Thai Guru's Gold und Silber ... (Informationen und Vermutungen)

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http://news.goldseek.com/CliveMaund/1096902001.php

Is this it?

By: Clive Maund

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http://www.mineweb.net/columns…an_renaissance/350979.htm

Critical issues for investment in SA gold

By: Jim Jones
Posted: '03-OCT-04 17:00' GMT © Mineweb 1997-2004

JOHANNESBURG (Mineweb.com) --Patriotism, n. Combustible rubbish ready for the torch of any one ambitious to illuminate his name. Ambrose Bierce: The Devil’s Dictionary, 1881

“Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.” Samuel Johnson 1709-84 quoted in Boswell’s Life of Johnson.

It was only a few months ago that South Africa’s ANC government and its president Thabo Mbeki had their collective knickers in a knot when one of their country’s leading companies listed the risks it faced in doing business in South Africa. Politicians, who ill-understood SEC rules on disclosing risk by companies whose shares were traded directly or indirectly (through ADRs) on American stock exchanges, seized the opportunity to wrap themselves in the patriotic flag and to hit out at white businessmen who were simply complying with stock exchange rules.

The mandatory risk warnings were tagged as being unpatriotic, as being deliberately contrived to damage the country’s investment status. But, in the process, the politicians’ patriotic grandstanding raised investors’ apprehensions about investment in the world’s largest gold producing country.

The politicos quickly realised the error of their ways, with the result that there has been not a chirrup over the risk warnings published by gold miner Harmony in its 2004 annual report. Today’s patriotic politicians, as all voters know, are not the cynics inferred by Ambrose Bierce and Samuel Johnson.

If evidence of this pragmatism were needed, one has only to look at president Mbeki’s welcoming of the R20-billion bid by UK banking group Barclays for control of Absa, South Africa’s largest banker. Mbeki blithely ignored direct initial criticisms leveled at the Barclays bid by some of South Africa’s largest unions and, indirectly, by his country’s finance minister, Trevor Manuel.

The presidential message was clear: Foreign investors are more than welcome in South Africa. And this is underscored by the politicos’ silence over the Harmony annual report’s three pages of tightly printed risk warnings.

Nonetheless there are real risks to any investment in Harmony or, for that matter, the other major South African-domiciled gold miners. Political risks do exist. But they are of neither greater nor lesser importance than those environmental, physical and financial risks faced by gold miners elsewhere across the globe.

Harmony’s greatest risk is the combination of rand:dollar exchange rate and the dollar price of gold. At end-June Harmony reckoned that it had 62.26 million ounces of gold in its measured reserves of which all but 3.34 million ounces were in South Africa and almost half in the Free State where the original Harmony mine was located.

In Australia Harmony had gold reserves of 1.29 million ounces and in Papua New Guinea 2.05 million ounces.

Inclusive of the measured reserve ounces, Harmony’s total resources were 521.43 ounces of which only 12.67 million ounces were in Papua New Guinea and 12.13 million ounces in Australia. In other words, Harmony’s future remains, and will remain, largely tied to South Africa where exchange controls, as listed among the risks facing the company, are a major block to its investing in other countries.

But as CE Bernard Swanepoel points out in his report to shareholders, the 62.26 million ounce measured reserve figure is calculated at a gold price of R92,000/kg. Cut that price by 10 percent to R82,800 and the reserves fall 15 percent to 53 million ounces. If the rand gold price rises by 10 percent to R101,200/kg the reserves increase by only 4.4 percent to 65 million ounces. The downside is greater than the upside.

At present the rand gold price is something less than R88,000/kg, meaning that more than one fifth of Harmony’s current South African production results in operating losses. Mines and shafts are being closed, miners are being retrenched and emphasis is being placed on cost cutting, more-efficient working and increasing grades. But this latter tactic means that lesser-grade, unprofitable gold has to be left underground and may well never be extracted. And, judging by the grades at which Harmony’s indicated and inferred (as opposed to measured) resources are calculated, only a small fraction of those 400-odd million ounces of inferred and indicated South African reserves will ever be mined at current rand gold prices and operating costs.

Talk about potential risk! But that is not the end of it.

South Africa’s ANC government has already passed legislation compelling formerly white-owned mining companies to transfer 26% of their operations to black owners. Harmony has complied with this through its merger with black empowerment company ARMgold. That merger provided Harmony with some scope to improve the exploitation of its so-called quality (as opposed to leveraged) assets in the Free State goldfield.

Fair enough. But a further sting in the tail comes with the government’s proposed introduction by the year 2009 of a 4 percent royalty on gold revenues (revenues not profits!) in terms of the so-called Money Bill that has still to be passed into law by parliament. If today’s gold prices, exchange rates and costs were to persist, that royalty could wipe out the profits of virtually all of Harmony’s South African mines. Harmony has yet to make a public estimate of the likely effect, but it is unlikely to be trivial.

Whether this analysis will be tagged as unpatriotic or deliberately damaging to South Africa’s investment image remains to be seen. Some politicians might still be more intent on scoring political points than on taking a realistic view of the potential risks faced by South Africa’s gold miners and their shareholders. But most will resist the temptation and in future will be going along with their president’s (and party leader’s) pragmatism

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China Rebuffs U.S., Refuses to Give Timetable on Yuan

Zitat

``If you force China to change it will hurt the U.S. You destroy a goose that will give you a golden egg.''

Was in etwa soviel heisst wie:

Zitat

"Wenn ihr China drängt (aufzuwerten) wird es die USA selbst treffen. Ihr zerstört damit eine Gans die Euch goldene Eier legt!"

weiter......

http://quote.bloomberg.com/app…d=aqInugWKloSg&refer=home

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Gold May Top 15-Year High as Dollar Falls vs Euro, Survey Says

Oct. 4 (Bloomberg)

Gold prices may rise above the 15-year high of $433 an ounce this week on speculation the dollar will decline and spur investor demand for the precious metal, a Bloomberg survey showed.

Twenty-seven of 44 traders and investors surveyed Sept. 30 and Oct. 1 predicted prices will rise for a fifth week. Ten forecast a decline and seven said prices would be little changed. Gold reached a five-month high of $421.90 an ounce Oct. 1 and had its biggest weekly gain since mid-August.

Zitat

``There is a good chance gold will break out to a new high given weakness in the dollar,''

said George Ireland, 48, who manages about $100 million at Boston-based Ring Partners LP, which trades in bullion and shares of gold-mining companies.

Gold has climbed 13 percent from a six-month low of $371.30 in early May on speculation that record-high energy costs will curb U.S. economic growth, reducing demand for the dollar. The U.S. currency's decline against the euro last week was the biggest since the five days ended Sept. 10.

The majority of gold investors and analysts correctly predicted the market's direction in 12 of the 24 weeks since the debut of the Bloomberg survey, including the past five weeks.

Eighty-five percent of the time, gold moves in the opposite direction of the dollar, said Gregory Wilkins, chief executive of Toronto-based Barrick Gold Corp. Gold has benefited from speculation that the dollar's decline will help accelerate inflation, which erodes the value of assets such as stocks and bonds.

`Latent Inflation'

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``There is a lot more latent inflation going forward, which I believe will be beneficial to the gold industry,''

Wilkins, 48, said last week during a presentation at a gold conference in Denver.

Gold for December delivery rose $11.50, or 2.8 percent, to $421.20 an ounce last week on the Comex division of the New York Mercantile Exchange. Prices are up 9.4 percent in the past year.

The Tocqueville Gold Fund, with about $500 million in assets, is seeking shareholder approval Oct. 22 to double its allowable purchases of gold bullion to 20 percent of total assets, partly because of declines in the dollar.

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``We're going to see new highs in gold before year-end, certainly next year,'' said John Hathaway, 63, who manages the New York-based Tocqueville fund. ``Owning physical metal is a more conservative way than owning higher-risk gold shares to participate in the favorable macroeconomic environment for gold, including a falling dollar.''

Matthew Turner, an analyst in London at Virtual Metals, is among the 10 survey participants who expect gold to fall this week. Gold's 7.9 percent rise in March to the 15-year high on April 1 was followed by seven straight weekly declines.

Uncomfortable Prices

Zitat

``The price hasn't been very comfortable at these levels all year,'' Turner said.

Prices topping $433 this week would be a sign that any demand for gold is speculative and ``would not be constructive'' for the rally, said Carlos Perez-Santalla, president of Hudson River Futures in New York. He expects a rise this week that will fall short of the 15-year high.

Hedge-fund managers and other large speculators are betting prices will keep rising. They increased their net-long position in New York gold futures in the week ended Sept. 28, the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission said Oct. 1.

Speculative long positions, or bets prices will rise, outnumbered short positions by 82,118 contracts on the Comex, the most since Aug. 27, the commission said. Net-long positions, which peaked this year at 144,253 on April 9, rose by 17,791 contracts, or 28 percent, from a week earlier.

Goldman Forecast

Goldman Sachs Group Inc. in a Sept. 28 report said gold will trade in a range of $390 to $450 an ounce in the next six to 12 months as the dollar falls and mining companies reduce their fixed-price sales contracts, limiting supply. Gold last traded at $450 an ounce in July 1988.

``Gold prices are likely to remain between $414 and $425,'' said Prithviraj Kothari, director of Riddhi Siddhi Bullion Ltd. in Mumbai. ``There is interest from hedge funds and gold prices may remain in the higher range of $420-$425 if oil prices move further up.''

Crude oil prices that reached a record $50.47 a barrel last week are forecast to rise this week, according to a separate Bloomberg News survey. Higher energy prices probably will help send the dollar lower on expectations for slower economic growth, another Bloomberg survey showed.

Rising oil prices and a falling dollar are positive for gold, said Frank McGhee, head gold trader at brokerage Alliance Financial LLC in Chicago.

Zitat

``If oil prices continue to rise, I would expect that you will see Arab buying of both the euro and gold as they look to defend the value of the petrodollars they are receiving,'' McGhee said.

Central banks in the Middle East, source of about a quarter of the world's crude oil, as well as Argentina, have been buying gold, Tocqueville's Hathaway said.

Central banks are the largest holders of bullion.

To contact the reporter on this story:
Claudia Carpenter in New York at Ccarpenter2@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story:
Steve Stroth at sstroth@bloomberg.net
Last Updated: October 3, 2004 19:03 EDT

hpopth

5 Dollar sind es bereits weniger!

Einigen Zerti Besitzern werden wohl bereits die Muffen etwas sausen. Wer physisch in Gold investiert ist, wartet ruhig ab, und spätestens ende Woche sind wir trotzdem drüber, über den 430.- Dollar!

Wer weiss, vielleicht gibts in den USA ja heute noch eine angenehme Ueberraschung, Warteb wir's mal ab.

Gruss

ThaiGuru