Chuck checked in last night:
The premium in the Central Fund is not an exact correlation, but it is a good indicator at extremes. The phenomenal drop today must mean something. If you look at the chart of its premium, the last time it was this low was back in June 2003 when gold bottomed at $325. Add in the persistent put buying in the gold options, and it could get explosive here. Chuck
Some help from my friends on this NO conference day:
Bill,
Hope your enjoying NOLA. My two favorite seafood dives (the ones with rodents crawling around but the best crawfish in town) are R & O's by the lake and Franky & Johnny's uptown on the river. You may want to check into these figures but my dad (a lifelong commodity trader) is insistent that Gold open interest reached 1 mm contracts in 1980. He said the IMM and Comex each had 500,000 open interest.
A couple of things you may have missed this morning: Japan 3rd qtr GDP came in at a disappointing +.1%. Euro 3rd qtr GDP +.3% and was aided by Greek Olympics. The important point to me is all the people fleeing the U.S. dollar for these currencies are ending up in no growth economies with low yields. Me I would rather own Gold with falling production and rising costs to produce. Secondly CNBC had a Chicago Merc Currency trader on saying he felt the most important thing he saw all week was South Korea deciding to cut interest rates with inflation picking up in order to protect the little growth they had. His point is there is tremendous international resistance to the falling dollar. The one currency he felt had upside was Gold since there was no government trying to devalue it (obviously that is debatable) but the important point to me is the story is starting to get around. There are very few attractive currencies. Most major currencies are being devalued it is a question which is being devalued the fastest. Gold will soon start outperforming all currencies.
U.S. retail sales were +.2%. While the media is talking up ex-auto retail sales, the growth came from gasoline stations + 4.3%. Auto sales were down 2.2%. In a healthy economy we would rather sell cars than gasoline. So the retail sales report was consistent with a stagflationary environment. Once again someone used the retail sales report to sell off Gold from its 16 year highs. It is clear to me they didn't bother to read the report.
In my opinion until Gold appreciates significantly against all currencies I would prefer to hold physical and physical leveraged Gold (futures) than the gold stocks. While I expect gold stocks to move up with the price of Gold it is clear they need significantly higher prices for their profitability to kick in given rising costs and falling production.
Garic