Beiträge von Ulfur

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Aus der FTD vom 13.8.2004
Portfolio: Das Gold des kleinen Mannes
Von Horst Fugger

Bei keinem anderen Metall gehen die Meinungen der Investoren so stark auseinander wie beim Silber. Die wenigen börsennotierten Silberminen, in die der Einstieg lohnt, sind extrem volatil.

Es war fast wie zu Zeiten des Neuen Marktes, nur passierte das Ganze im Zeitraffer: Von Ende 2003 bis März 2004 stieg der Silberpreis um gut 60 Prozent, die wenigen börsennotierten Silberminen gewannen sogar noch erheblich mehr. Im April war der Spuk vorbei, und der Metallpreis fiel fast wieder auf das Ausgangsniveau zurück. Wohl dem, der früh genug verkauft hatte.

Nach jahrelangem Tiefschlaf war der Silbermarkt wieder als das entdeckt worden, was er in den späten 70er und frühen 80er Jahren schon einmal war: eine Spielwiese für Spekulanten und eine böse Falle für all diejenigen, die auf Fundamentaldaten vertrauten.

Widersprüchliche Interpretationen möglich

Nun verhält es sich in diesem traditionell sehr engen Segment des Rohstoff- und des Aktienmarkts ohnehin so, dass die verfügbaren fundamentalen Daten durchaus widersprüchliche Interpretationen zulassen. So argumentieren die Pessimisten seit Jahren, der Rückgang der konventionellen Fotografie mit Rollfilmen werde den Silberverbrauch und damit auch die Nachfrage langfristig verringern. Doch dieses Argument zieht wohl nicht, denn in der traditionellen Fotografie liegt die Silber-Recyclingquote bei der Film- und Bildentwicklung bei etwa 90 Prozent. Zudem gibt es inzwischen Hinweise darauf, dass die Silbernachfrage aus der Fotoindustrie sogar steigen könnte, weil digitale Aufnahmen großformatig auf Papier gebannt werden. Und dieses Papier ist so silberhaltig wie eh und je.

Wer sich für Silberinvestments interessiert, muss sich vor allem der Tatsache bewusst sein, dass es sich hierbei weniger um ein Edelmetall als um einen industriellen Rohstoff handelt. Dies ist vor allem deshalb wichtig, weil es nicht an Gurus und - sagen wir es offen: Scharlatanen mangelt, die Papiergeld grundsätzlich misstrauen und von der früher üblichen Golddeckung oder Silberdeckung nationaler Währungen träumen.

Nebenprodukt der Rohstoffgewinnung

Diese Zeiten sind vorbei, und es erscheint wesentlich vernünftiger, sich auf bestehende und mögliche industrielle Anwendungen des Rohstoffs Silber zu konzentrieren. Man darf dabei nicht vergessen, dass gut 70 Prozent der jährlichen weltweiten Silberproduktion nicht von ausgewiesenen Silberminen kommen, sondern als Nebenprodukt bei der Förderung von Gold und von Industriemetallen wie Kupfer, Nickel, Zink oder auch Blei anfallen.

Ganz anders als zum Beispiel im Goldsektor ergibt sich daher die ein wenig kuriose Situation, dass für einige der größten Silberproduzenten der Welt - etwa die Rohstoffkonzerne Rio Tinto, Anglo American, BHP Billiton oder Noranda - der Silberpreis kaum eine Rolle spielt. Wer am Aktienmarkt auf steigende Silberpreise setzen möchte, muss daher mindestens eine Liga tiefer einsteigen und sich der Tatsache bewusst sein, dass die wenigen börsennotierten Silberminen, denen man Investmentqualität zubilligen kann, extrem volatil sind.

Als klassische Silberminen gelten Hecla Mining und Coeur d’Alene aus den USA, die beide auch in Deutschland börsennotiert sind. Beide Unternehmen sind im "Silver Valley" des US-Bundesstaats Idaho eng benachbart und erwecken schon deswegen Vertrauen, weil es sie bereits seit über 100 Jahren gibt. Wer am Aktienmarkt auf Silber setzen will, ist daher mit diesen beiden Aktien gut bedient.

http://www.ftd.de/bm/ga/1092171050811.html?nv=hpm

Zufällig wird der Wert auch bei w:o entdeckt.

Heute von Christian Jüptner Kommentar: Corriente Resources: Kanadisches Rohstoffunternehmen mit großem Potenzial

Die Nachricht selbst kann ich nicht lesen, da im kostenpflichtigen Premiumbereich

Gestern wurden auf den dt. Börsen 14000 Aktien gehandelt. Nicht besonders viel, bei der in Deutschland meist umsatzlosen Aktie aber ein Spitzentag.

Hoffentlich bleiben die ekelhaften w:o Pusher fern.

Russ Winter is very sharp, a copper update:
The following Copper analysis from Russ Winter at

http://www.siliconinvestor.com…lk/msg.gsp?msgid=20402240

All questions I have pondered. Let's just take copper, because that's the most obvious and the one I'm playing actively.
Backdrop: We have about 14 million MT consumed a year right now. We saw a 0.2% drop in production (let's just call it flat) in the 2nd quarter despite a $1.25 price. If we used Comex, LME and Shanghai inventories for draw down we can closely construct the supply-demand set-up for this market. Since production (supply) is flat we could probably give consideration to utilizing this to diagnose the global economy, they don't call it Dr. Copper for nothing. Maybe a little simplistic, but I think a good exercise. From my daily index card.
May: inventory drawdown was about 78,000 MT: copper deficit is 936,000 annualized, or 6.7% of global demand.
June: inventory drawdown was 72,000 MT; deficit 72,000, 864,000, 6.2% of global demand. Could it be argued that the world economy contracted 0.5% from May to June? I think so.
July: drawdown is 55,000 MT, deficit is 660,000 annualized, 4.7% of global demand.
August: 8 days showing about the same drawdown rate as July.
Did the world economy contract 1.5% in July? That may be overstating it, but I'd still guess July was quite a contraction. Probably July saw the arrival of disrupted Grasberg supply, so that accounts for about half the down shift. I'd say 0.8% is my July-August SWAG. So I'll SWAG global GDP having contracted by 1 1/4% annualized from May to August.
Sure that might give the market "pause", but now let's examine what's required to prevent the remaining 180,000 MT in LME, Comex, and Shanghai inventory from going to goose eggs. The July-August "economic contraction" draw rate is currently about 2600 a day, or 650,000 MT annualized. That's a bit over three months to get to zero. So if the world GDP contracted another 1% immediately, you would get about a 500,000 MT deficit. In otherwords to get the copper market back into equilibrium Dr. Copper (the economy) would have to contract by over 4% (a depression by any measure) from August.
Could that be about to happen? Possibly, but I think you will see price rationing of the last 180,000 MT of inventory first. At any rate your first clue will be in the drawdown rate (spread out over a month or so). Remember there is no meaningful new supply, so if drawdown suddenly dropped to 35,000 a month, that might suggest a another serious economic deceleration was underway, 1.7% by my math.
But let's just take a worse case, we are in mid-Sept, and the draw down has slowed to a 420,000 MT annualized deficit (1750 MT a day), and the global GDP is in deep retreat. We are now down to about 135,000 MT left in inventory. That's nearly four months to zero, a little better calendar wise, but worse in relative numbers. If you are a copper consumer (say China), aren't you going to be getting damn nervous, weak economy or not? And how about those hedge funds, wouldn't they be tempted to start a run, weak economy or not?
Then just carry out this exercise on through. Conclusion: a severe depression (6% drop from last spring) will bring the copper market back into equilibrium at extremely low inventory levels. I think there will be a depression from this, but caused by price spikes from severe shortages, probably in both energy and metals, and in time even food (a subsistence item). New supply you say? That's several years away, and I don't see anybody whatsoever in a hurry to deal with that solution, do you? HUGO trades at 3.88 today, NTO at 1.96. They have two of the best undeveloped deposits in the world, and nobody seems lined up for them, at least today.
-END-

On this tumultuous day for most of the financial markets and on one of the most blatant gold rigging days of all time, the following emails from Café members might help to put the big picture in focus:

Bill:
I've been thinking about the emails you're getting such as "Can we then really say that the cartel is on its last legs? To my perception, they seem to have complete control, at least for now."

Bill, my take on the current situation is just the opposite. This is one hell of a complicated Chess game and I do not doubt that the bad guys are smart, ruthless and perhaps desperate, but they are not omnipotent, nor do they have complete control. I think they truly are cornered. The interest rate rise is the last thing they wanted right now. But it was that or a Dollar collapse. It was a move FORCED on them by the market.

Just think: There is less than ONE OUNCE of Gold per person on this planet. After 5000 years of mining!!! Each month the US Trade deficit is $45+ Billion. If that had to be settled in Gold (as it was under the Gold standard) the US would have to ship 3000+ tonnes to its trading partners.

Instead this deficit is settled in paper promises, aka Federal Reserve Notes or Treasury Paper. Think of it as a gigantic game of musical chairs. Each month the US issues 45 Billion new tickets to the game without increasing the number of chairs.

The market knows this. So they probe for weakness. They are rebuffed and withdraw. They probe again, testing the Fed's resolve. So far this year, we've seen the Japanese save the Dollar, then the Chinese slowdown story saved the Dollar, then the Fed promised to raise rates to save the Dollar, then they actually had to do it twice. But these rate rises have real consequences, some obvious (like housing) others not so obvious but which we assume must be dramatic (like the interest rate derivatives).

American power has many sources both economic and military but the most efficient instrument of that power is the US Dollar. For decades the American government has abused that power, allowing its citizens to live beyond their means. The strength of the Dollar is an illusion. American control over other nations depends on the continued belief that the Dollar is Money. It is the Fed's job to keep that illusion alive so that 45 billion new tickets can be absorbed each month.

For those of us who understand this, it becomes obvious that we must secure a chair before the music stops. How close is that day? I certainly don't know but yesterday the October gold price closed only 10c above the Spot price. This is ominous. As Antal Fekete argues:

"Backwardation in gold has a perverse effect. In the case of agricultural commodities backwardation provides a most powerful incentive for traders to sell the cash commodity and buy the futures. Not so in the case of gold. Rather than bringing out deliverable supplies of gold, backwardation tends to remove them. The more the gold basis falls the less likely it becomes that owners will exchange their cash gold for futures. Please remember that you have seen it here first. This perversion of the gold basis constitutes the self-destroying mechanism of the regime of irredeemable currency. The longs tend to take delivery on their gold futures contracts in ever greater numbers, and refuse to recycle cash gold into futures, regardless how low the gold basis may go. As it is not set up to satisfy demand for delivery on 100 percent of the open interest, the gold futures market will default. Exchange officials will declare a "liquidation only" policy to offset long positions in gold. At that point all offers to sell cash gold will be withdrawn. Gold is not for sale at any price. The shorts are absolved of their failure to deliver on their gold futures contracts."

The Gold price is down less that 8% from its high, yet somehow many gold bugs have been convinced that the bull market is over. This is the power of the Illusion the Fed feeds us. Don't listen. Trust Gold.
Cheers from Auckland, Ed

Dear Bill, You may post this if you choose. I was around in the 1970s playing the gold and silver markets. Made some money but was self taught and got out mid 79 and left some on the table. This time around I started buying back in 1996 quite early. Lost some money but kept buying. Signed up with Lemetropole after you were about three months old. In 2000 we placed $ 300,000.00 more in the market and kept buying as was feasible. By 2003 with about$300,000.00 more invested. We took profits in November 2003of 1.55 mill

And still have our original money in the market. We paid off the mortgage on our Holiday Inn and buying with all available funds back into the market. I am a few years older now, but still think I have time to beat these bums. But I if don’t my son sure as hell does. I would like thank you personally. We could not have done it with out you. So we have beaten them, and were going in for the kill. Can’t stop these boys’ come hell or high water. Don’t get discourage just keep buying. We will nail these bums. You have given a great service to mankind and I want thank you personally. TKT

Great commentary Bill, as always. Knowing the facts makes it easier to deal with the absurdities in today's markets. I have been accumulating gold shares since 2001, taking profits along the way but always re-investing the proceeds. "Be prepared" is what I was always told, and thus I am preparing. Thanks to people like you and your efforts, the truth, one day, will be for all to see and those who listened early on will be safe with their
financial futures. Thank you for your hard work.

Dana D
Halifax, Nova Scotia
Canada

GATA press:

Gold bugs waiting for price jump

By Jonathan Wegner
Omaha World-Herald
Wednesday, August 11, 1004

http://www.omaha.com/index.php?u_pg=46&u_sid=1171763
Since gold prices bottomed in 2001, the shiny metal has held steadily above $300 per ounce, no thanks to the Federal Reserve System, says Bill Murphy, chairman of the Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee.

"We're looking for the price to more than double where it is, easily. The only reason the price is here is because the gold cartel has suppressed the price for the last seven or eight years. It's very complicated," said Murphy, a former professional football player and commodities broker from Dallas.

You probably haven't heard of the gold cartel, and the whole idea has been debunked thoroughly by economists and other experts. Yet some gold bugs hold fast to such conspiracy theories.

Murphy believes the Federal Reserve and major investment banks such as J.P. Morgan and Goldman Sachs secretly sell their reserves into the market to depress gold prices.

The Federal Reserve and other central banks alone, he contends, have sold half their 32,000 tons in gold reserves. Murphy has invested his entire net worth -- more than $1 million -- on the premise that when the Fed goes to buy it back, it'll have to pay substantially higher prices.

"Hold prices are going to go bananas because the people suppressing the price will run out of gold to maintain the price cap operation," he said "All of a sudden, it's like every other scandal. It has ramifications for the financial markets. It could be another Enron."

Murphy knows it sounds slightly wild, but then people thought you were crazy if you thought Enron might collapse, he said.

To publicize this to the world, he organized a world summit meeting in Durban, South Africa, to draw attention to the problem. Though it wasn't well-attended, it was a start, he said. "We had five nations attend, mostly the gold producers and the mining unions."

Creighton University economist Ernie Goss said it all sounds like something from late-night AM radio.

"That just doesn't make sense. I do an economic round table with the Fed once a year in Kansas City and I've never heard this one. They try to be transparent. The goal is price stability, and that's not the price of gold."

-END-

As long as they are talking about GATA and the rig. The mainstream dismissal of what we have discovered is par for the course. NONE of these people have looked at any of our evidence. Their retorts are both mundane and of a noodle brain mentality. A Goss is the same kind of person who pooh-poohed the notion Enron was a fraud. After all Enron was lauded by Forbes and Forbes year after year and Ken Lay was buddies with President Bush. Because the Fed doesn’t discuss gold in its conference’s, gullible Goss says gold manipulation does not exist because the Fed is transparent. How naïve can you get? He and his ilk sound like kindergartners trying to explain to their daddies how the world works.

This is why the general American investor is in such trouble. These are the types they look up to for some straight talk. Good grief!
Some pictures of the Omaha story:

Nick Ferris, CEO of J-Pacific Gold, is excited about his company’s latest exploration program. Yesterday, J-Pacific announced the results from the late spring drill program at their Elizabeth Project in south-central British Columbia. The exploration drilling returned strong gold values and attractive widths from the "Southwest Zone" and indications of significant porphyry copper mineralization from the "No. 9 Zone."

Yesterday, J-Pacific announced the results from the late spring drill program at their Elizabeth Project in south-central British Columbia. The exploration drilling returned strong gold values and attractive widths from the "Southwest Zone" and indications of significant porphyry copper mineralization from the "No. 9 Zone."These results come from drilling that tested the new gold and copper discoveries from these zones in 2003….

The Elizabeth Gold Project, consists of 10,995 acres of owned and optioned crown grants and mineral claims and is located 130 miles north of Vancouver and just 18 miles south southwest of the permitted mill at the J-Pacific owned Blackdome Gold Mine. The project is located in what could be described as "Elephant Country" as it is just eight miles south southeast of the Poison Mountain porphyry copper deposit (discovered in 1956) and 18 miles north northeast of the historic gold mining town of Bralorne, where over four million ounces of gold have been produced, making it the largest gold producing camp in British Columbia's history. Given its close proximity to the permitted gold mill at J-Pacific's Blackdome Gold Mine, the Elizabeth Project could be complimentary to development plans for the district and specifically to any future production using the Blackdome milling facility. J-Pacific is one of the largest claim holder in British Columbia with its activities concentrated on the Blackdome/Bralorne liniment.

The J-Pacific Gold (55 cents Cdn. up a penny) press release can be read in toto at:

http://new.stockwatch.com/swne…s+Elizabeth+drill+program

Nat gas shortages, oil shortages, coal shortages and probably copper shortages ahead. It is possible both J-Pacific and Samex, two of my favorite exploration companies, have copper discoveries. Just a heads-up.

The gold shares bucked the general trend today and closed on or near their highs with the South Africans firmer due to the softening rand. The XAU gained .74 to 85.64 and the HUI rose 3.55 to 185.13.

The HUI needs to take out the 190 area to conclusively take out its well established downtrend:

http://bigcharts.marketwatch.c…&o_symb=hui&freq=1&time=8

As it ought to be, the huge shorts in Golden Star Resources have begun to cover. It closed at $3.99 up 29 cents.

While today’s blatant price rigging was infuriating, the signs of the times say The Gold Cartel is in deep trouble as outside market forces are collectively going against them. We are a serious day closer to getting out the GATA stretchers.

The gold and silver shares remain THE historic investment opportunity of a lifetime!

GATA BE IN IT TO WIN IT!

MIDAS

CARTEL CAPITULATION WATCH

The dismal US economic news:

08:30 July Retail Sales reported 0.7% vs. consensus 1.2%; ex-Autos reported 0.2% vs. consensus 0.4%
Prior Retail Sales revised to (0.5%) from (1.1%); ex-Autos revised to (0.3%) from (0.2%).
* * * * *

(This is old news, however it is negative because it reveals a weakening trend, one which won’t be helped in the months to come by sky high oil.)

The Bank of Korea cut its key interest rate Thursday, stunning markets, in an attempt to bolster the flagging South Korean economy despite the threat of rising prices
* * * * *

08:59 Moscow court denies YUKOY more time to repay its $3.4B tax
* * * * *
Reuters:
"Britain became a net importer of oil in June for the first time in 11 years, official data showed on Tuesday."

10:25 Yukos local shares halted for trading at 10 minutes after this hour
Halted for one hour on the local shares, according to Micex. Meanwhile, September WTI crude oil continues to move higher, now at $45.30, with the expected corresponding drop in stocks. Dow (0.88%) to 9850.64; S&P 500 (0.82%) to 1066.99; Nasdaq Composite (1.21%) to 1760.87.
* * * * *

A monster disappointment:

Aug. 12 (Bloomberg) -- Hewlett-Packard Co., the world's No. 2 maker of personal computers, said third-quarter profit rose to $586 million, less than analysts expected, as sales of its server and storage computers fell. The shares declined as the company cut its forecast for the current quarter.
Results are ``unacceptable'' and Hewlett-Packard will make ``immediate management changes,'' Chief Executive Carly Fiorina said in a statement that included preliminary results…. – END-

Even the high end is suffering:

Tiffany & Co misses by $0.04, guides Y04 below consensus (TIF) 31.80: Reports Q2 (Jul) earnings of $0.25 per share, $0.04 worse than the Reuters Estimates consensus of $0.29; revenues rose 7.7% year/year to $476.6 mln vs the $496.8 mln consensus. Company issues downside guidance for Y04 (Jan), sees EPS of $1.55-1.60 vs. Reuters Estimates consensus of $1.64… - END-

China has its problems too. Will they send them our way?

Bill;
Well look what we have here. Inflation is only a transitory problem in China too. Thank god for that!

Aug. 12 (Bloomberg) -- China's consumer prices rose last month at their fastest pace in more than seven years as food costs surged, making it harder for the central bank to avoid raising interest rates. Bonds fell after the report. .........

.....``The inflation pressure is transitory,'' said Chris Leung, an economist at DBS Bank Ltd. ``Why raise interest rates when the economy is already slowing?''..

Monkey see, monkey do.
Rob

Wall Street pundits were hoping yesterday that the inventory numbers would show healthy decreases. They didn’t get them:

10:00 July Business Inventories reported 0.9% vs. consensus 0.6%
Prior reading revised to 0.7% from 0.4%.
* * * * *

WASHINGTON, Aug 12 (Reuters) - Inventories at U.S. businesses rose more than expected in June, marking their largest gain in four years and their tenth consecutive monthly rise, a government report showed on Thursday.

The Commerce Department said June business inventories rose 0.9 percent to $1.234 trillion while sales at manufacturers, retailers and wholesalers grew 0.1 percent. Wall Street economists had expected a milder 0.5 percent rise in June stocks.

The June business inventory gain, the largest since a matching rise in June 2000, pulled a key measure of inventory leanness from recent lows. The stock-to-sales ratio, which measures how long it would take to deplete stocks at the current sales pace, rose to 1.31 months in June from 1.30 months in May…. –END-

More bad economic news:

"The Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago said its index of manufacturing activity moved 0.7 percent lower in June compared to May's levels. Three of the four sectors followed by the index declined in June while the fourth group was unchanged. The May reading was revised to show a 0.1-percent tick higher."
* * * * *

The energy problem is not only about oil:

US coal prices soar as output declines

Financial Times
Published: August 12 2004
US coal prices are rising rapidly as unexpected growth in demand this year is undermined by declining domestic production, according to Standard and Poor's.

The ratings agency says in a report to be released on Thursday that demand has risen because of the stronger economy, weather-related usage and the running of coal plants at higher capacities as utilities have increasingly switched to the fuel to avoid paying skyrocketing natural gas prices.

Yet US production to meet this demand has been declining over the last few years and coal exports have increased, with high-grade thermal coal being marketed for Asia's surging steel production needs at a time when the depreciation of the US dollar makes it attractive.

Efforts to build up coal inventories are being hindered as US railroads experience severe congestion, with demand for all commodities higher than expected. Coal inventories already are at historic lows, with coal-fired generation outpacing coal production. Some utilities report inventories of only about one month.

"Inventories will reach an all-time low by year-end 2004, potentially causing further volatility in spot prices," said Aneesh Prabhu, S&P credit analyst.

-END-

Remember when our Café source told us months ago the Chinese have tied up huge coal supplies out of West Virginia and Alabama and were shipping them back to China?

GATA’s Mike Bolser:

Hi Bill:
The Federal Reserve added $13.25 Billion in repos today August 12th 2004, an action that took the pool up ton $43.769B.

The DOW's 30-day ma has slipped to a new low for the move and this is interesting and suggests that the Fed may not be as well off as they imagine. The relatively large add today hints at things to come and we will have conclusive evidence that the Fed is in trouble when they run the repo pool up over $50 Billion again.

Richard Russell keeps advising investors to obtain gold in metal form and so do I. Think not in terms of how many pieces of colored paper will buy an ounce but in how many ounces one can get and still meet one's other expenses. Inflation ravaged countries in Europe know this drill all-too-well. The day of reckoning is in the future so it makes little sense rushing to count gold "profits" in dollar terms. Accumulation is all that "counts".

Derivatives explosion or COMEX closure?

The interest rate derivatives held at JP Morgan top $29 Trillion in the latest quarter and much of that contract load is gold linked. The language stipulates that "a pricing mechanism must exist" in order for the contract to remain valid. This extremely odd language insertion attracted my attention when I first saw it and I asked...why is this here?

Well, the cynical view is the phrase is there as an escape clause after the authorities close the COMEX and other big gold markets under their control to precious metals trading. Until there's a better explanation, I'm sticking to this expectation so investors ought to beware of precious metals options and futures as an avenue to prosperity. Under such a scenario, metal itself will deliver its own very high leverage.

Philosophically, the Fed's goons would make sure, by design, that their arch enemies in the gold bug army made no profit when the price finally ran away. They would deliver a scorched earth.

D-Day

When... is the key question everyone wants to know, not if. The wild mutations in historical ratios such as oil/gold and gold/real interest rates have prompted even mainstreamers to comment of late. Something isn't right all-too-few of them say

By watching the Fed's every move using proprietary metrics, many of which have yet to be published, I attempt to guess where they are going. Right now the Fed has just changed from up to flat in the DIVG ma even as they are forced to keep M1 rising and suffer massive budget and trade deficits that are, by all assessments, out of control. They took from May 24th until this week to transition so they were not in too big a hurry as they gently added more and more selling pressure.

I don't think they can hold this for very long without some external event to cover their next move which needs to be designed to halt the need for gold sales. It could come in weeks or months...no one can say.

I do not believe that D-Day will bring the same kind of failure we experienced in 1979 because the Fed is dedicated to preventing just such an un coordinated retreat from ever happening. They often speak of how things are different today. Perhaps the biggest difference between 1979 and 2004 is that the Fed feels much better about bending economic truth and therefore has become a full adversary to those holding wealth. Don't waste your time listening to the Masters words...use his pieces of colored paper to obtain metal while you can.

DOW 11,750?

By Labor Day? It's all but a blown forecast but I'll concede defeat when the time comes. I'm guessing that the election has been conceded so the Fed may have chosen not to push things any harder. This DOW 11,750 defeat is one I'll gladly accept. BTW the democratic presidential contender took a slight lead in the Florida polls today and IF the hurricane does appreciable damage here, lightly motivated folks will be absorbed in rebuilding first and voting second.
Mike

PS I'm hunkering down for Charles (hurricane) so there won't be a repo update tomorrow.

The amazing Mahendra has done it again. He just recently called for a short-term sharp soybean rally. August beans closed up 50 ½ cents to $6.87 ½. Then, he recently called for the dollar to weaken, except against the South African Rand, which he said would weaken against the dollar. Sure enough, the SA Reserve Bank lowered interest rates today and the Rand weakened against the dollar, while the dollar fell against most other currencies. Now, if only we could get the Gold Cartel to shoot themselves in the foot so his gold prediction can pan out.

From Richard Russell last evening:

"But what ever happened to the long-promised gold ETFs? When it comes to gold and silver, the authorities will do everything they can to keep the precious metals out of the hands of the public. When you buy the not-yet approved gold ETC, you actually take an ounce of gold off the market, reducing supply. The authorities don't want that."

This is exactly what GATA said the US would do to this World Gold Council, New York Stock Exchange product years ago when it was first proposed. It will be two years behind schedule as of this fall. Once again GATA finds more anecdotal evidence of a coordinated mass conspiracy to denigrate gold and keep it out of the average American investor’s radar screen. Either that, or the World Gold Council is proving once again it is among the least effect industry organizations in history. The most likely reason for the delay is a combination of both reasons.

It is time for the gold producers in the WGC to withdraw their support and get behind a new organization to fight the gold price suppression scheme, a scheme which is destroying their profits and demoralizing their shareholders. If you are one of those disgusted shareholders, don’t just sit there, get on the phone and raise "Kane" with the CEO’s of your gold companies to do something about this nightmare. If you don’t make any effort to end this fraud, fine. Just sit there, complain, and stay miserable!

Robert Rubin’s Citigroup (a Gold Cartel honcho) has itself in some hot water in Europe due to alleged market shenanigans (what else is new).

FT

Citigroup coup stirs up emotions

Published: August 11 2004 05:00 |

The controversial trans-actions by Citigroup that have stunned the eurozone government bond market came at a challenging time for the fixed-income markets, provoking an unusually emotive response from many rival banks.

After a period of exceptionally low interest rates, which helped make fixed-income desks significant revenue generators for investment banks, the cost of borrowing has begun to rise.

Meanwhile, profit margins in the inter-dealer, or wholesale trading, of eurozone government bonds have dwindled as pricing in the maturing market has become more efficient.

This has been driven by a move to electronic and internet-based trading, which cut costs and incr-eases pricing transparency.

"Market-making has be-come very tough," said a trader at a European bank. "Five years ago, you could expect to make 4-5 cents [per Euro] on a €100m transaction in German Bunds. Now it's about 1 cent."

But unwelcome though they may be to rivals, large trades of this sort are probably here to stay. Citigroup's market coup reflects the growing power of a handful of leading banks in the capital market arena.

A combination of their large balance sheets with electronic technology and sophisticated financial modelling allows them to put together deals that leave lesser players gasping….

-END-

Don’t think for a moment the hedge funds are cleaning up these days:

Benton's Andor Fund Assets Fell Almost 50% in July, People Say

Aug. 12 (Bloomberg) -- Dan Benton's Andor Capital Management LLC, the eighth-biggest hedge fund at the end of 2003, lost almost half its assets in July, people familiar with the New York- based fund said.

Assets in the fund, after 18 months of losses in its main Andor Technology Fund, fell 46 percent in July to $3.5 billion, the people said. Investor withdrawals of $1.5 billion led the decline as two of Andor's portfolio managers left and Andor decided to close the funds they ran, the people said.

At Andor's annual meeting in May at the New York Public Library, Benton asked investors to ``ride the technology wave'' with him. Computer and telecommunications shares plunged in the following two months, contributing to a 5.4 decline in net assets this year through July for Benton's $1.7 billion Andor Technology Fund.

-END-

Modest gold supply increase:

China's gold output expected to hit 210 Gold output in the Chinese mainland is expected to reach 210 tons this year, according to an industry organization.

The figure will be up from 200.598 tons last year, said sources from the China Gold Association.

***

To give you some idea of how insignificant this increase is, compare it to Turkey importing a record 30 tonnes in just one month.

Forked tongue stuff:

Bill,
I know I'm a broken record on this, but once again, the feds are lying about the deficit. From the Treasury Department's Bureau of the Public Debt web page at http://www.publicdebt.treas.gov/opd/opdpdodt.htm I get the following numbers:

Date

Debt Held by
the Public

Intragovernmental
Holdings

Total

07/30/2004

4,267,913,389,239.04

3,048,654,181,993.85

7,316,567,571,232.89

09/30/2003

3,924,090,106,880.88

2,859,140,955,862.74

6,783,231,062,743.62

subtracting, we get:

10 months

343,823,282,358.16

189,513,226,131.11

533,336,508,489.27

$533.34B is not $395.78B. Where do they get their numbers, and why don't they use the ones on their own web site?

$533.3 B / 10 = $53.33B average monthly deficit.

2 more months at that rate adds over $106B more.

That projects the fiscal 2004 deficit to around $639B.

This is the amount they pay interest on. It is the real FY2004 deficit.

The $343.82B increase in the debt held by the public (mostly the bond market) is close to the announced $395.78B, so I am assuming they are using that, with some unknown fudge factor, possibly excess Medicare receipts. The $189.51B increase in Intragovernmental Holdings represents the various federal pension fund receipts in excess of the amount needed to pay current benefits. Mostly this is Social Security. Their web site explains it all in detail.

They seem to be implying that they don't really owe the Social Security trust fund the money they borrow from it, they simply use it as a cash cow, knowing that some day they'll simply renege on it. What other explanation could there be for not including it in the deficit? On the other hand, they can't play those games with the debt, since by law it is defined as anything they borrow that they must pay interest on. That's why periodically, when they must raise the debt ceiling, they borrow from other internal accounts while the bill works it's way through Congress, and the numbers posted at the above web site virtually freeze until the bill passes. They don't pay interest to those other internal accounts, and so can get around the law that way until they run out of those sources.

If I were in charge, I'd change the law to require the excess SS funds be invested in hard money, money that can't be reneged on. I think you know which money I'm refering to. And I'd start selling those treasuries and use the proceeds to buy more of the same. I know, fat chance.

Oh what a sight it will be to see the printing presses in high gear in 2020.
Best regards.
Ed Peters

This is a bit scary and food for thought:

Forward Planning: Two Years (or less) to $125 Oil

http://www.urbansurvival.com

Oh, this is a for sure bummer: An Iranian oil expert makes the call at http://www.abc.net.au/rural/news/stories/s1172992.htm You can do the math, right? $45 goes into $125 2.77 times and with gas at $2.00 now, that would project $5.54 gasoline within 2-years.

You need not be a genius to figure out that we are quickly coming to a major bifurcation point where the future will be wildly inflationary due to soaring oil - when we get three times the oil price, we get a kick of inflation that may exceed even the 1980's. On the other hand, oil prices could actually fall but that would imply a collapse of demand. As your people's economist I won't forecast which way things will break, but you see the point, right? Consumption can never outpace supply so if Peak Oil is here, stand by for the age of falling standards of living.

No doubt, the soaring oil price figured into the Fed decision to raise rates yesterday. You see, it makes no difference to the government right now whether employment falls later on this year. Their immediate problem is to keep the string of carry trades intact, and thus keep the U.S. dollar firm enough so that it won't take much more than $45 a barrel to buy oil: http://business.scotsman.com/economy.cfm?id=923342004 The reality is that if the U.S. dollar falls, the price of oil denominated in dollars will quickly head much higher - and that would have a disastrous impact on what's left of the U.S. economy. It would make the oil shocks of '73 and '75-76 look like child's play.

We can only hope that folks over at the Fed are reading the news in serious financial media - there is, it's coming out as we forecast, nothing transitory about oil prices. See Forbes article at http://www.forbes.com/business…2004/08/11/ap1499798.html That Sir Alan and the crew would have been so foolish as to think that oil prices would be transitory has prompted us to add yet another word to our New Economic Reality Dictionary:…

-END-

The John Brimelow Report

Gold Crossed

Thursday, August 12, 2004

Indian ex-duty premiums: AM $6.32, PM $6.64, with world gold at $395.85 and $396.15. Ample for legal imports. India is a strong importer at these prices. Mitsui-London noted that yesterday:

"Gold was bid initially through NY with decent spec buying but Euro weakness spurred dealers and locals to hunt down weak longs. Aggressive physical buying from Turkey and India provided support." (JB emphasis)

Some interesting light is shed today on the state of the physical market by a report in a Gulf newspaper today that a jewellery show in Jordan last week saw record sales, more than twice the usual in the event’s 5 year history. Jordan, of course, has no oil, and is in the unenviable position of being sandwiched between Israel and Iraq. However, this has meant boom times for the Jordanian trucking industry, supplying the occupation forces. Your US tax dollars at work! See

http://www.bahraintribune.com/ArticleDetail.asp

TOCOM continues unimpressed. Volume fell 25% to only equal 9,244 Comex contracts, and the active contract was down 10 yen. Open interest slipped another 789 Comex equivalent. World gold stood 80c above the NY close at the end. (NY yesterday traded 48,754 lots: open interest slipped 901 contracts.)

Yesterday saw powerful selling after the US data, with more than half the estimated volume going through in the first 90 minutes of Comex. Refco Research blames "fund and dealer" selling, while Standard London, in an unusually frank commentary, appears to suspect short selling:

"Gold opened in Asia almost 2 dollars lower and it was evident what were on the Asian dealers mind. One could almost see the glint of their smiles while rubbing their hands as they were finally having the first chance to direct the gold’s movement. So gold opened at 397.70 bid and dealers initially sold it cautiously…Gold was soon banging at 396 but physical demand underpinned the market there …With all things considered, 397 seemed like a pretty good level to get short for the day and so the European dealers gamely started selling it as well. …After COMEX opened… everyone scrambled to sell some gold before the prices became unattractive. Gold was pushed lower gradually and eventually established the day’s low at 393.20 offer. Without fresh selling interest, gold recovered its composure to close at 395.40 bid, which technically is a bearable closing as it did not close below 395."

This simply seems unwise in view of the buoyancy of the physical market.

Brightening up a day in which another dreary round of trench warfare seems to be underway between Eastern physical buyers and North Atlantic sellers is a piece by Jessica Cross of Virtual Metals, published late last night on Reuters. Most of this is a complaint about the shrinkage in the bullion dealer community, a.k.a. possible buyers of VM’s service. However, the occasion of the report is the publication of the "Hedge Book" survey VM does for Mitsui. This shows that producer hedges were cut by more than expected in Q2 ’04:

"A Hedge Impact reduction of no less than 4.6 Moz was substantially more supportive of the gold price than a simple committed ounce measure would have suggested. And yet the price over the period fell from $427/oz to $393/oz. This tells us that in the absence of this decline in hedging, the gold price would have most likely fallen further and faster than it did...As US interest rates turned up, signalling to many observers the end of dollar weakness, so it appears that the speculative side of the gold market went short in volumes that swamped the supportive 4.6 Moz of dehedging and resulted in the subsequent price vulnerability."

(Cross maintains, no doubt correctly, that the hedge reduction impact was accentuated by the gold price decline and lease rate changes, which influence the "delta".)

The problem with the claim that this powerful uplifting influence was offset by spec shorts is that there is absolutely no evidence that such shorting occurred. Indeed, the CFTC data showed just the reverse, and was widely thought to be replicated on a larger scale OTC. And, as Cross notes, lease rates remain "glued to the floor".

Lower prices + big producer hedge reduction + no huge spec short increase = Undisclosed Central Bank activity

A conclusion from which establishment publicists like Virtual Metals always shrink.

JB

The complete Virtual Metals report follows for your perusal:

The Hedge Book Q2 04.pdf

Another gold industry joke, this Virtual Metals. Perhaps hoax on the industry is more like it. This report is completely disingenuous as it fails to deal with the real reason the gold price tanked in the second quarter. To blame the specs going short as a reason is ludicrous. For years Mr. Cross, now of Virtual Metals, dealt with the large BIS gold derivatives numbers as being related to the hedgers. Now that the hedgers have reduced their positions sharply over the past few years while the derivatives have not gone down, she says nothing and shies away from the issue.

The gold price is suppressed because there is a Gold Cartel out there surreptitiously feeding central bank gold into the market to keep the price from rising. How clear can that be?

By the way, for new Café members, Ms. Cross is married to the former number two at the South African Reserve Bank. During my tour of South Africa I met with the bank’s number 3 and 4 in a government building in Pretoria to lay out the gold scam story in an effort to expose the fraud and free the gold price. The main beneficiary of a sharply rising gold price (then about $258) would be the people of South Africa. The two bankers giggled part of the time like a bunch of school kids when they thought I wasn’t looking.

August 12 - Gold $393.90 down $1.50 – Silver $6.53 up 2 cents

Letting It All Hang Out!

"...I do not see that one can blame the majority of Germans who, in 1933, believed that the Reichstag fire was the work of the Communists. [The Parliament burned down and a convenient Communist arsonist was fingered, which the Nazis used as the excuse to unleash police-state tactics against all opponents.]

What one can blame them for, and what shows their terrible collective weakness of character clearly for the first time during the Nazi period, is that this settled the matter. With sheepish submissiveness the German people accepted that, as a result of the fire, each one of them lost what little personal freedom and dignity was guaranteed by the constitution; as though it followed as a necessary consequence."
Sebastian Haffner, Defying Hitler, 1939

http://www.crisispapers.org/Editorials/germany-1933.htm

Wake up America about what your own government has been up to for some time, before it is too late! Remember when you were kids and as you were taught history you thought how could the average German have ever let that have happened? Well your kids and grandkids are going to be reading the same history books many years from now and ask how YOU could have ever let happen what Washington and Wall Street are doing to America today. Chris Mathews of CNBC’s HARDBALL recently said on his acclaimed show that he had traveled around the world of late and found that "America is hated." It is NOT for no reason. It is time for our once great nation to wake up to what the financial/political powers have done and keep doing - all for the WRONG reasons!

As long as this sort of suspicious attitude prevails in the poor areas of the world, America is going to find itself in deeper and deeper trouble as the years go by in this new "terroristic time."

KHARTOUM, Aug 12 (Reuters) - Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir on Thursday accused Western nations of interfering in its troubled western Darfur region to try to exploit Sudan's gold and oil resources.

Sudan is under intense international pressure to rein in Arab militias, accused of looting and burning African farming villages, and provide security for more than 1 million people displaced by the fighting in the remote area bordering Chad.

If not, the U.N. Security Council in a July 30 resolution says Khartoum could face unspecified sanctions. There has also been talk of possible foreign troop intervention in Darfur.

Bashir on Thursday said Western nations, especially Britain, were inflaming the Darfur fighting to destabilise wider Sudan.

"There is an agenda to seek for petrol and gold in the region," he told a women's union meeting on Darfur in Khartoum on Thursday. –END-

This is not anti-America diatribe on my part, it is pro-America and anti where the power structures in Washington and New York are taking our country. The way I see it is the question for the average American is, "if you were living around 1776 what side would you have fought on?" The establishment British or the Colonists? Would you have fought to preserve tyranny and the banking elitists or for freedom and your deserved rights? Like it or not, that is close to where we are in 2004 in many regards.

Not only are Americans in peril of losing long cherished freedoms, the average Joe and Jane are in danger of losing a good deal of their hard earned money when the stock and real estate markets collapse – due to bursting "bubbles" engendered by the former strong dollar policy of Robert Rubin, rigged markets (most importantly the gold price) and deliberate misinformation emanating from Washington and Wall Street.

It is time for America to wake up before it is too late!

If the venerable Jim Sinclair has it right, it may already be too late. From this latest missive at http://www.jsmineset.com:

Thursday, August 12, 2004, 11:30:00 AM EST
Blunder of Blunders - NOCs take Notice
Author: Jim Sinclair

The final act in this drama will be the population taking down the new government of Iraq and demanding a Theocracy under the influence of Iran while the Kurds and other elements demand autonomy. The West will be rendered incapable by having their economies held in hostage via oil.

The inflationary implications of this will deliver a spike up in gold of an enormous magnitude thanks to the manipulation by the powers that be that have so far prevented the normal market power of gold to unfold. The net result in markets for anything is to construct an internal coil of power that once released by such events will multiply the upside potential by orders of magnitude. Dan Norcini's read on the USDX extension on the downside will become a reality. All this might be closer than anyone is willing to accept.

-END-

Fellow Café members saw it (gold) this way early this morning:

Hi, Bill:
Let's see now. Dollar down? Yup. Stock markets down? So far. Oil up? Yeah, but so what? Gold's down. Even though it might appear to many of your frustrated readers that nothing much has changed in the world, everything has changed. One of these days soon, Toto will pull back the curtain on the Great Oz to reveal the truth.
Jay

Morning Bill,
This fraud is getting very old. The absurdity is sickening. Both gold and the dollar down. For some reason I keep thinking about an old poster that pictured a hawk on a tree limb with the statement: "Patience Hell, I Need to Go Out an Kill Something!" I continue to remind myself that the payoff is going to make this slow torture all worthwhile, and the fundamentals just keep getting better. Although, as you indicated last night, just what is their bullion supply? Geopolitical events are really heating up, in addition to the existing wars, Iran and the China Sea armada are stoking the flames. Things continue to be very curious indeed. Time is on our side!
Rich

The gold related news of the day was BULLISH all the way around, which you will read as you go on with the MIDAS. A list:

*Oil shot up as high as $45.75 and closed at $45.50, up another 70 cents per barrel.
*The dollar FELL .18 to 88.80 and the euro ROSE .44 to 122.54.
*Fighting in Iraq is intensifying.
*The US economic news continues to be abysmal and is worsening by the week.
*The US stock market was soft all day and both the DOW (9815, down 124) and the DOG (1752, down 30) closed on their LOWS.

Gold? It shot up early and then THE GOLD CARTEL launched one of their price-capping assaults, taking it from up $2.60 to down $1.50, where they sat on it for most of the entire trading session. The Kitco daily chart looks line another flatline brainwave of a dead person. Gold, after making its high AGAIN in the first half hour, barely traded for the entire session after its take down. And that is with the stock market cratering and oil surging. ONCE AGAIN, we see gold manipulated by the cabal RIGHT at the time gold should be taking off. You have to wonder how desperate the devious crooks are? I think REAL desperate.

The US economy is weakening, the dollar is shaky, the effects of the last few years of stimulus are over, oil is soaring and Iraq is a mess. The geopolitical and economic/financial market news is very likely to worsen from here on in through the rest of the year. Can’t see the bums being able to hold gold down too much longer. The creeps are going to be blown out of the water.

A potential BIG plus for the bull side of the gold market:

The option writers on the gold floor have been writing calls on the metals markets with impunity as of late. By the way they are writing the options, it appears they don’t believe gold will make a move in the next half year. This could be a source of panic shortcovering in the months ahead.

The gold open interest fell 901 contracts to 218,161.

Silver was quiet most of the session after falling back from its opening 10 cent. Its open interest fell 1575 contracts to 95,616.

Good news on the warehouse stocks front. After a 600,000+ ounce build yesterday, the silver stocks fell 1,193,826 ounces this afternoon to register a new low of 110,416,153. Still going the right way!

[Blockierte Grafik: http://www.ftd.de/images/ft_logo_artikel.gif]
Aus der FTD vom 13.8.2004

Renten und Devisen: Südafrikanischer Rand bricht nach Zinssenkung ein
Von Sebastian Sachs, Frankfurt

Der südafrikanische Rand ist auf breiter Front eingebrochen. Grund für die teils panikartigen Verkäufe der Investoren war eine überraschende Senkung des Leitzinses durch die Notenbank um 50 Basispunkte auf 7,5 Prozent.

Die Mehrzahl der Volkswirte war von einer Zinsanhebung ausgegangen. Ein höheres Zinsniveau vergrößert die Attraktivität einer Währung. Da der Zinsschritt vom Donnerstag den Zinsvorteil Südafrikas gegenüber den USA und der Euro-Zone verringert, lösten die Anleger ihre Rand-Positionen - insbesondere gegen Dollar und Euro - auf.

Gegen 20 Uhr MESZ kostete ein Dollar 6,4710 Rand, nach rund 6,20 Rand am Vortag. Für die Einheitswährung mussten 7,9075 Rand bezahlt werden. Am Mittwoch waren es noch 7,58 Rand. "Am Donnerstag erst musste sich Zentralbankchef Tito Mboweni starke Proteste von Minenarbeitern anhören, die eine Zinssenkung oder eine Intervention am Devisenmarkt zur Schwächung der Währung forderten", schrieben die Analysten von 4cast in einem Kommentar. "Jetzt kann darüber gestritten werden, ob die Zinssenkung damit in Zusammenhang steht oder nicht." Für die weitere Entwicklung sind die Strategen skeptisch. Der Markt werde sich jetzt fragen, ob der Schritt nicht "der Anfang einer Serie von Zinssenkungen sei".

Abgesehen von den Turbulenzen beim Rand verlief der Handel am Devisenmarkt ruhig. Die Veröffentlichung uneinheitlicher US-Konjunkturdaten sorgte nicht für neue Impulse. Gegen 20 Uhr MESZ notierte der Euro bei 1,2235 $, nach 1,2218 $ am Vortag. Der Dollar kostete zur gleichen Zeit 110,94 Yen. Am späten Mittwoch waren es noch 110,89 Yen.

Das britische Pfund bewegte sich etwas stärker. Befürchtungen, die Bank of England würde ihre Zinserhöhungen bald beenden, schwächten die Währung. Gegen 20 Uhr MESZ lag das Pfund bei 1,8230 $, nach rund 1,83 $ am Vortag. Am Anleihemarkt in den USA und der Euro-Zone gab es fast keine Kursausschläge. Der Bund-Future beendete den Handel leicht im Plus bei 115,68 Punkten.

http://www.ftd.de/bm/ma/1092171048793.html?nv=hpm

Durban Roodepoort ist in den letzten beiden Tagen um über 30% abgestürzt. Eigentlich ist es noch zu früh, um eine Wertung abzugeben, da der Kurs sich schnell wieder erholen könnte. Da der Absturz aber aufgrund der schlechten Quartalszahlen ausgelöst wurde, wird die zu erwartende technische Reaktion wahrscheinlich nicht den Einbruch wieder ausbügeln können.

Am 13. Juni hat Dr. Clive Roffey in einem Artikel folgende Wertungen über Drooy abgegeben:
http://www.gold-eagle.com/editorials_04/roffey061304.html

I again refer to the long term chart of DROOY as being the key to this market and to retaining some element of sanity. The data on DROOY is extremely bullish in the long term. It has merely reacted back to test the long term support level and I am happy to hold DROOY and to buy more at the $2.50 level as my upside target is $10. I have similar analyses for all the South African gold stocks. Many of the North American golds are also exhibiting this same data.

Far from being bearish on this market at this junctureI rate the gold and silver stock levels as once in a lifetime buying opportunities.
…
The Rand price of gold that is the key to the earnings of the South African gold mines remains locked in a narrow trading range. Despite all the negativity in the gold stocks the actual Rand price of gold has remained relatively stable. It has certainly not fallen to the same degree as the gold stocks.

Especially in the precious metal stocks there is always a sudden panic in the last phase of the downside legs. Last week was a typical example of bottom panic selling.

[Blockierte Grafik: http://www.gold-eagle.com/editorials_04/images/roffey061304a.gif]

It is essential to take a good look at the long term chart of DROOY that I regard as the key to the precious metal markets.

The first aspect of this chart is the long term support at the $5 level that provided a floor for the DROOY share price from 1988 to 1996. At that point the price broke this support level and turned it into a major overhead selling resistance level.

The $5 resistance level has since impeded the progress of the price of DROOY for the past 7 years. During the past two years the share price has made four separate attempts to penetrate above this resistance but failed.

For the past two years the price has gyrated between the overhead resistance at $5 and the major support level at $2.40.

But the key to this chart is the way in which the trading of the past two years has formed what looks to be the right shoulder of a six year reverse head and shoulders base pattern. This is a major reversal formation. It implies that in the long term investment scenario the actual bull market has hardly started.

The upside count out of this pattern is at least $10 and probably a lot higher, but $10 will do for now.

Sicher spricht Roffey vom langfristigen Trend. Da aber sein major support level durchknallt wurde, ist seine Chartanalyse hinfällig.

(Nach dem Kurseinbruch gibt es noch eine aktuelle Analyse zu Droopy von Roffey, in dem er das Panik-Verkaufen für nicht gerechtfertigt hält. http://news.goldseek.com/GoldAction/1092320821.php )

Seine Behauptung von einer Einmal-im-Leben-Kaufgelegenheit sehe ich aufgrund der wirklich schlechten Quartalszahlen als übertriebene Pusherei.

Was ist eigentlich aus den vielen Prognosen geworden, die man ständig im Goldsektor erhält ?

Vielleicht kann man im Sräd mal festhalten, was die verschiedenen Analysten für Vorhersagen abgegeben haben und was daraus geworden ist. Weniger, um sich bei falschen Prognosen lustig zu machen, als vielmehr, um abschätzen zu können, welche Analysten treffende Vorhersagen machen und welche voll danebenliegen.

Schön wäre es, Analysten herausfiltern zu können, deren Aussagen ernster zu nehmen sind.

Artikel von Dr. Clive Roffey, Gold Action, über Durban.

War schon vor Wochen sehr positiv zu Roodepoort. Kein Wunder, wenn er jetzt von panic selling spricht und von once in a lifetime buying opportunity.

"This should negate the current commentaries that this mine will never again raise its head"

"I must look at Durban Deep as one of the best potential recovery stock situations that I have ever seen. I believe that within a month all the panic sellers will be ruing their recent hasty actions."

Also : Droopy to da moon!!!

Durban Deep Report

Warren,

mir scheint schon, daß die Charttechnik zu den neuen Jahrestiefkursen wesentlich beigetragen hat. Die Anleger sind noch von den negativen Erfahrungen der letzten Jahre beeinflußt , es ist womöglich eine höhere Geneigtheit da, bei Kursabschwüngen die Sache nicht auszusitzen, sondern möglichst schnell das Zeug rauszuhauen.

Dieses Jahr bestand eine Seitwärtsbewegung, es war nicht klar, ob die Indices nach oben oder unten ausbrechen. Es reichen kleine fundamentale Anläße(US-Arbeitsmarktdaten), die Unterstützungslinien werden nach unten durchbrochen. Für viele ist das dann das Klingelzeichen, um zum Ausgang zu rennen. Damit wird die Bewegung verstärkt. Insofern ist die Charttechnik auch eine sich selbst erfüllende Prophezeiung.

[Blockierte Grafik: http://ad22.vhb.de/hbi/images/logo.gif]

Experten sehen langfristigen Abwärtstrend

Charttechniker warnen vor Kurssturz

Von Ulf Sommer

Selbst gute Vorgaben der US-Börsen helfen nicht mehr. Trotz der Schlussrally am Dienstag in New York ging es in Europa gestern weiter abwärts. Ob Deutscher Aktienindex (Dax), Euro-Stoxx oder Tec-Dax, alle wichtigen Kursbarometer näherten sich wieder ihren Jahrestiefständen.

DÜSSELDORF. Schuld daran ist nach Meinung von Händlern und Analysten die Charttechnik: Nachdem große Indizes wichtige Marken, so genannte Unterstützungslinien, unterschritten haben, sinken die Kurse. Und sie werden weiter fallen, wie die Charttechniker mittels Interpretation von Kursgrafiken vorhersagen.
Ein Blick auf den Dax und den amerikanischen S&P-500 zeigt stellvertretend für alle großen Indizes in Europa und den USA, dass die Märkte ihre „stabile Seitwärtslage“, in der sie seit Jahresanfang verharrt hatten, nach unten verlassen haben. Selbst die Erholung an den amerikanischen Märkten am Dienstag änderte nichts mehr an dem negativen Bild. Zu tief war der vorangegangene Fall. Das heißt, die Märkte sind jetzt nachhaltig unter ihre Unterstützungen gefallen – eine wichtige Voraussetzung für Charttechniker, um neue Prognosen abzugeben.

„Es geht weiter abwärts“, sagt der Darmstädter Charttechniker Lutz Mathes. Die nächste Unterstützung sieht er für den Dax bei 3 500 Punkten. Dort verläuft der langfristige Abwärtstrend, den die Börsen im März 2000 eingeschlagen haben. Eindeutig sieht er auch die Lage in den USA, wo die 2003 eingeschlagenen Aufwärtstrends gebrochen wurden. Im S&P-500-Index liegt seiner Meinung nach die nächste Unterstützung bei 950 Punkten. Demnach beträgt das Abwärtspotenzial noch mehr als zehn Prozent. Jeff de Graaf vom Investmenthaus Lehman Brothers sieht nach dem Jahrestief am Freitag vergangener Woche nichts mehr, was einen weiteren Fall des S&P 500 aufhalten könnte.

Das Ende der langen Seitwärtsbewegung beschwört aber auch Diskussionen herauf, dass der eindrucksvolle Aufwärtstrend zwischen März und Dezember 2003 nur ein Intermezzo innerhalb der ausgeprägten Baisse war, die im März 2000 ihren Lauf genommen hatte. „Die Aufwärtsbewegung war eine ausgeprägte Bärenmarkt-Rally“, sagt Mathes. Er ist davon überzeugt, dass der langfristige Trend nach unten zeigt. Historisch betrachtet sind in ausgeprägten Baisse-Phasen Aufwärtsentwicklungen von 30 Prozent und mehr nicht ungewöhnlich. Japan erlebte solch eine „Bärenmarkt-Rally“ in den 90er-Jahren dreimal, ohne dass sich an dem negativen Gesamttrend etwas geändert hatte.

„Das gegenwärtige Chartbild der meisten Indizes ähnelt in Besorgnis erregender Weise dem vom Mai 2002 kurz vor einem mehrwöchigen Kurssturz“, meint Klaus Deppermann von der ING BHF-Bank. Damals war der Markt nach einer ausgeprägten Seitwärtsbewegung nach unten abgedriftet. Auch wenn diesmal kein Kursrückgang im Ausmaß von 2002 zu erwarten sei, so rechnet Deppermann „in den nächsten Wochen mit einer Beschleunigung der Abwärtsbewegung“.

„Längerfristig müssen wir uns vermutlich an den alten Tiefs von März 2003 orientieren“, befürchtet Mathes sogar großes Abwärtspotenzial. Gemessen am aktuellen Niveau, wäre das im Dax ein Minus von 40 Prozent. Doch so weit müsse es nicht kommen.

Weniger dramatisch beurteilt Achim Matzke von Commerzbank Securities die Situation. Er sieht die Märkte lediglich in einem Abwärtskanal – das heißt, die Kurse sinken, aber nicht dramatisch. Eine ganze Reihe von Einzelaktien habe schon frühzeitig Verkaufssignale gesendet. Deshalb komme der jetzige Richtungswechsel der Indizes nicht überraschend. Unterstützungen auf dem Weg nach unten sieht Matzke bereits im Bereich von 3 580 Punkten, also nur gut 100 Zähler unter dem jetzigen Stand.

Auffällig ist, dass die technischen Analysten das fundamentale Umfeld, also betriebswirtschaftliche und volkswirtschaftliche Daten, berücksichtigen, dabei aber ebenfalls zu einem negativen Fazit kommen. Zwar überzeugten die meisten Unternehmen mit guten Quartalsergebnissen. Auch sprächen die nach wie vor niedrigen Zinsen für die Aktie. Aber, so Matzke: „Der steigende Ölpreis und die Tendenz zu steigenden Zinsen deuten auf eine Abkühlung hin. Damit laufen die Märkte in eine raue Phase hinein.“

Die Alarmzeichen:

Herdentrieb: Charttechniker konzentrieren sich auf Kurscharts, um ihre Prognosen zu erstellen. Je mehr Investoren danach handeln, desto heftiger sind die anschließenden Kursausschläge, wenn Unterstützungs- und Widerstandslinien gebrochen werden. Vor allem große Adressen wie Versicherungen verkaufen Aktien, wenn bestimmte Marken unterschritten werden, um so weitere Verluste zu vermeiden.

Handelsvolumen: Derzeit geringe Börsenumsätze bei sinkenden Kursen sind ein Alarmsignal und signalisieren, dass Verkaufsaufträge wenig Käufer finden. Zur Bereinigung des Marktes kommt es erst, wenn die Umsätze steigen – wie beispielsweise zum Ende der Talfahrt im März 2003.

HANDELSBLATT, Donnerstag, 12. August 2004, 07:11 Uhr

http://www.handelsblatt.com/ps…4/SH/0/depot/0/index.html

MIDAS

Appendix

WHY GATA IS NOT ALLOWED TO BE HEARD ON WALL STREET:

The Manchurian Investor
(spielt wohl auf den Film The Manchurian Candidate an, in dem es um Gehirnwäsche geht)

Warning: Wall Street is secretly brainwashing you

By Paul B. Farrell, CBS.MarketWatch.com
Last Update: 8:16 PM ET Aug. 10, 2004

ARROYO GRANDE, Calif. (CBS.MW) -- Ever wonder why you feel like you're addicted to financial news, like you need a fix if you don't catch the latest market-moving hot-breaking news tip?

Ever get super-anxious, like you're detoxing when you go more than a few hours without checking CNBC, Fox or MarketWatch, or reading The Journal, Kiplinger's or Money?

You're now "The Manchurian Investor!"

You're being brainwashed by what BusinessWeek calls the "Wall Street Hype Machine," a powerful cartel that spends $15 billion a year trying to turn you into a robotic junkie addicted to the business news ... which is indirectly controlled by America's big ad spenders in the financial industry.

Warning: If you're still buying their hype I hope you'll "wake up" soon because some respected market experts are now advising investors to go to cash, warning of an eminent collapse with the Dow testing its 2002 low around 7,500!

The Wall Street cartel (including its co-conspirators in the mutual fund, insurance and banking industries) are at work gaining absolute control of your brain by making you believe you cannot trust yourself to think independently without their advice and assistance.

Wall Street's secret brainwashing machine

So they're brainwashing you into becoming another one of the millions of Manchurian investors in America. How? Very simple: by confusing you with schizoid, double-bind messages. They tell you to think long-term about asset allocations while they are churning your funds 100 percent annually on the average.

They tell you to stay the course, be a patient, passive buy-and-hold investor. Then they spend $15 billion on advertising while at the same time making sure their high-paid guru analysts and portfolio managers get exposure as talking heads and sound-bite providers on the same networks, channels and publications they advertise on.

For example, recently Wall Street's creators of the new "Manchurian Investors" condoned a respected financial magazine publication of a great article advising an investor that his 20-fund portfolio is too big and he would be better cutting down to just eight funds. That's all, just eight funds for a well-diversified portfolio.

If you look closely at so many other issues and stories and watch the cable networks or go online for data anytime through the trading day you'll be overwhelmed with advertisements and articles recommending hundreds and hundreds of funds and stocks. Remember Wall Street and its buddies have a total of 10,000 funds and 8,000 stocks that they gotta push like Wal-Mart.

Every month you can bet a dollar to a doughnut you'll see one of the key magazines sporting a tabloid-style exploitation cover coming at you like a flashing neon sign -- over and over and over you hear about "The 25 Best Funds," or the 100 best, or 8 best, or whatever.

But the $15 billion a year Wall Street Hype Machine stays on message -- the "long-term buy-and-hold is best" message while at the same time they also push you into schizoid hell with their incessant pounding surrealistic double-bind advertisements grabbing at what few brain cells you have left.

How bad is it? If you are already a Manchurian Investor, or any other mildly active investor trying to keep up with what's happening in the world, you should be aware of why you feel the anxieties you feel. So here's my back-of-the-envelope estimate of the number of times you get exposed to hot tips and recommendations from all the major financial media:

Cable television hits you with 15,000 securities per year

Imagine watching CNBC, CNN and Fox for the annual barrage of 250 market days. Now multiply the number of ads plus "recommendations" from talking heads and hosts being thrown at you during an eight-hour day. On the conservative side at least 20 stocks and funds pop up on the screen every day for a total of at least 15,000 every year. And this fair-and-balanced onslaught doesn't include your local business channels and network television.

Daily newspapers: another 20,000 securities per year

Now consider the added barrage that comes packaged in The Wall Street Journal, Barron's, USAToday and your local newspaper. That's 250 issues a year, 50 for Barron's and 365 for your local newspaper -- loaded with another estimated 20 journalists "recommendations" and ads shouting at you for attention in just these four newspapers.

Monthly magazines: add 6,000 more securities per year

Let's assume you're a subscriber to all the good ones, BusinessWeek, Kiplinger's, Money, SmartMoney plus one other that offers financial tips. That's five magazines times 12 months with another hundred securities mentioned in each issue in the ads or articles written by journalists. That's another 6,000 hammering away at your every years.

Total securities "recommended" by media: 42,000+ per year

No wonder we're all feeling brainwashed and manipulated as The Manchurian Investors, addicted to a news overload that is far, far beyond the capacity of our brains to process. We get hit with 42,000 "recommendations" for funds and advertisements each and every year ... that's more than 100 every day!

And still these jokers have the audacity to tell us that 8 to 10 funds is all the diversification your portfolio will ever need!

Put these two contradictory crazy-making claims together and you get a devious form of brainwashing that makes the Manchurian Candidate look like child's play.

And since I'm on the inside of the hype machine, I guess I'm guilty of the same sin. But at least most of the time my message is limited to telling you to stick to two, or four or nine -- but no more than 11 -- funds that make up a well-diversified, long-term, buy-and-hold portfolio for the average passive investor.

I do that in hopes that what I say can sneak past your Manchurian brain and into what's left of your brain cells that are not controlled by the Hype Machine.

CARTEL CAPITULATION WATCH

The Republicans in power in Washington know that if the stock market sinks a good deal from here it is all over as far as the election is concerned. Therefore, all stops will be out to keep our market elevated. We saw more of that today. With the high tech news surprisingly bad and oil closing near all-time highs, the price managers actually managed to get the DOW up on the day for a bit. By the close it was only down 6 to 9938 and WAY off its lows even though oil closed HIGHER than before the Saudi press conference.

The continually weakening DOG was pulled up by the DOW’s repeated rally attempts during the day and crawled back to finish at 1782, down 26.

RED INK ALL OVER:

14:00 July monthly budget deficit reported $69.2B vs. consensus $62.5B
Prior reported deficit $54.2B.
* * * * *

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The federal government ran a larger-than-expected budget gap in July, bringing the year-to-date shortfall between receipts and spending to almost $400 billion, the U.S. Treasury Department said on Wednesday.

In its monthly budget report, the Treasury said the July deficit was $69.16 billion, based on revenues of $134.42 billion and spending of $203.58 billion. That was above the $61 billion shortfall Wall Street economists had expected and wider than July 2003's $54.24 billion deficit.

With only August and September left in the 2004 federal budget year, the red ink through the first 10 months totaled $395.78 billion. That's ahead of the revised record budget gap in 2003 of $374.27 billion. –END-

Some of the oil news of the day:

10:29 Saudi Arabia's oil minister says they are well prepared to meet demand
Notes output is more than 9.3M barrels, with more than 1.3M bpd in capacity that can be used "immediately."
* * * * *

10:31 DOE reports crude oil inventories reported (4.3M) barrels vs. consensus (950K) barrels
Gasoline inventories (1.8M) barrels vs. consensus +755K barrels. Distillate inventories +1.3M barrels vs. consensus +1.05M barrels. September WTI crude is trading higher in initial reaction to the data and YUKOY announcement.
* * * * *

10:34 API reports crude oil inventories (5.2M) barrels
Gasoline inventories (2.4M) barrels. Distillate inventories +3.1M barrels. Sept. WTI crude continues to climb; $44.50 last.
* * * * *

10:31 YUKOY gets default notice on $1.6B loan, reports Bloomberg (15.19)
* * * * *

13:44 Shi'ite militia threatens to bomb oil pipelines in Southern Iraq if city of Najaf is attacked - Reuters
Recall U.S. and Iraqi forces were training for "major assaults" on Najaf (see 9:21 comment).
* * * * *

GATA’s Mike Bolser:

Hi Bill:
The Fed took no action (so far at 11AM) today August 11th 2004, an action that dropped the repo pool a bit to $39.519 and let the DOW's 30-day ma stay alive for another day exactly at its low for the move. Surprise! Surprise! The DOW went up exactly as its 30-day ma was about to break a new low for the move.

I suggested as much recently and I continue to warn clients NOT TO SHORT THE DOW unless the plan is for a VERY short time. The Fed keeps acting as if they are marking time for an external event and I don't think the external event was the FOMC meeting. We may see it fall through its previous low for the move tomorrow in "preparation" for the future plans of the Fed. The repo pool's 30-day ma keeps running up on a fairly straight path signaling the Fed's dogged, if not frantic support mode.

The important thing from yesterday's view is that the Fed DOES have big inflation problems with oil. Even the outcast Fed governor Meyer said so in an academic interview and the FOMC minutes also grudgingly admitted it. The Fed simply HAS to respond to inflation. There is no option and a .25% FF rate hike is like a Dixie Cup on a forest fire. Pretending there's no fire isn't going to cut it.

Perhaps the pivotal event the Fed is waiting for is just before the election...there are endless guesses including another surprise invasion, but no speculation is needed to conclude that the warping of traditional metrics such as the gold/oil ratio has had a damaging effect on investor confidence, especially those savvy players in the hedge fund area. So far they have avoided precious metals but will they keep staying away? Time will tell.

DIVG

Even though gold is being hammered today, the DIVG may not change too much as the dollar zoomed up so high yesterday AFTER its noon fixing while gold remained flat, thus the DIVG's components really didn't change that much.

It is crucial, but difficult, for investors to align their gold valuation thinking towards the DIVG and away from the PM Fix. After all, the "value" of one's gold IS a function of the two and the cartel uses this metric so we should too.

Finally, since the gold cartel uses the DIVG to value their vault gold they aren't likely to accept (for very long) a falling or flat DIVG while M1 rockets higher and we know they didn't accept it in the past. Even if the MCDI can mystically be held flat by Brenanke's printing press, the PM Fix must rise to counter inflation or the cartel's remaining gold gets diluted by inflation. So today's flat DIVG should be thought of as a temporary condition, being held for a time when it can be released higher to compensate for M1's inflation.
Mike

The Fed/Wall Street versus the Ciscos and the real world – some anecdotal evidence that the former is huffing and puffing fluff:

Bill : The FOMC can hide behind the rising price of energy as much as they want, but the consumer holds the key to economic recovery and the consumer is not buying. Here's two examples I personally know about:

A major automobile dealer in the southern tier region of New York State recently posted an ad in a local newspaper. He has purchased a 500 car inventory of previously unsold 2003 and 2004 Ford Motor cars and is offering them at prices up to $14000 below sticker price. Says the ad: "Why buy a 2005 when you can buy a new 2003 or 2004 car with the same body style, same warrantee, etc. for $10,000 plus below the MSRP of a 2005."

I can assure you that he will sell every vehicle on his lot at the expense of his '05 models and he knows it, so he is holding back on purchasing a huge inventory of '05 vehicles.

Well, my local Ford dealer in Metro NYC took over my leased 2002 Explorer and put me in a new 2004 for only $7.00/month more than I was paying to lease my '02. He also bought out all my 20,000 excess miles over my original lease agreement. He'd rather see me in one of his new vehicles than jump to the competition. Times are rough out there!!
Keep up the great GATA work.
Steve Z

The following was sent to Derek Van Artsdalen concerning what a visible market technician thinks about gold. Derek forwarded it to Dan Norcini for his thoughts. I could not agree more with Dan.

"I think gold is going to have a correction - make new lows for the year - make a final bottom - all to happen over next few weeks - then go sideways - basically nowhere until next year and then breakout and go totally crazy."

Hi Derek:
I don't know why these technical analysis oriented gold bears have no fundamental view. Pure technicians are the bane of gold. Why sell here? How much downside do they think gold has? How much upside do they think that the dollar has - and why?

I continue to tell everyone who wants to short gold to go right ahead but what are they going to do if there is a single terrorist incident? Today, the front page of the Washington Times reports the Al Q. has something planned to assassinate a high ranking American political figure either here or abroad. A pipeline or refinery blast is possible at nearly anytime. What is going to happen to all their tech analysis then? I tell you where it will go - out the window with many of them as they jump!

That is why gold is so hard to trade. Following a pure technical view when it comes to trading gold will leave you broke. Just ask the commodity funds who are getting eaten alive by the sharks of the cartel. These guys are master chart painters and they know exactly how the game is played. They can read charts with the best of them and have the same oscillators and whiz bang indicators that the funds have. On the other hand, the professional buyers are waiting for them under the market as are the gold mining outfits that still have hedges left to lift. They will let the market come to them and will not chase it up.

Did you see what crude oil did today? The Saudis came out and tried to talk down the market by telling everyone that they were increasing production. The market dropped over $1.00. Then out comes the energy figures showing crude stocks falling by larger than expected amounts and the entire amount of the intraday setback was completely erased and crude is now down a mere .07/bbl as I write this. This crude thing is for real and I cannot see gold falling to new lows as this particular individual claims it will while crude continues to hold near these levels.

The dollar is a disaster waiting to happen that has been jawboned back up again and is going to run into a brick wall of supply soon. It would have to begin a new bull market or at the very least take out the region above .92 on two consecutive closing basis’ to knock gold into new lows. Why would that happen? Who wants to buy it up there? Don't any of these guys understand the significance of the Current Account deficit and budget deficits alongside a swooning stock market? I do not think the forex traders are that gullible that they will swallow the swill that Greenspan dished out for us yesterday.

The stock market looks top heavy and is being supported only by Fed intervention. Once again we had a late day miraculous rally to salvage it. We can't have Greenspan being made a complete fool of can we now? The reason for the downdraft today were comments by various CEO's of leading companies that they are concerned about the strength of the economy going forward. Now, I would prefer to listen to them rather than to Alan's glowing assessments since Alan has nothing but tea leaves to look at and they have orders on their books (or should I say lack of orders).

With all those things going on, why short gold?

It is a fundamental view against the technical analysis purists and stock chart painters.

We will see who wins. It will be fun.
Thanks Derek,
Dan

Rhody on the importance of the low lease rates:

Good morning:
There was considerable leasing done in gold and some in silver to manage the sell off in gold and silver yesterday. Notice that gold LRs are in slight

backwardation, a sign that there has been some significant short term leasing that has bumped the rates up. This is always a sign of efforts on behalf of the shorts to cap or repress the gold price.

Having said that rising rates signal price capping efforts, I should comment on the fact that the rates overall are still astoundingly low! One year rates now are lower than one month rates were several years ago. There is almost a panic effort here to make borrowed gold as cheap as possible to dump on the spot price. Only the central banks would be this concerned to repress pms and it is my opinion that this is where the metal originates.

It is better for the cbs to give away real money than have the world realize that the currencies printed up by the cbs are worthless and that the world population has worked two generations for worthless script.
Regards, Rhody.

Emails have been pouring in later from Café members concerning whether The Gold Cartel is too powerful to lose their ironclad grip on the gold price. Despair is mounting in our camp. Some examples:

Bill,
It's been three years since I last wrote you during which time you've done some wondrous things and I've remained a strong supporter.

I wonder what your thinking is about the abrupt and absolutely linear rise, and today's fall in the gold price, first seemingly on disappointing job news and now seemingly reflecting the hike in interest rates. What I find troubling is the flat line of the price in between as if the patient had died; as if there were no real contest between the market makers (cartel) and everybody else. It seems that there is one buyer and one seller and everyone else goes to sleep. Can we then really say that the cartel is on its last legs? To my perception, they seem to have complete control, at least for now.

The second part of my question: Each time the cartel hammers down the price and panics the population are they not also buying back at the bottom thereby reloading their musket for the next massacre? If so, are they really running out of ammunition? Are there any numbers to show that gold ownership is changing hands?
Best,
Peter S

Can't take much more !

Hi Bill,
I am a long time member and can't take much more. I don't know how you continue to write each day. Month after month just gets more and more depressing. I am beginning to believe the cartel can't be carried out. They can't lose when they have an unlimited supply of money with the FED's printing presses. They can do whatever they want to do. Politically they control other countries and get silver (China and Mexico) and gold whenever they need to. 2000-2002 was suppose to start gold and silver, then 2003 and for certain 2004 was our year….

I have enjoyed your commentary over last 3-4 years riding the highs and lows, but this year the lows are mentally devastating when it was suppose to be our year. I will check gold and silver along with your commentary now once every month or two because mentally the cartel is winning. I just wanted to THANK YOU for you time and effort over the years and if we ever win I plan to meet you in person at a conference and shake your hand personally.
Sincerely,
Scott G

This year has been a brutal one for our camp, yet only on a relative basis compared to 2002 and 2003. And certainly we have come a LONG WAY since 2001. Anyone who has stayed the course with their precious metals investments since then has cleaned up on balance.

Sure, I expected the prices of gold and silver to be MUCH higher today than where they are. However, for years I have also stated the price of gold would never soar until The Gold Cartel is carried out on a stretcher and this has not occurred yet. [B]On that line of thinking the most prevalent comment of late from Café members is whether the cabal can ever be beaten?

The answer is yes of course. Yet, it will only be the case if GATA is right about how much central bank gold is left in their vaults and that most of the entire gold world is wrong. For if the central banks do have 27,000 tonnes left and not less than 16,000 tonnes as we think, there is little hope for gold to rally in the next decade. If our number is way off, it would mean demand is far less than we think and Gold Cartel can feed out gold from their stash for many years to come – selling bullion whenever gold is about to break out.

Since I strongly believe GATA is correct on all, if not almost all, counts the key during these dog days of summer is to watch for clues the cabal IS on the way out. Some items which could do them in:

*The price of oil going berserk. At some point the Arabs will make so much money if oil soars, they could buy up the gold market themselves.

*A stock market debacle. This would force the Fed to lower rates again and put severe pressure on the Cartel bank’s ability to remain short gold.

*Visible disappearance of the physical silver supply a la the Comex. If the Comex warehouse stocks continue to draw, the price of silver will take off. If the price of silver is flying, it will be very hard for the riggers to keep the gold price down here.

*An Iraq debacle which further erodes the credibility of the US.

*A collapse of the dollar, one which is so severe it causes The Gold Cartel to run for the hills.

*The Gold Cartel runs out of enough available physical supply to keep the price from rising.

Thus far we have only seen rumblings in all of these areas. Consequently, The Gold Cartel is still able to attack when they see fit to do so. However, lately stress is beginning to show. The oil price continues to trend up at all-time high levels and the US stock market has become very volatile after months of tranquility. The PPT’s efforts to support the DOW could be in serious trouble.

This is no time to jump ship. When The Gold Cartel is on their way out, gold is likely to explode out of nowhere and do so unexpectedly. Those not on board will find entry to be very difficult. Those not paying attention probably won’t do so until gold takes out $430.

The big gold story of the day was Gold Fields beating out Golden Star in a bid for Iamgold:

Aug. 11 (Bloomberg) -- Gold Fields Ltd., the world's fourth- biggest gold producer, agreed to buy Canada's Iamgold Corp. in a stock swap valued at about $2.1 billion, fending off a competing bid from Golden Star Resources Ltd.

Iamgold will issue 351.7 million shares and combine with Gold Fields' operations outside South Africa, Johannesburg-based Gold Fields said in a statement to South Africa's stock exchange. Holders of Toronto-based Iamgold will get a dividend of 50 Canadian cents a share when the deal is completed.

Iamgold Chief Executive Joseph Conway has tried to court investors to avoid a takeover by Littleton, Colorado-based Golden Star. That bid, worth about C$1.15 billion ($870 million) expires on Aug. 15. Iamgold shareholders last month rejected a plan to buy Wheaton River Minerals Ltd., prompting Iamgold to invoke a ``poison pill'' plan to win more time.

``The board has determined that Gold Fields' transaction is the best alternative for shareholders and clearly superior to the Golden Star offer,'' Iamgold said in a separate statement distributed by Canada News Service….

-END-

Golden Star’s bid for Iam has put severe pressure on its share price the last few months. That is now behind us (at least I sure hope it is). While I know CEO Peter Bradford must be disappointed in losing out on his bid, he handled himself quite well and put Golden Star on the map as a player in the gold world. GSS closed at $3.70. What a steal!

The gold shares were soft all day long. The XAU lost 1.56 to 84.90 and the HUI fell 1.97 to 181.58.

Keep the Faith!

GATA BE IN IT TO WIN IT!

The John Brimelow Report

A Bear snuffle, again

Wednesday, August 11, 2004

Indian ex-duty premiums: AM $6.35, PM $6.50, with world gold at $396.30 and $396.35. High; well above legal import level. India is clearly a vigorous buyer from overseas with world gold in the $390s. Dubai kilo bar premiums, derived from the Standard London data, were high today too. And the Shanghai Gold Exchange has reverted to modest premiums. A number of technicians are calling for gold to break down. Painful experience has taught one never to say never where gold is concerned; but getting it down from here will require lavish sales of real metal.

A respected Indian think tank, the Centre for Monitoring the Indian Economy, suggested today that the country’s food grain production would be flat this year (-1%) and oil seed output down 7.6%, which does not sound disastrous.

TOCOM met a gold market crushed by aggressive selling on ACCESS when it opened. There was no disposition to disagree. On low volume equal to only 12,279 Comex lots (22% below Tuesday), open interest fell the equivalent of 659 Comex lots. The active contract closed down 1 yen, and world gold was $3.75 below the NY close at the end. What speculative enthusiasm is around ahead of the universally observed Obon summer holiday is reserved for platinum, which traded 66% more in value today than gold. (COMEX yesterday traded only 20,886 lots; open interest was up 2,073 contracts.)

Comex traded little yesterday; the lower close set against the rise in open interest suggest some modest shorting. When ACCESS opened, 2,000 lots quickly traded knocking gold down over $2; this set the tone for Wednesday.The silver sell-off and the violent plunge of gold on the NY open all point to another predator raid: that 23,000 estimated Comex volume traded by 10 AM (e.g. more than all yesterday) supports this concept.

With the kind of physical response apparent, it will once again fail.

A CBSMarketwatch headline gave food for thought this morning:

"Saudis help stocks off mat."

JB

August 11 - Gold $395.40 down $4.50 – Silver $6.51 down 19 cents

Gold Market Forces Versus Cabal, Cisco Versus Fed/Wall Street

By persisting in your path, though you forfeit the little, you gain the great. Ralph Waldo Emerson

GO GATA!!!

The scenario:

Yesterday the FED gave Wall Street exactly what it wanted to hear. They said the US economic picture remained bright and brisk. To support that view the PPT had already loaded up on S&P futures via Goldman and JP Morgan and then drew in more support from its other allies after the FED announcement. By day’s end the US stock market had rallied strongly.

Meanwhile, gold, which The Gold Cartel had capped for days at the $400 level, was immediately taken down in the Access Market, and then savaged right off the bat today by cabal operators. With the US stock market in such a fragile condition, the Working Group on Financial Markets is petrified of what a rising gold price might set off.

Yet, lo and behold, the best laid plans went awry again, fouled up by two high tech companies, Cisco and National Semi-Conductor, who both panned their business outlook.

Aug. 11 (Bloomberg) -- Shares of Cisco Systems Inc., the world's biggest maker of computer-networking equipment, fell as much as 9.5 percent after Chief Executive Officer John Chambers forecast slowing sales growth and said customers are ``more cautious'' about the economy.

Analysts at J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. and Merrill Lynch & Co. cut their ratings on the stock. San Jose, California-based Cisco yesterday reported fourth-quarter profit rose to a record $1.38 billion as sales increased 26 percent, meeting analyst estimates.

Chambers's comments fueled concern that demand may be tapering off and economic growth slowing, said David Eiswert, a technology analyst at Baltimore-based T. Rowe Price. Cisco's inventories are rising, squeezing margins and sparking worries that companies overestimated demand. Intel Corp. last month said its inventories were higher than forecast.

``The market is saying the economy is getting worse, and Cisco's not refuting it,'' Eiswert said. T. Rowe's funds hold 43.2 million Cisco shares. Some investors may sell technology stocks because of concerns about the economy, he said. –END-

The economic reports have been lousy the past two months. Now this from Cisco and the pivotal semi-conductor industry. At odds with all of this is what the Fed said in July (temporary soft spot) and its upbeat assessment yesterday, which is what Wall Street wants the investing public to pay attention to.

Clearly, something is not kosher. The dichotomy between the Fed/Wall Street pundits and the real world appears to be growing. This leaves it up to the PPT and Washington/New York Spinmeisters to do what they can to win the day, or at least stave off financial market disaster.

The DOG fell 34 points right after its opening, one of the most severe early drops in memory. As it sank further, down some 45 points and the DOW came close to falling 100, the, the PPT pulled another "Hail Mary" maneuver calling in the Saudis to call a press conference in an attempt to calm down oil, which was looking at taking out $45 per barrel as a result of further Yukos problems in Russia, substantial US inventory drops, and two storms in the Gulf which will curtail oil production for a few days.

The Saudi press conference produced a mission accomplished, for about 20 minutes. Oil tanked, finding its way down close to $43. Then, it turned right around. Questions abound whether the Saudis can produce this oil for one, and two, whether their less in demand "heavier" oil will solve the short-term problems anyway?

September crude closed at $44.83 per barrel, up 31 cents and its second highest close ever. All stops have been now pulled out (outside of opening the US strategic reserve) to halt the oil price rise. If there any further supply disruptions of any serious nature, oil will be $50 in a flash.

Gold was hopeless for the day right from the beginning. The increasingly desperate PPT is ordering The Gold Cartel to sit all over gold because they are losing control of the other markets, namely oil and the stock market. Were gold to soar right now, like it should, the bond market could then be spooked and who knows what then occur in the interest rate derivatives world?

The message from the cabal to the investing world is, look at the falling gold price – no inflation or crises to be concerned about.

Back at the ranch, the dollar only rose .05 to 88.98 and the euro dropped .13 to 122.13. For about the 10th time over the past several months we see how the dollar plays a distant secondary role as far as the gold price is concerned. The real story is how the physical market holds up against The Gold Cartel onslaught.

The gold open interest rose 2071 contracts to 219,062.

As bad as today was, gold closed $3 off its low of $392.50

The recent failure of silver to close above $6.75 took its toll. It was mauled early. Naturally, this takedown was set up to coincide with the beating gold was scheduled to take today.

The silver open interest fell 471 contracts to 97,251.

While silver was hit hard, it has performed admirably lately and is liable to run right back up.

September silver
http://futures.tradingcharts.com/chart/SV/94

Wieder mal leitet Droopy den Quartalsbericht mit schönfärberischen Angaben ein:

Key Features
US$40 per ounce cash margin
45.33% ownership of Emperor
Australasian operations - 70 000 ounces @ US$200 per ounce
Ore reserves confirmed at 11.7 million ounces
Year-end impairment of mining assets and investments - US$15.3 million

Die Zahlen, die dann etwas später, nicht so hervorgehoben kommen, sind dann weniger schön:

Der Verlust pro Aktie war im Juniquartal 0,182 $, nach einem Gewinn von 0,032 im Vorquartal.

Der Quartalsverlust nach US-Gaap war 42,3 Mio USD. Bei einem Aktienkapital von 135,7 Mio (Quartalsanfang) entspricht das immerhin über 30%. Zwei weitere solche Quartale und das Eigenkapital ist weg.

Der erzielte Goldpreis war 395 $/Unze.
Cash Cost 355 USD
Total Cost 518 USD

Blyvoor, das mit 51.000 Unzen mehr als ein Drittel der Südafrikaproduktion ausmacht, hat sogar Cash Cost von 488 USD. Der erwartete Goldgehalt war 8,8-8,9 g/t, erreicht wurden 6,59 g/t.

Der Absturz von Droopy erscheint gar nicht mehr so übertrieben.

Droopy hat die Zielzone von 1-1,60 erreicht.

Roodepoort Rocket scheint in die falsche Richtung zu düsen.

Droopy gestern 1,78$, -25%.

Was sagen die Charttechniker? Wo kann man wieder einsteigen?

Appendix

Global: The Mythical Recovery
Stephen Roach (New York)

From my jaundiced perspective, renewed weakness in the US economy hardly comes as a surprise. It’s an unmistakable outgrowth of an upturn that has been of highly dubious quality from the start. The consensus view is that America has entered nothing more than a "soft patch" -- the momentary lapses that most recoveries experience before resuming their upward march. Now that the major equity market indexes have all hit new lows for the year, there will undoubtedly be a rush of buy recommendations from that same optimistic consensus. My advice: Look before you leap at the siren song of the mythical recovery.

This business cycle is different. The modern-day US economy has never had to struggle this hard to eke out an economic recovery. Plagued by an outsize shortfall of internal income generation, it has taken an unprecedented dose of fiscal and monetary stimulus to spark any semblance of cyclical revival. But the question all along has been, recovery at what cost? It’s a cost, in my view, that has been manifested in the form of an extraordinary array of imbalances -- record twin deficits (budget and current account), a massive household sector debt overhang, an unprecedented shortfall of domestic saving, and an asset-dependent support to aggregate demand. Lacking in the organic staying power of job creation and wage earnings, the US economy has become addicted to the steroids of extraordinary monetary and fiscal support. But with policy levers pushed to the max, the lifeline of support is now dangerously thin. For such an unbalanced and vulnerable economy, it doesn’t take much of a shock to put a low-quality recovery in trouble. As bad luck would have it, that’s precisely the risk as oil has once again entered the macro equation.

I have held this dour view for about five years -- since 2000, to be precise. My basic concern was that America’s post-bubble carnage would take a lasting toll on the recovery dynamic. An accelerated pace of globalization and the related pressures of what I have called the global labor arbitrage only intensified my concerns. This view served me well for the first four years of America’s post-bubble workout but didn’t work all that well over the four-quarter period from 2Q03 through 2Q04, when real GDP growth averaged 5.1%. But now with momentum on the wane again, it pays to ponder the downside. In my view, recent data unmask five key myths to the case for sustainable economic recovery in the US and in the broader global economy:

Myth #1: The US economy has achieved the critical mass of a self-sustaining cyclical recovery. The theory is very straight-forward: Jobless recoveries don’t generate enough income to drive consumer demand. Counter-cyclical policy stimulus -- fiscal as well as monetary -- can fill the void, sparking an inventory and production dynamic that spurs income and spending growth. From there, the "multipliers" take over, and the self-sustaining recovery can then successfully be weaned from policy stimulus.

It’s a good theory but it’s not working. It’s not just that job creation has averaged an anemic 55,000 per month over June and July. It’s that this recovery has been accompanied by the weakest employment profile on record. In only three of the 32 months of this recovery has job growth exceeded 200,000; by contrast, in looking at the average profile of the past six cycles, that threshold was exceeded 14 times over the comparable 32-month time frame. By our calculations, private nonfarm payrolls are currently 8.1 million workers below the path of the typical hiring-led recovery. Lacking in job creation, real wage and salary disbursements -- the key organic driver of household purchasing power -- are running $323 billion below the typical recovery profile. All this speaks of the absence of the critical mass for self-sustaining recovery.

Myth #2: Imbalances don’t matter. Few can deny the severity of America’s imbalances -- a 5.1% current account deficit, a 4% federal budget deficit, a sub-2% net national saving rate, and household sector indebtedness that now exceeds 85% of GDP. Where the denial creeps in is with respect to the implications of these imbalances. America is special, goes the logic. The rest of the world is desperate for high-return dollar-denominated assets in the world’s most productive economy. That makes current-account and budget deficits a cinch to finance. Debt isn’t a problem because interest rates are still low -- at least for the moment. And who needs old fashioned income-based saving, when ever rising asset markets will do the job?

The problem with this logic is that it turns orthodox macro inside out in an effort to justify the notion of sustainable imbalances. These new theories are always seductive. Supply-side economics promised self-financing tax cuts. The New Economy promised an ever-rising US equity market. And now yet another new paradigm argues that foreign investors will gladly foot the bill for a US economy that continues to push the envelope in living beyond its means. Let the record show that that the personal saving rate fell back to a rock-bottom 1.2% in June 2004. Lacking a cushion of income-based saving, over-extended and asset-dependent American consumers suddenly have their backs against the wall. As for the external financing conundrum, as they say in the mutual fund business, past performance is no guarantee of future returns. The likelihood of a saving-short US economy continuing to run ever-wider current account deficits without suffering dollar and/or real interest rate consequences is close to zero, in my view. Imbalances matter -- now more than ever. Take a look a Pete Peterson’s latest book if you want the clearest and most honest explanation as to why (see Running on Empty, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York, 2004).

Myth #3: Oil doesn’t matter. Every time oil prices go up, we are always subjected to the same dismissive cop-out: Since the energy efficiency of US GDP has continued to improve, the role of oil in shaping both production and consumption has steadily diminished. As such, the impact of a given increment in oil prices is not what it used to be. So don’t worry.

I have never bought this one either. The record is pretty clear on this risk factor: Each of the five recessions since the early 1970s has been preceded by an oil shock in one form or another. The key question, in this instance, is whether the US has experienced a true oil shock. I have previously argued that while $40 oil hurts, it does not qualify as a full-blown shock; however, relative to the post-2000 average of $29 per barrel, a $50 price tag would have to be considered a shock (see my May 10 dispatch, "Global Wildcards"). Right now oil is hovering near the midpoint of those two possibilities -- hardly a comforting development. For an unbalanced US economy that lacks much of a cushion, the pain of $44 oil can hardly be minimized.

Myth #4: Nothing stops the American consumer. This is widely perceived to be the Golden Age of US consumption. Recent trends add a good deal of credence to this presumption. Over the eight-year period, 1996 to 2003, real consumption expenditures rose at a 3.9% average annual rate -- well in excess of the 3.3% pace of real GDP growth over the same period. Nor did the consumer flinch in the aftermath of the burst equity bubble in early 2000. Lacking in income, consumers have become increasingly creative in levering their balance sheets and extracting purchasing power from assets in order to keep the magic alive. Most believe that this creativity remains an enduring feature of our times.

No pun intended, but I continue to worry that the American consumer is living on borrowed time. Yes, debt is a key concern. Even with interest rates near 40-year lows, debt service burdens -- interest expenses relative to disposable personal income -- are near historical highs. The personal saving rate, as noted above, is near historical lows. Wage income generation, also as noted above, is lagging as never before. And, as the US property cycle nears its secular peak, asset-driven consumption strategies will be challenged as never before. All this speaks of a US consumer that is lacking in staying power and therefore vulnerable to the slightest of shocks. Oil is an obvious and immediate threat in that regard. Personal consumption expenditures rose at only a 1% annual rate in 2Q04 -- one-fourth the post-1995 trend and equaling the weakest quarterly increase since 1Q95. I have long been wary of betting against the American consumer. That bet is now more tempting than ever.

Myth #5: The world is now on the cusp of synchronous recovery in the global economy. The hope here, of course, is that an unbalanced US-centric world has now been rebalanced, thereby providing the global economy with a broader platform of support. That, of course, would come in quite handy in the event of a shortfall in the US economy. On the surface, a broadening out of the global growth dynamic offers encouragement in this regard -- underscored by our estimates of 5% growth in the Japanese economy in 2004, 6.4% in Asia ex-Japan, and 4.7% in Latin America. Even in Europe, we have raised our sights recently to 2.1% in 2004.

Don’t kid yourself. The world, in my view, remains very much a two-engine economy -- the US consumer on the demand side and the Chinese producer on the supply side. The American consumer, as just noted, is already on thin ice. And the Chinese producer is now being hit with a sharp blast of policy austerity in an effort to tame the excesses of a severely overheated economy. One lesson I have learned over the past decade is that it pays to heed the wishes of the Chinese leadership. We’ll get another slug of data from China this week, but in my view the case for a significant slowdown remains very much intact. Absent the twin dynamic from the US and China, the outlook elsewhere in this externally-dependent world should slow appreciably. The persistence of massive external imbalances in the global economy speaks of a non-US world that has failed to develop autonomous sources of domestic private consumption growth. Lacking in new growth engines, weakness in the US and China should put to rest the myth of a new synchronous recovery in the global economy.

I’ve been on holiday for the past two weeks. Lots of family time and plenty of opportunity for reading, exercise, and something called relaxation. I stayed minimally connected and glanced at the screens once or twice a day. Re-entry is always a challenge and an opportunity -- a chance to see the world through a different lens. For my money, there can be no mistaking the reality check of this summer’s disappointing data. This recovery now looks more mythical than ever.
-END-

NEW YORK POST

WHY AN INTEREST-RATE HIKE IS A BIG MISTAKE

By JOHN CRUDELE

August 10, 2004 -- THE Federal Reserve will be making an enormous mistake if it raises interest rates today.

Nearly everyone is expecting Chairman Alan Greenspan and his rubber-stamp colleagues to push the so-called fed funds rate up another quarter point when the Central Bank's Open Market Committee meets today.

This would be the second rate hike since late June as the Fed pursues its wrongheaded attempt to rein in an economy that — as last week's employment numbers clearly showed — is growing much too slowly already.

To be fair to the Fed, there are some valid reasons that could justify a rate hike.

Inflation is now running at more than 3 percent a year and Greenspan might want to raise rates now so he will be able to cut them later if he needs to do that.

Lower economic growth means less demand for money, which means rates can't stay up. The dismal employment figures released last Friday caused the world bond market to push rates even lower.

Like the hike that will probably come today, the June move made the Fed look completely out of step with economic reality. It erodes confidence.

In last Thursday's column I said that Wall Street would be wrong when the employment numbers were released the following morning.

With the experts expecting growth of anywhere between 215,000 and 300,000 jobs, the stock market was jolted when the actual increase for July was a meager 32,000 and June's already modest gain was reduced by 34,000 jobs.

Most people are having a problem predicting the economy these days because I believe there is a difference between what is really going on and what the statistics say.

The economy seems to be growing — but only moderately. The peaks (as we saw earlier this year) and the valleys (as we appear to be going through now) could simply be statistical distortion.

For instance, the good growth in jobs this spring occurred only after the Labor Department made some very generous seasonal assumptions about positions being created at new companies. These companies might not really exist and, so, the jobs they are supposedly creating could also be make-believe.

In Friday's jobs report, the Labor Department removed 91,000 jobs from the count for companies it believed — but couldn't prove — went out of business in July. Without that assumption, growth during the month would have been a still anemic — but slightly more acceptable — 123,000 jobs.

But the problem goes deeper than that.

Most forecasters based all their predictions for jobs on how fast the GDP is growing.

But what goes into these GDP calculations has been changed so much over the past decade that 3 percent annual gross domestic product growth today isn't nearly as strong as it would have been a decade ago.

The main reason is that the government has altered the way it calculates inflation, mainly so that Washington can pay less in cost of living increases to Social Security recipients and others.

Not only is the economy broken because neither the Fed nor Congress can do anything, but the experts are being deceived en masse.

* Please send e-mail to: jcrudele@nypost.com