Lisa

A Guide to Gold, Silver and Platinum ETFs and ETNs

Good discussion - I'm now following you!

- I'm not sure why you'd want a fund that rebalances between gold and silver. Why not just buy the two ETFs and let them run?
- Mutual funds, due to their open ended structure, allow you to buy as much as you want (after market close) with no buy-sell spread. The problem with a lightly traded closed-end fund like (CEF) is that the spread can really hit you.
- Even if you made money on CEF after buying it at a premium, that's not an argument that buying at a premium is OK. You could have made *more* money had you bought at net asset value. The ETFs guarantee that.

On Nov 18 04:15 PM mbkelly75 wrote:

> You can buy it at a premium or you can buy it at a discount. Even
> buying at a premium - I have made a lot of money here as they keep
> going up with the price of both Silver and Gold. BTW - they publish
> the NAV right on their webpage and tell you the actual premium or
> discount - it is not hidden and you do not have to go through the
> balance sheet to find it. The dividend is VERY small (0.07%) and
> comes from re-balancing done when the price of Gold and Silver move
> in such a way that they get too far from their 50-50 balance. I made
> good money simply from that myself - trading on the Ratio - I know
> that they are sharp enough to do the same thing.
> Let's talk about their annual expense ratio: They have no management
> fee at all - it is 0.00% and there is 0.38% listed under "other expenses"
> - that 0.38% is the entire expense. GLD has a management fee of 0.40%
> and an expense fee of 0.40% - given this comparison - who has the
> higher expense ratio?????
> You do have one point - GLD has 15X the average volume of trade than
> CEF does. However CEF is a Closed End Fund and trades just like any
> other stock. You do not have the problems getting in or out that
> you might get from a mutual fund that only trades at the end of the
> trading day.
> As Renold said above - CEF also gives a tax advantage over GLD -
> it is taxed at 15% instead of GLD's 28%. Make your own choices -
> I think you are mistaken here.
>
> On Nov 18 02:49 PM Lisa wrote:

A Guide to Gold, Silver and Platinum ETFs and ETNs

Disadvantages of the Central Fund of Canada (CEF):
- it's a closed-end fund, so you can find that you've bought it at a premium to net asset value.
- it has far lower trading volume than GLD, so that means it can be hard to get in and out and the buy-sell spread is far wider than for GLD.
- because it holds a combination of gold and silver, it's harder to know what the actual asset value is.
- The annual expense ratio is higher than for the ETFs.
- If they pay you a dividend, it has to come from somewhere (the assets in the fund) because gold doesn't generate income.

The Fly's out with his (exhaustive) list of predictions for 2009.

Here were his 2008 predictions; they don't seem too bad, actually:

The elections will be gay.
Taxes will go up.
Emerging markets will get their teeth kicked in, especially “BRIC.
”Commodity prices will remain robust, as food supplies dwindle.
Oil will keep a tight range of $75-90.
Natural gas will break $10.
Gold will break $1,000.
Two major financial institutions will fail.
There will be mergers in the brokerage sector.
Agriculture stocks will outperform in the first half, then dive in the 2nd.
Semiconductor stocks will bore investors to death.
CC will file for bankruptcy protection.
HOV will file for bankruptcy protection.
Stem cell stocks will gain momentum, with strong Democratic poll showings.
Utilities will continue to outperform, as old people look for yield.
PFE will make a big acquisition.
Many solar burrito stocks will drop by 50%, before recovering.
RIMM will get hit hard, in the second half of 2008.
AAPL will do well.
GOOG will lose mojo.
The Dow Jones will fall by 15%.
The Nasdaq will fall by 15-20%.


On Dec 28 12:24 PM Paul Price wrote:

> After seeing your 2008 predictions I don't have much confidence you'll
> be right this year either.

The Perfect Storm: Even with Bailout, Economy Is Hurting

Excellent article -- as usual from this author.

Meet Chrome - Google's Windows Killer

Yup, Chrome is a threat to Windows. But what many people are missing is that it's also a threat to Apple's OS -- if Chrome becomes the operating system of choice, why pay up for a Mac instead of buying the best value hardware that will run Chrome?

Meet Chrome - Google's Windows Killer

My Take -- your comment makes a lot of sense if you think that Vista and IE are good products.

'Nuff said. :-)

Will Google Be Forced to Re-Ignite the Browser Wars?

Great call -- just 4 years early :-)

Google's Browser

This was really prescient -- just 4 years too early.
:-)

Top Nine Stocks Going Ex-Dividend Mid-September

Isn't there different tax treatment of the dividends, depending on how long you've owned the stock for?

Steve Jobs: Not Dead Yet

One other point: what's so amazing about the AAPL cheerleaders is they didn't even read this article carefully enough to understand that Kedrosky was criticising Bloomberg, not only for publication of the obit (that led the stock to fall without cause) but for the ethics of the journalism.

Steve Jobs: Not Dead Yet

An earlier commenter wrote: "At what point does a "lapse" like this constitute something akin to a business version of shouting "fire" in a crowded theatre?"

Rumors about banks going under are crying "fire" in a crowded theater, because they cause a run on the bank which puts the bank out of business. Rumors (which this article wasn't in any case) about a company like Apple aren't, because the rumor doesn't damage its business.

If all the AAPL cheerleaders love the company and the stock (they often can't distinguish the two) as a long term investment, what do they care if it falls due to a false rumor? Surely it's a buying opportunity?

There seem to be a lot of nerves from these bulls...

Investing and Demographics

Can you elaborate on this please: "I don’t see the emerging markets getting rich enough, fast enough, to do the wealth exchange necessary for the developed world on favorable terms for the developed world."?

Marketers Reducing Ad Budgets in Difficult Economic Times

I wonder what "alter mix of marketing channels to lower cost" means in practice for Internet advertising.

Hedge Fund Manager's Notebook: Time to Buy Chinese Stocks, & Lehman's True Value

On the topic of LEH, this account of the Bear Stearns collapse is really interesting:

www.vanityfair.com/pol...

Hedge Fund Manager's Notebook: Time to Buy Chinese Stocks, & Lehman's True Value

Couldn't you argue the opposite on the Olympics: the Olympic hype benefited the China market, so now it's over the stocks will fall further?