Gold Investor

Sell bitcoins, buy gold
A lot of bitcoiners were looking to buy physical gold. Seems like this was a good call for last week as Bitcoin has been on a real roller coaster ride since its recent highs.

Four big reasons to stay away from gold: Strategists
Does this qualify for a contrary indicator? Is this a "9 out of 10 dentists agree..." moment for gold?

Silver imports in India are hitting new highs as 338 tonnes of the precious metal was brought into the country during the month of October. Data from Thomson Reuters GFMS shows that this represents a 40% increase from the month prior. The reason is pretty clear as gold investors and jewelry buyers have not been able to purchase gold, during the Diwali and wedding seasons, which is just hitting its third month. This is due to the Indian government's restrictions on gold and the resulting scarcity (and higher prices) of the precious metal.

Martin Armstrong invokes reactions amongst investors or followers of the markets, that range across a broad spectrum. That is, there are many who believe in his views, others who loathe him and many more who have no idea who he is. It is impossible and unjust to try to condense his market views and theories into a sentence or two about cycles and charts - so I'd suggest anyone interested to go and do some more reading on their own. In a recent blog piece titled "The Battle Between Nominal & Virtual", Armstrong presents his views on where the price of gold may be going in the short term and then further out in time.

Jesse Owens won four gold medals (the 100 meter, 200 meter, the 400 meter relay and the long jump) at the 1936 summer games in Berlin, Germany. With this win, he put a real dent in Hitler's propaganda war but really struggled when he returned back home to a segregated and struggling economy which continued to have high unemployment. Owens gave one of his four gold medals to Bill “Bojangles” Robinson, an African American tap dancer and movie star of the time. After his death, it passed on to his wife and then to her daughter in 2007. And now it is up for auction.

There is no shortage of investment themed books. A quick look on Amazon shows that tens of thousands of books on this topic are currently available. Many authors write about investment ideas, investment theory, biographies of famous investors, investigative reports, economics, philosophy of money, etc. So how does Michael Lewis' Liars Poker differ from the rest? Since I have not read the other tens of thousands of investment books, I can't provide a definitive view about its relative value (or lack thereof). What I can tell you is that after reading this book, I have a better understanding of how Wall Street operated and evolved in the important financial period of the 1980s and to some extent, probably still does today.

If a picture is worth a thousand words, then this infographic is worth many, many times that. Visual Capitalist has an interesting report titled, "Global Gold Mine and Deposit Rankings 2013". Along with the nice looking infographic, they also put together a more detailed .pdf report and ask an important question.

The winter games are just around the corner and the southern Russian city of Sochi is all set to host the much hyped event. But a question that often comes up is whether the gold medal is actually made of gold (and the same with the composition of silver and bronze medals). As it turns out, the gold medal weighs in at a hefty 16 ounces (454 grams) but only has 6 grams of gold plating (1.3%) with the rest being composed of silver. The silver medal is pretty much the same without the gold plating. The bronze medal is composed of copper, tin and zinc. The medals highlight the Caucasus mountains which are one of the defining features of Russia.

Gold investors have a pretty good idea on where Peter Schiff stands on the precious metal. In this video, the CEO and chief global strategist of Euro Pacific Capital provides his views on Bitcoin.

The Royal Canadian mint is releasing a special 25th anniversary 1oz Silver Maple Leaf bullion coin made with 99.99% pure silver. Silver Maple Leafs (SMLs) have a good reputation as silver bullion with the RCM's guarantee for weight and fineness and should prove to have a slight higher desirability if for nothing but sentimental reasons.

By David Morgan
The Platinum Group Metals (PGMs) are a family comprised of 6 metals – platinum, palladium, rhodium, iridium, osmium and ruthenium. But for our purpose today (and for most investors), we are only interested in the first two – platinum and palladium. Platinum is usually more expensive than gold. But for well over a year, it actually traded for less – substantially less. One could purchase a troy ounce of platinum for $150 or so less than a troy ounce of gold. (As a side note, during the time of this unusual inverted pricing relationship, in expectation of the “norm” reestablishing itself, I placed a long platinum/short gold spread trade. Of course, this did indeed take place and I was able to make a good profit on the trade.)