Tuesday, October 14, 2008

Investors look to physical gold as safe haven

By Rachel Kelly, Channel NewsAsia

SINGAPORE : Gold continues to glitter as an investment option while global equity markets face continued volatility and turmoil.

The price of gold is holding steady at the US$850-per-ounce mark, but experts said it could rise to as much as US$1,200 in the next six months.

The precious metal has long been regarded as a safe haven investment compared to options such as shares or currencies. And investors are seeking out physical gold instead of shares in bank-owned gold.

William Kwan, bullion director, Gold Capital Management, said: "In the first place, there is a divergence between the physical gold market and the paper gold market. A lot of consumers are already converting their unallocated holdings from paper gold to physical gold allocated, because they find that it is safer for them to hold physical that is more tangible.

"That is why recently there is a short supply of gold coins around the world. A lot of consumers are queuing up outside of bullion dealer shops to buy gold coins and gold bars."

Industry players have noted a two to three-year low in gold paper trading. And for those investors looking to get their hands on some physical gold, such coins cost in the region of S$1,500 per ounce.

United Overseas Bank (UOB) in Singapore is one lender that trades in gold coins, and has noted a significant increase in demand for physical gold, gold bars and coins.

However, UOB also said that high gold prices have deterred jewellers and goldsmiths from buying gold bars.

That said, while there has been interest by investors, it is costly to invest in physical gold as GST and gold holding fees will be incurred.

UOB expects the demand for physical gold to subside over time when there is more stability in the global financial markets.

Jewellers in Singapore have also noticed an increase in demand for gold for investment.

Charles Ho, president, Singapore Jewellers Association, said: "In the past one to two weeks, there (has been) an increase of 15 to 20 per cent in enquiries, in particularly gold bars. If (they are buying gold) purely (for) investment, then most of the customers will look for gold bars...but gold bars are not wearable, so the best choice may be to buy some gold jewellery where you can touch it and feel it everyday."

Experts also recommend stocking up on gold with higher carat values as these make better investments. - CNA/ms

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GoldTraderAsia.com - Where to Buy and Sell Gold Bullion Bars, Gold Ingots, Gold Coins Collection and Gold Jewellery in Singapore.

To buy Hallmarked 999.9 Pure Swiss Gold Bars, Gold Bullion, Gold Ingots & 916 Gold Coins in Singapore or convert your 916 Physical Gold to physical 999.9 Pure Swiss Gold Bars, Click on Buy Gold Bullion Bars to find out more. You may Sell Gold Bullion Bars to us too.
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Wednesday, October 1, 2008

Why you should buy some physical gold

By Dominic Frisby

Refineries are struggling to make enough gold to satisfy demand

As I sat in front of my screen on Monday and watched the historic action of the stock market, I was glad I owned some physical gold.

I know it's a cliché and I know it'll get me accused of fear-mongering, but we really do seem to be teetering on the edge of some kind of financial meltdown. Every day, a new set of rumours flood the market about another bank facing collapse.

So it's little wonder that demand for a real, solid, wealth-preserving asset that you can hold in your hand is going through the roof…

Owning physical gold is the best way to protect what you have

There are plenty of other ways to play gold, but none offer the same sheer reassurance that physical gold does. Junior mining companies are, for the most part, a form of speculation. They are not something you invest in to protect your savings. They are something you put money in to, hopefully, make more money. The same goes for futures and options. Exchange-traded funds (ETFs) are a handy means of getting exposure to the price of the underlying commodity, but they are not the same as owning the commodity itself.

Similarly, when you hold cash in a bank you are taking on individual company risk – that's why you are paid interest to compensate. You are also taking on government risk, as all cash is a promise from and a belief in the government (and why hold significant savings in sterling with this lot in charge?).

Indeed, as this chart shows, measured in sterling, gold is touching all-time highs:

But physical gold in your hand or stored somewhere safe carries no such risk. It is not something you buy to speculate in or to make you rich, but to protect what you already have. And if you have it stored safely, no amount of derivative meltdown, naked short-selling, banking failure, government incompetence, stock-market-collapse, state-sponsored inflation or whatever threat to our wealth we face tomorrow can take it from you.

There is so much risk out there at the moment everywhere. Surely it's worth owning some bullion. And if it goes down in value, who cares? It means everything else you own will be going up.

The demand for bullion is going through the roof

Certainly, plenty of people agree with me. There seems to be a massive rush to physical gold, as I noted in a recent MoneyWeek cover story (if you're not already a subscriber, sign up for a 3-week FREE trial). This week we had the London Bullion Market Annual Precious Metals Conference in Kyoto, Japan. Sure, they have a vested interest in promoting this, but they say that demand for bullion is "unprecedented".

Jeremy Charles, chairman of the LBMA says, "There is an enormous pick-up in investment demand. I have never seen a market like this in my 33-year career. The gold refineries cannot produce enough bars." Other executives report that the move into physical gold was unseen, and driven by the very rich.

Johan Botha, a spokesman for the Rand Refinery in South Africa, which manufactures the Krugerrand, the world's most popular gold coin, said the plant was now running at full capacity seven days a week. "Even so, now and then we have shortages," he said.

The Austrian mint, which manufactures the Vienna Philharmonic, a popular gold coin in Europe, said it had extended work to the weekends to accommodate soaring demand. While the US mint suspended sales of the American Buffalo coin last week as it ran out of stock.

If you don't already hold some physical gold, I'd suggest you get hold of some.

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GoldTraderAsia.com - Where to Buy and Sell Gold Bullion Bars, Gold Ingots, Gold Coins Collection and Gold Jewellery in Singapore.

To buy Hallmarked 999.9 Pure Swiss Gold Bars, Gold Bullion, Gold Ingots & 916 Gold Coins in Singapore or convert your 916 Physical Gold to physical 999.9 Pure Swiss Gold Bars, Click on Buy Gold Bullion Bars to find out more. You may Sell Gold Bullion Bars to us too.
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Thursday, September 18, 2008

How Fibonacci numbers can help you trade

By Dominic Frisby

Fans of The Da Vinci Code, mathematicians, technical analysts, believers in the supernatural, even some bee-keepers and rabbit-breeders – they all know their Fibonacci numbers. This is an almost-magical sequence of numbers first described in ancient Sanskrit mathematics and introduced to the West by one Leonardo of Pisa, aka Fibonacci.

What gives this sequence its perceived ‘magical’ power is that the pattern repeatedly appears throughout nature, for example in the branching of trees, the arrangement of leaves on a stem, even in the spirals of florets on a sunflower. Pine cones, pineapple fruitlets, artichoke flowers, the family trees of honeybees - all show Fibonacci patterns in their arrangement.

What’s this got to do with finance? Well, it’s claimed that this same pattern is also discernible in markets. First I’ll explain the theory – bear with me – then we’ll look at how it may apply to today’s markets.

How the Fibonacci sequence works

Each number in the Fibonacci sequence is the sum of the previous two numbers. That means the first 20 Fibonacci numbers are:

0 1 1 2 3 5 8 13 21 34 55 89 144 233 377 610 987 1597 2584 4181 6765

Each number in the sequence is roughly 1.618 times greater than the previous number. And if you divide one number in the sequence by the number that comes after it, the ratio is consistently about 61.8%. For example, 8/13 = 0.6153, or 21/34 = 0.617.

This ratio, 61.8%, is known as ‘the golden mean’. Other key ratios are 38.2% (found by dividing a number in the series by the number two places to the right) and 23.6% (found by dividing one number in the series by the number three places to the right).

You will often find in the markets that a bullish major trend will suffer a bearish retracement to a key Fibonacci ratio, and vice versa. What does that mean? Well, for example, if an index rises 100 points from 100 to 200, it will often then retrace to a key Fibonacci level – that might be 61.8%, 38.2% or 23.6% of the move. So the index might then pull back from 200 to 161.8.

But does it really work?

Let’s take a look at this in practice. I picked two markets at random – the gold price and the Dow Jones index.

The Dow went from a low of 600 in 1975 to a high of 12,000 in 2000. That’s an 11,400 move. It then corrected. If it were to have corrected to a level that is 61.8% of that 11,400 move, it would have gone to about 7,045. In fact, it went to just below 7,200 in October 2002.

In gold’s recent great bull run, we went from a low of $250 in 1999 to a high of just below $1,030. That is a move of $780. If we look at likely Fibonacci levels to which gold would retrace from that high (i.e. possible buy-points), you get the following:

$780 x 61.8% = a correction of $482
$780 x 50% = a correction of $390 (though not a Fibonacci number, 50% is also a figure that is used, for obvious reasons)
$780 x 38.2% = a correction of $298
$780 x 23.6% = a correction of $184

A correction of 38.2% of that $780 move – in other words a reversion to a point that is 61.8% – takes us to $732 ($1030 - $298). And in fact, last week gold touched just below $740. As the May 2006 high, and also an important support level in 1980, it’s an obvious area for gold to find a low.

Now it would be easy to dismiss all of the above as mumbo jumbo, were it not for the fact that these ratios occur everywhere and with such frequency. And I would never advocate Fibonacci patterns as a sole reason for making an investment. They are, however, useful as a secondary trading tool. You may well have decided that you want to buy a stock or commodity for sound fundamental reasons, but Fibonacci numbers can help you to decide on the best time to do so.

But sometimes, of course, technical analysis goes out of the window. At one stage yesterday, by Asian trading, gold was up some $100 in a single day! It was gold’s greatest day’s trading ever.

Was this the mother of all panics? The mother of all short-covering rallies? Who knows, but it was a great day to be long. You can read more about why demand for physical gold is surging in this week’s MoneyWeek cover story, along with an update on my junior mining tips from the past year or so.

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GoldTraderAsia.com - Where to Buy and Sell Gold Bullion Bars, Gold Ingots, Gold Coins Collection and Gold Jewellery in Singapore.

To buy Hallmarked 999.9 Pure Swiss Gold Bars, Gold Bullion, Gold Ingots & 916 Gold Coins in Singapore or convert your 916 Physical Gold to physical 999.9 Pure Swiss Gold Bars, Click on Buy Gold Bullion Bars to find out more. You may Sell Gold Bullion Bars to us too.
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Tuesday, September 16, 2008

Where now for oil and gold?

Sir John Templeton died on 8 July, aged 95. He was, throughout his life, a great investor. He was also famous for the following quotation: "Bull markets are born on pessimism, grow on scepticism, mature on optimism, and die on euphoria."

The late Sir John's famous quote encapsulates the current condition of the commodity and energy sectors. We have to ask ourselves: Are the bull markets for gold and oil over and are they now primary bear markets?

Firstly, the gold market

Born on pessimism

At the start of the bull market for gold, prices were at a twenty year low of about $250 oz, having been in a bear market since 1980. That particular low became known as 'Brown's Bottom', because Gordon Brown marked it by selling a large percentage of Britain's gold reserves at the bottom.

Grow on scepticism

We first invested into the gold story in 2001, most people thought we were mad. How's that for extreme scepticism?

Mature on optimism

As time moved on, holding gold-related investments as a long-term investment became more accepted, particularly as the dollar swooned. The credit expansion also provided fertile ground for its popularity. Gold-related investments prospered and the subsequent credit crisis added further weight. After all, gold is said to be non-correlated with everything, especially stock markets.

Die on euphoria

The euphoria stage is when the price rises higher and faster than ever before. This could mean for gold a doubling of the price in a matter of months. Has there been euphoria? The answer is 'no'. The majority of investors do not hold gold bullion or gold-related investments as part of their portfolios. You can do your own market research to establish that fact. Talk to people and ask them if they hold gold and you will find the vast majority do not.

Interestingly, the most recent news has been very positive. According to Reuters, the president of Bombay's Bullion Dealers Association said that in August India imported 100 tonnes of gold bullion, which compared to 22 tonnes in July and 67 tonnes in August 2007. It is the time of year when India's demand for gold burgeons but the demand this year has been much higher than usual.

We strongly suspect, at present, that prices are being pushed around by short-term speculators to such an extent that gold is now seriously oversold. So we would certainly expect, in the near term, a strong rally, if not a recovery. Our view remains that the bull market for gold is still intact and that euphoria patiently awaits us in the future.

So far, pullbacks have been worse than expected but the gold price is now where, if you believe the story - and we do - you buy gold-related investments. So for the moment it would seem sensible to maintain exposure.

Secondly, the oil market

Born on pessimism

The oil price, at its lows, was $10 a barrel and as recently as December 2001 traded as low as $17.80 a barrel. Oil companies could not afford to invest, the market was very pessimistic.

Grow on scepticism

So far, the market has continually expressed its scepticism about the oil price by never re-rating equities in line with the market price for oil. As we explained in the previous issue, number 578, even now with oil at about $100 per barrel, oil shares reflect a medium to long-term oil price of only $53-$60 per barrel.

Mature on optimism

There has been a measure of optimism about higher future oil prices, quite rightly because it is based on the fundamentals of growing Chindia demand and long term supply issues. Over time, we don't doubt that growing optimism will manifest itself and the oil price will head meaningfully higher.

Die on euphoria

Still in the future

The energy market is unquestionably suffering on the back of the global economic slowdown and demand destruction. Although the long-term bull market, in our view, remains secure. However, if there is more weakness before support comes in and the $100 per barrel level doesn't hold (using a thick pencil) we will look to close energy positions. If that happens, we will monitor the situation, expecting in due course to buy back at a lower level.

As far as the gold and energy markets are concerned, we think the following quote from the newsletter The Rude Awakening is apt: "The trick is to know the difference between a bad investment that deserves to fall and a good investment that doesn't." We would maintain that our view is correct in believing that this sector falls into the second half of that quote.

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GoldTraderAsia.com - Where to Buy and Sell Gold Bullion Bars, Gold Ingots, Gold Coins Collection and Gold Jewellery in Singapore.

To buy Hallmarked 999.9 Pure Swiss Gold Bars, Gold Bullion, Gold Ingots & 916 Gold Coins in Singapore or convert your 916 Physical Gold to physical 999.9 Pure Swiss Gold Bars, Click on Buy Gold Bullion Bars to find out more. You may Sell Gold Bullion Bars to us too.
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