) in exchange for shares (or deliver shares) its price will never significantly diverge from the Spot Price because that would mean dealers are letting arbitrage profits fly way and if you think that dealers are going to forego easy profit you are an idiot.
4) Coin/Bar Prices. The price for small, non-wholesale amounts of physical gold. This is a physical price of sorts, but it is not the spot price and can diverge from it if manufacturers don't forecast demand correctly and run out of or get too much inventory. Until the manufacturers can get metal from the spot market and convert it into small forms, the price will diverge. This market is small compared to the Spot market. Shortages do not have a bit impact on the spot price (ie real physical market) because the wholesale market is much larger.
Do not fall into the trap of getting excited by what you see happening in the retail physical market or GLD or COMEX. As I show i goldchat.blogspot.com/... this is about 2% of the entire gold market. What you see is a tiny part.
"Nearly all the gold ever mined is still out there, it has not been consumed as bagels are." - Fair point, my analogy was deficient. However, we both agree that there is no real shortage in gold, contrary to what the original author suggests.
A move in price from $400 to $800 an ounce, be it for the spot, the futures, or the ETF, is much more meaningful than a temporary local shortage at jewelers or even at the US Mint. Gold is indeed a monetary commodity, and a price doubling in three years should get our attention as much as a similar movement in the exchange rate between two major currencies.
2. The dollar and the rest of the world's fiat is failing right now.
3. Silver and Gold rise when fiat falls.
4. Silver will rise by at least 40X when fiat falls. See History.
5. Silver is private non-digital money and is sold for cash.
6. It is time to allocate 95% of your portfolio to Silver.
SLV has already appeared on the Reg SHO list on a couple of occasions indicating without a doubt that there were sellers of the stock who were unable (or unwilling) to borrow stock and this resulted in a failure to deliver stock. There is no way that a share sold short to a long shareholder or bought by an authorised participant for redemption can be distinguished from a share backed by real metal. Even if there was no naked short sales and no duplicate borrowing of stock, a situation where each real backed share was sold to two long shareholders could exist and the entire float could be redeemed for metal leaving the equal number of shares in the market no longer backed by a single ounce of metal and supported only by the credit of the short seller.
The bank, with $752 million in assets and $622 million in total deposits, was shuttered by the Kansas state bank commissioner's office and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., the FDIC said yesterday in a statement.
Citizens Bank and Trust will assume the failed bank's insured deposits. Columbian Bank's nine branches will open Aug. 25 as Citizens Bank and Trust offices, the FDIC said. Customers can access their accounts over the weekend by writing checks or using ATM or debit cards.
``There is no need for customers to change their banking relationship to retain their deposit insurance coverage,'' the FDIC said.
The pace of bank closings is accelerating as financial firms have reported more than $500 billion in writedowns and credit losses since 2007. The FDIC's ``problem'' bank list grew by 18 percent in the first quarter from the fourth, to 90 banks with combined assets of $26.3 billion.
Prior to yesterday, the FDIC had closed 36 banks since October 2000, according to a list at fdic.gov. The U.S. shut 12 banks in 2002, the highest in the period, and 2005 and 2006 had no closures.
U.S. bank regulators closed Florida's First Priority Bank on Aug. 1; Reno-based First National Bank of Nevada, Newport Beach, California-based First Heritage Bank, and Pasadena-based IndyMac Bancorp Inc. in July; Staples, Minnesota-based First Integrity Bank and ANB Financial in Bentonville, Arkansas, in May; Hume Bank in Hume, Missouri, in March; and Douglass National Bank in Kansas City, Missouri, in January.
Well, there you go...another one bites the dust.... and they say 90 more are on the "list".
I am betting that there a lot more than 90. If you see one cockroach, you know there are hundreds more.
The time to argue about metal manipulation is OVER! This week you had better decide what side of the fence you are going to be standing on and make your moves while you still can.
You can't time the beast, and it is better to be able to sleep at night. Do what feels right in your gut and stick to it. It will feel like a rollercoaster because we are on one!
While your busy diversifying your portfolio, check on your bank's rating, move accounts around if needed and get your parent's, kids, and other family members looked after or they will be beating your door down in a few months.
I would rather be prepared and be wrong, than ignore the writing on the wall and hope that I am right....
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A safe deposit box (sometimes incorrectly called a safety deposit box) is a type of safe usually located in groups inside a bank vault or in the back of a bank or post office...
You better be able to figure out how much pure gold is in the jewelry and it's a good idea to have a means of testing the purity. If you can do that, you will likely find they will gladly provide you with all you can afford. They generally buy at ~70% of spot and refiners won't pay more than 98% (minus postage and insurance costs), so it's a good deal for the pawn shop too.
Broken jewelry is not as elegant as coins, but the last time the USGov banned gold people could keep their jewelry. Besides, how do you divide a Kruggerand to buy a loaf of bread if the world falls apart? Gold necklaces can be trimmed to size with a pair of pliers.
Just something to think about.
Has the thought ever crossed anyone's mind that the GLD reserves are easy pickings for the USGov if they ever ban gold ownership again? All in one place and I imagine not very easy to disperse quickly. Good platform for trading swings in price, but no substitute for physical holdings to survive the worst.
Really, GLD and other precious metal ETFs should request a special and permanent ban on naked short selling to ensure the integrity of the 1:1 backing.
In that situation you can imagine that other countries may be experiencing the same problem, so it is up for conjecture if the UK with happily hand over the GLD gold or say, stuff you US, we are keeping it. They themselves may confiscate it, or may just say the GLD trust is holding it on behalf of GLD investors so we will hold it here in the UK for you if you move to the UK.
Honestly, where do some of you guys come up with this stuff? Paper currency has been around since the first Chinese emperors and all of the issues about backing and convertibility have been there from the beginning. Even in the US we've been off the gold standard for longer than 37 years. Those of you who believe that gold was what gave currency its value need to read your Communist Manifesto again and understand how the social abstraction of commuting labor into currency is what gives money its value, not the ability of a handful of survivalists to acquire some ingots...
Why is this so certain? Because GLD is supposed to be tied to the physical gold spot price, which you can find in nice graphs here: www.kitco.com/charts/l... . And you can find historical prices for GLD at yahoo here finance.yahoo.com/q?s=... or wherever you like.
So look at them. Is there a discrepency? Answer: no.
I think it is an interesting question of why gold coins are out of stock while at the same time the spot price is down. Perhaps traders are selling while survivalists are buying? I'd be interested in the answer, but it has nothing to do with GLD.
If I'm wrong, please correct me!
HA HA HA
How stupid can you get?
As for GLD shares held by investors being redeemable into physical gold - they aren't. These are paper instruments designed specifically to track the price of gold - and only to track it. They can be shorted and bought on margin just like any other stock. They are not ownership of real gold.
You are spreading disinformation and should shut up.
Tom - you are incorrect. Read the prospectus, specifically "creation and redemption" on page 3, here: www.spdrgoldshares.com...
Only "authorized participants" can do this, not the ordinary joe who buys some GLD with his schwab account. Authorized participants are professional investors like banks, brokers, hedge funds, etc. By buying GLD, you are trusting those participants to arbititrage any difference between GLD and actual gold, by creating or redeeming shares.
If you can't trust banks, brokers, and hedge funds to want to make money for themselves, then yes you better own your own gold - and keep it under your mattress, because you never know when your local bank - or the government - or the illuminati - will steal the contents of your safe deposit box.
"How stupid can you get?" - I guess you've answered that for us.
Actually, Mr. Ordinary Joe with a Schwab account can also redeem GLD or any other ETF. Charles Schwab & Co. will gladly arrange for this transaction (for a fee, of course), as would most major borkerages.
On a hindsight basis, he could have sold higher, bought lower and been richer or poorer. But by holding on, he has made about 15%. Pretty Darn good in today's markets.
The comments made 5 months ago are similar to what are being made now but with hindsight we have a better picture.
I found one particular comment, very enlightening.
No, its not Smarty's comment supporting the purchases of Gold Jewelry.
Its the comment by "phdinsuntanning", which lists all sorts of links regarding the Conspiracy to keep the price of Gold down. They were interesting reading then and are still now.
IMO