streetTRACKS Gold Shares (GLD)

All Comments on GLD

  • commenter
    freefall51
    Oct 15 07:34 AM
    Bullion Shortage and Spot Prices Tell Two Different Gold Stories [view article]
    A point to the specific risk on paper gold and why people may think it is manipulated.

    Reference was made to GLD, SPDR Gold Trust that sells paper gold. The price of the share is supposed to track the price of a 1/10 oz bullion, ~ $84 a piece today. What do you get for your money if you buy GLD?

    I am reading from GLD’s 10 Q report ending June 30, 08:

    Gold investment and receivables is all there is on the asset side of the GLD balance sheet.

    Gold Assets/ Number of shares = $ 13.8 B/ 0.21 B Shares = $ 65.7/ Share. But you pay today ~ $82.50 /Share. Are you not shortchanged by 25 % + buying the paper instead of physical gold.

    Plus this trust has negative equity due to excessive redemption share liabilities, strongly deteriorating yoy and the buyer takes on all the credit and counter party risk of this trust.

    This all looks like a terrible deal to me. Looking at the price volume action of GLD today I sense there is a high volume shorting of GLD going on since Friday.

    The GLD price curve looks awful since it broke in Mar 08.

    I think alajac is right, when the hoi polloi believes it is common sense to buy gold, the smart money has already left the place.
    Reply
  • commenter
    alajac
    Oct 15 07:10 AM
    My Website
    Bullion Shortage and Spot Prices Tell Two Different Gold Stories [view article]
    Retail is buying overnight and buying coins. Smart money is selling the pops. In a deflation, all commodities go down. Not hard to figure unless you have a fixed idea that is wrong. Reply
  • commenter
    mzcap
    Oct 15 06:58 AM
    My Website
    An All-Weather Portfolio Using Multiple Asset Classes [view article]
    There is a more up-to-date study of this subject here

    investmentscientist.co.../

    (or the My Website link above.)     Reply
  • commenter
    mr.g
    Oct 15 03:23 AM
    Gold / Silver Ratio Tops 80 to 1 [view article]
    delivery from comex /nyse mini's- great idea! The first time doing it would probably be a nightmare but it would cut down the cost of getting middled from the retail side -
    Reply
  • commenter
    Fish Gone
    Bad
    Oct 15 02:21 AM
    My Website
    Weapons of Financial Mass Destruction [view article]
    Wow. Wow. Wow. What a wonderful job. You really put this together very very well. I should just mail you envelopes of Yen for helping me out. Thank you so very much.

    I can only hope that you are making a great deal of money from your research,

    Clark Jenkins
    FishGoneBad.com

     Reply
  • commenter
    Boleslaw
    Oct 15 01:53 AM
    Gold / Silver Ratio Tops 80 to 1 [view article]
    The gold/silver ratio may be 80, but it could go to 90 and stay there for months. It's rational to expect the markets to revert to the mean, but when the whole world is going crazy, maintaining your sanity can help you stay around to be in the game, but does not necessarily help you wing the game.

    There have been instances of pork bellies selling for less than live hogs for more than two years, in ALL cash and future markets. It does not make sense for bacon to cost LESS than live hogs, but it's happened again and again.     Reply
  • commenter
    short WFC
    Oct 15 01:48 AM
    Bailouts Will Soon Drive the Currency Markets [view article]
    up Reply
  • commenter
    remarkl
    Oct 15 01:24 AM
    Bailouts Will Soon Drive the Currency Markets [view article]
    I'm not persuaded by this hysteria. It is surely true that the governments will have to act, but it is entirely possible that they will not have to print nearly so much money as seems necessary at first blush. I, too, am a dollar bear, but I don't see Mr. Jones's scenario as the particular road the buck will take to perdition.

    Fire (the kind that warms our house, not the kind that burns it down, athough it's good to remember that the distinction is entirely one of degree) is a good metaphor for a banking system. Fire needs fuel to burn, oxygen to enable combustion, and heat to start the process; a banking system needs money to lend, capital to enable lending, and demand to give the money a reason to move.

    Until recently, our banks got the money to lend from depositors. That's why a run on deposits killed the banks of the 1930's. As oil and cheap labor increased our trade deficit, however, and money market funds and 401(k) plans replaced savings accounts, banks could no longer rely on deposits to fuel their lending activity. So they had to borrow through Fannie and Freddie or through investment banks, who got their money from bond-buyers, many of them foreigners holding dollars from the aforesaid trade deficit.

    Where bank depositors relied on the banks' own brand reputation, the strangers who provide intermediated bank fuel don't know or care who was issuing the paper. They care only about the rating it bears. Each investor has an appetite for a certain level of risk, and the paper gets sliced and diced into tranches to satisfy the aggregate demand for paper bearing the various levels of risk.

    Mismatches between the paper available and the aggregate appetite for paper of a certain risk level si met by issuers of credit default swaps and other forms of credit-enhancement. Of course, the credit-enhancers also look to the ratings agencies to determine the uninsured creditworthiness of the paper so they know what to charge for upgrading it to the desired level of security.

    Under this analysis, none of the current mess would have been possible if the ratings agencies had just said "no" to the first bundle of subprime crap presented to them. Or the second. But they didn't, and the markets were flooded with AAA paper that was nowhere near AAA in creditworthiness. Think of that paper as a few bottles of tainted Tylenol. It didn't matter that the rest of our AAA paper was good; no one could trust the US AAA brand, all of it, toxic or otherwise, became unmarketable, and the fuel for our banking flame was cut off.

    With the ratings system disrespected, a bank holding mortgages found that it could not securitize them and so could not get new money to lend, But it gets worse. The banks still had deposits, and could have done some lending with those were it not for the SEC and its ridiculous mark-to-market accounting rules. With banks unable to securitize their loans, they were forced to write down their value, not to reflect expected loan losses, which might well have been manageable, but to reflect the MARKET value of those unmarketable loans. That markdown impaired the banks' capital, and even if it did not render them insolvent, it reduced their capital to a level at which the were not permitted by their regulators to make any loans at all, even with depositors' money. Thus, when the bond market shut off some of the fuel, the SEC withdrew all of the oxygen. No wonder the fires went out!

    So now, we have three big problems. First, banks cannot stay afloat by lending out their deposits while they seek more money to lend from foreign holders of trade deficit dollars. Second, trade deficit dollars will not come home until there is a reliable way to homogenize the paper, and that requires reliable ratings agencies. And third, without real collateral, it's not clear whether we can produce enough high-grade paper to woo those dollars back anyway, That third thing is the threat the dollar really faces: the subprime mortgages with AAA ratings obscured the fact that as a nation we did not have enough wealth to collateralize the repatriation of the money we were spending on imports. Now that our penury is exposed, what happens to the dollar even if we make money on the bail-out?

    This is not to say we should not try to rehabilitate the US AAA rating as a brand so that foreigners will lend to those good credits that remain. To do that, we will need to find a way for ratings agencies to have some skin in the game. They may have to be owned by insurance pools that make good on bad ratings. A device can be found, and will be found, if not now, when all else has failed and whoever is in charge thinks its his own idea.

    In the meantime, it is important that the Government go to bat for the highly rated American paper, as that is the surest way to restore confidence in the rating system while the rating system is overhauled and outstanding paper is re-rated at a cost borne by the government - you cannot make the ratings agencies pay without destroying the credibility of their future pronouncements - but measured in large measure retrospectively by the accuracy of the ratings.

    That will get the fuel going again. It will also reverse the bad effects of marking to market, as the reliquification of the system will magically bestow market value on the assets banks already hold. While that's happening, though, it would sure help if the SEC would allow banks to account for loans on their books as if the banks were, well, banks, and not Enron.

    I do not believe we are in a secular bear market. Rather, we are in a really, really big dip in a bull market driven by the savings of baby boomers nearing retirement and in a savings panic. The market would be going up if it were not for the binary event of the financial melt-down, with its margin calls, FUD, etc. When that goes away, the market will resume its upward climb.

    Except, of course, for that pesky trade deficit. If we can get off the oil teat, and create a robotic manufacturing industry (freeing the humans to work in healthcare, which will consume an increasing part of the GNP, i.e., account for the lion's share of job-creation), we should be all right. If not, the dollar will collapse, as we will be in deep you-know-what. And that'll be a bear market.     Reply
  • commenter
    short WFC
    Oct 15 01:11 AM
    Bailouts Will Soon Drive the Currency Markets [view article]
    a cpl of trillion in extra money supply or not inflation will wait till commodity prices, oil,unemployment, oversupply (of auto, and just about everything else) will come down Reply
  • commenter
    silver-bulle
    t
    Oct 15 12:52 AM
    Setting A Minimum Gold Price Target [view article]
    Buy Gold and Silver to stores value - don't expect to get rich quick.

    Peter Schiff of europac.net says that eventually Gold and Dow will be at equilibrium.

    The trend is clearly in his favor.     Reply
  • commenter
    freefall51
    Oct 15 12:39 AM
    Is Gold A Sucker's Bet? [view article]
    Reference was made to GLD, SPDR Gold Trust that sells paper gold. The price of the share is supposed to track the price of a 1/10 oz bullion, ~ $84 a piece today. What do you get for your money if you buy GLD?

    I am taking from the 10 Q report ending June 30, 08:

    Gold investment and receivables is all there is on the asset side of the GLD balance sheet.

    Gold Assets/ Number of shares = $ 13.8 B/ 0.21 B Shares = $ 65.7/ Share. But you pay today ~ $82.50 /Share. Are you not shortchanged by 25 % + buying the paper instead of physical gold.

    Plus this trust has negative equity, strongly deteriorating yoy and the buyer takes on all the credit and counter party risk of this trust. Who would want that now?

    Is there not a strong case to short GLD? Looking at the price volume action of GLD today I sense there is a high volume shorting of GLD going on since last Friday.

    The GLD price curve looks horrible since it broke in Mar 08.

    What am I missing here?
    Reply
  • commenter
    Keer-eh Khar
    Oct 14 11:04 PM
    Is Gold A Sucker's Bet? [view article]
    Gold elevator up will pass by Dow Jones Industrial Average elevator down at 3000...


    Gold elevator up will pass by Dow Jones Industrial Average elevator down at 3000...


    Gold elevator up will pass by Dow Jones Industrial Average elevator down at 3000...     Reply
  • commenter
    Keer-eh Khar
    Oct 14 11:01 PM
    Gold: The Last Carry Trade [view article]
    Gold elevator up will by-pass Dow Jones elevator down at 3000...

    Gold elevator up will by-pass Dow Jones elevator down at 3000...

    Gold elevator up will by-pass Dow Jones elevator down at 3000...     Reply
  • commenter
    david rojas
    Oct 14 10:31 PM
    Gold / Silver Ratio Tops 80 to 1 [view article]
    Hey Guys, I really am a rookie on this subject. In the last few months I've learned from reading these articles and comments what the uptick rule was and selling short among other things, but I do believe buying gold now is the prudent thing to do. Many empires and great cilivizations have falllen in history. None of us know what will happen tomarrow. Our current bull market of capitalism is possible through our socialism (taxes). Its not a true boromameter or measure of value and gold and silver are since time emmimorial. If you want to make a quick profit then that is something else but to guard against reckless politicians and wall street greed, you should buy gold. Thats the way this rookie feels.
    Dave     Reply
  • commenter
    Berto
    Oct 14 10:28 PM
    My Website
    Gold: The Last Carry Trade [view article]
    Buying gold is a great idea, but not everyone knows the best ways to own it. It’s not safe to own too much under the mattress, so I wrote this article that gives you some options:

    www.mikeroberto.com/20.../

    Please add any thoughts or comments.
    Berto

    (PS - I have a personal feeling that it will dip a bit when it gets sold off as people/funds dig for cash, and think low $700s will be the next entry point. But who knows, I’ve been wrong before!)     Reply
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