Gold Investor

Earlier this year the government of Canada sold off most of its gold reserves, mainly in the sole form of selling their gold coins. The gold coins that were sold are iconic to Canada; the Royal Canadian Mint has produced pure maple Leaf gold coins in a variety of denominations for well over 40 years. Canada’s latest selling of gold reserves is very much part of a longer-term pattern. It takes time and skill to keep on top of quality investments like Canada’s move away from the precious metal. There are numerous factors to take into account when considering making an investment. It takes time and skill. Discretionary Investment Managers are specialists at doing this on your behalf.

The International Monetary Fund’s has stated according to their International Financial Statistics, Canada held three tonnes of gold reserves as of late 2015. Throughout most of 2015, the country’s gold reserves stood at more than $100 million. The Finance department figures show that Canada has sold 41,106 ounces of their gold coins in December alone, then a further 32,860 ounces of the gold coins in January. The decisions that led to sell the gold was not tied to a specific gold price, and the sales are being conducted over a long period of time so that it can be in a controlled in an effective method.

We try not to get too caught up in the post-apocalyptic-zombie apocalypse-Mad Max-SHTF type of scenarios when it comes to the question of money. Everyone should be prepared for unforeseen emergencies but it is not very healthy to be continuously living in a paranoid state. Some cash and precious metals should be good hedges against this type of scenario. One of the inherent values of gold, silver and many tangible assets is that people associate them with actually having an inherent value and this can be a good insurance policy against a financial collapse that makes fiat money worthless and / or sees a shutdown of the financial transaction system.



But what about bitcoin? Does it work in the financial collapse scenario or even worse, in a post apocalypse world? Consumer Affairs has created a cool little comic book / novel that explores just this type of gold vs. bitcoin scenario in their post apocalypse world.

Greg Hunter at USA Watchdog did this interview over the weekend with Bo Polny of Gold2020Forecast.com. Polny purports to use cycles and technical analysis to predict the value of stocks, bonds and of course gold (and silver). In his view, gold has bottomed and will be up to $2,500; silver will hit new all-time highs; stocks and bonds will get decimated - all by October of this year when some cataclysmic event is going to take place. For what its worth, October (28th) also happens to be a time period when Martin Armstrong's Economic Confidence model predicts a short term bottom for this current downturn. Coincidence?

Most Gold-Investor.com readers will be familiar with Chris Martenson from his Crash Course and the website, Peakprosperity.com (which is run by him and Adam Taggart). Dr Martenson usually has some sanguine advice when it comes to the economy and our future. In this edition of the Money Metals' Weekly Market Wrap podcast he is interviewed by Mike Gleason about his views on the economy as we ended 2015.

The podcast is titled New Evidence Fed Is “Scared Witless” & Hiked Rates for Show and could well have been titled New Evidence Fed Is “Scared Shitless” & Hiked Rates for Show. Apart from providing his analysis on the actions of the Federal Reserve and its interest rate hike in December of last year, Chris also provides some insights into how the average person can prepare for an uncertain future. Your personal well being, health, attitude and wealth are all at risk of deteriorating we must take action to protect against this decline. And there is a lot more to this than just holding gold and silver.

The oceans of the world hold untold amounts of gold, silver and other riches. Brad Baker, chairman of the publicly traded Odyssey Marine Exploration talks about how his company looks for buried treasures in the oceans. More specifically, we learn more about their operation off the Irish coast to recover the WW2 silver from the SS Gairsoppa that was being sent from India to Great Britain.



One warning as you watch this video. Mr Baker does use a good chunk of this Ted talk to "talk his book" and build up some PR for his company. Can we and do we want to mine the oceans? And is it really environmentally friendly as he would have you believe? This does seem to be becoming the next frontier for mining gold, silver, copper and other materials.

Gold has been always considered a universal currency and played vital role in economy of nations during ancient times. It was earlier considered as a good source for long-term investment and also good addition to user’s investment portfolio. But Gold doesn’t always glitter and with strong dollar values, it has lost its attraction among investors. Since Gold is priced based on US dollars, the yellow metal comes down in value if the USD rises.

Due to revival of US economy and surging interest rates, Gold is not considered as a good form of investment as the money spent in purchasing bullions will not yield any returns. Instead investors look out to invest in stocks with higher dividends, treasury bills or alternate mode of investment like binary options. Gold can be considered as a way to diversify your investment portfolio but it does not yield any earnings or dividend like traditional bonds and stocks. Investing in spot gold or purchasing bullions can only yield returns when people are ready to buy it back at higher cost. But with declining gold value, people are not ready to purchase gold and whoever has invested in it heavily by purchasing Gold at higher price is only suffering now in today’s market conditions. You can gain from a declining gold value by trading binary options which is one of the safest methods of investment which guarantees very high returns on investment.

Does a unit of gold still buy the same amount of bread today as it did 2000 years ago during the time of Jesus? This is a good interview from Bloomberg for a non-paper/financial instrument perspective on gold. In it, Petropavlovsk Chairman and Co-Founder Peter Hambro brings some much needed wisdom to the financial press by differentiating between the much speculated paper price of gold versus the demand, supply and price dynamics of the actual physical metal.

"To the illumined man or woman, a clod of dirt, a stone, and gold are the same."
Bhagavad Gita

This verse from the ancient Hindu holy text came to my attention when reading through Eknath Easwaran's excellent book, Words to Live By. We look at the prices of gold, silver, stocks, bonds, etc. on a daily basis but sometimes it is nice to put things into a higher perspective. Here is now Mr. Easwaran further elaborated on this quote from the Bhagavad Gita:

"Gold is not valuable in itself. It is valuable because there is so little of it. If sand were found only in small quantities, people would treasure it in their safe-deposit boxes, they would buy sand certificates, on important occasions they would exchange a little sand, and they would have the expression "as good as sand".

Things cannot give us status. We give status to things. When Tom gets into his BMW, he is giving status to the car. The car is not giving him status. The car says, "I feel good because Tom is at the wheel."

In what is at the very least a stunning move, the Peoples Bank of China (PBOC) has announced that the country's official gold reserves increase by 57% between May and June 2015. Any suggestion that this 604 metric ton increase in gold holdings took place in one month would be preposterous but the Chinese Central Bank had been keeping its monthly gold data fixed since 2009. The Chinese stock markets have been through a tumultuous time with a huge spike and fall within this calendar year. The fact that China would reveal these increased gold holdings could be a sign that they wish to stem some of the eroding confidence that has resulted from their (draconian) financial measures to counter the stock market bubble.



Many gold analysts believe that the Chinese gold holdings are much higher as (unofficially) they have been big buyers of physical gold since the last financial crisis. This updated number of 1,658 tons (53.32 million ounces) is still nothing compared to their $3.69 trillion foreign reserve holdings. When and how the Chinese decide to let the world know about their actual gold holdings, will depend on their own broader geopolitical plans.

The United States Justice Department granted UBS immunity after fining it a total of about $545 million dollars and getting a promise of co-operation. Other banks also agreed to settle for FOREX manipulation but UBS apparently agreed to "to help investigators examine whether there was “manipulation of, or fraud in” precious metals markets."

In this interview, Bill Murphy of GATA, who has been a long time vocal protestor of market manipulation of gold and silver, provides his take on what this means and how this situation could impact the gold and silver market (and its prices).