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The John Brimelow Report
Comfort from Bridgewater
Tuesday, May 25, 2004
Indian ex-duty premiums: AM: $5.75, PM $4.20, with world gold at $385.40 and $387.30. Adequate, and a little too low for legal imports. India has announced a further liberalization of gold import regulations, permitting imports by a wider range of Indian entities. While this does not immediately mean much, it is a positive sign on the matter of the incoming government’s attitude to the trade. Also, in times of great activity like April, it will presumably enhance the Indian importing function’s ability to finance imports. This has occasionally thought to have caused some stress.
In Japan this morning the public found world gold several dollars higher than yesterday: they responded by selling. Volume jumped 53% to the equivalent of 33,856 Comex lots, but open interest fell the equivalent of 2,489 Comex to equal 111,820 Comex. The active contract closed at a one month high, up 12 yen: world gold went out $1.05 above the NY close. (NY yesterday traded 82,658 lots, of which some 30,000 arose from switches: open interest fell 4,533 contracts to 246,319.
As so often happens, the abrupt move in gold shares in NY late yesterday heralded a congruent move in bullion today. However, the persistent selling noted yesterday by several observers was apparent again today. Optimists would attribute it to the defence of the expiring options. Comex options expired today, and the OTC tranche tomorrow.
Pessimists would note that the buying back of a substantial 1.25 MM ozs of paper gold on Comex on Friday and Monday was accomplished in a $5 range, against a backdrop of oil somewhat unexpectedly crashing through to an all-time high: this is not the way gold used to work.
It is timely for gold’s friends to draw some comfort from Bridgewater Associates Daily Observations: this manager of over $50 billion of sophisticated money notes:
"…there is a real risk that the Fed could make the classic mistake of the 1970’s – i.e., letting inflation and inflation psychology germinate to the point that it is painful to kill. As we see it, we are transitioning from a time when running monetary policy was pretty straight forward to one in which it is going to be much more difficult…"
adding:
"…we expect to see more signs of emerging inflation psychology. In fact, we have seen some signs of it already. For example, we see many more institutional investors who are interested in holding more inflation hedge assets (commodities and inflation-indexed bonds), plus the art market is starting to get hot." (JB emphasis)
JB