Goldbugs, Silverbugs, or Balancedbugs: Sales Ratios

New post on precious metal investors, who seem to be either goldbugs, silverbugs, or balancedbugs.

If you don’t know who the sucker is at the London Auction, you’re the sucker

I revisit my post from last week on the new London Auction, this time having a deeper look into the funny "I don't care what price I get" sellers.

Returns Matrix for USD & AUD and Gold & Silver

What the title says, new post here. Some additional charts following on from yesterday's post.

45 year Returns Matrix for Gold

A new post up late yesterday with a colourful returns matrix for gold, I think it looks pretty cool. Will probably do one for silver today.

Outlook for gold: positive and negative factors

Have a post up on the outlook for precious metals, a something that has to be done for the annual budget write up. Includes a pretty picture of the factors for those who don't like too many words.

Silver investors corner the market, not JP Morgan

Have a post up on GoldCore's Friday article asking whether JP Morgan was cornering the silver bullion market, noting their Comex warehouse stocks of 55 million ounces and claims by Ted Butler that they “may be holding as much as 350 million ounces of physical silver.” My short answer: I don’t think so. Investor interest in silver in the face of falling prices is a global phenomenon, not a JP Morgan one.

10 year Price vs Sentiment Map for Gold

Earlier this year Societe Generale mapped asset classes in a matrix according to popularity and profitability over the past few years. It got me thinking about applying the same idea to gold to show how its sentiment had changed over the past 10 years, which I've done and posted up on the corporate blog http://research.perthmint.com.au/2015/05/01/10-year-price-vs-sentiment-map-for-gold/. Hopefully we can move from the "Sad" to "Happy" quadrant.

Who buys or sells (to China) matters

I have a post up about an article Steven Saville of The Speculative Investor wrote in January saying that “focusing on the changes in gold location is pointless if your goal is to find clues regarding gold’s prospects.” While I get what he was trying to debunk, I think he has thrown the baby out with the bathwater in doing so.

The power of gold and rebalancing in a portfolio

Have a post up on the corporate blog on the permanent portfolio and specifically the Australian fund Cor Capital which has implemented the strategy. It shows a safe and consistent return that I think argues well for the strategy's inclusion in retirement accounts. Read more here.

Moving to new corporate blog

I have been very busy over the past few months, a few projects coinciding, and also working to set up a blog for myself at the Perth Mint - research.perthmint.com.au hence the lack of posts. I've moved the content from the Research section of the Perth Mint to the blog to seed it but the first real post on the new London fix is now up.

I will be trying to maintain a daily schedule and part of that I will go back over this blog and revisit/rewrite some content that is evergreen in nature and worth bringing to new readers' attention, after around 7 years and 450 posts otherwise useful material can get lost. I also plan to redo my most popular post on gold confiscation, incorporating a lot of material gathered since I wrote it as well as comments from those I've discussed the issue. Putting together all of my fractional reserve bullion banking posts is also probably worthwhile, so much misinformation on that topic.

The new corporate blog will be where I will put most of my serious or sensible stuff, but this blog will remain for truly personal commentary on the PM markets that the Perth Mint just can't host. This blog has been an awkward blend of personal and work which necessarily restricted overly blunt and pure opinion content (yes I have been restrained), but I hope to make the distinction clearer so that this blog has the "space" where I can rant a bit more.

I'm not sure exactly how personal I can be, given the recent case of Scott McIntyre, who was sacked for comments "calling Australia’s involvement in the World Wars an 'imperialist invasion of a foreign nation'." The excuse given for the relevance of the sacking was "It’s not tenable to remain on air if your audience doesn't respect or trust you.” Is this justified only because he had a public role, would someone without any public facing role saying the same thing which it is then discovered who he/she works for be justification for sacking. Seems a restraint on free speech to me, no matter what he said. In such cases where is the line between personal and work life, effectively there is no work/personal split and work dominates your entire life. I suppose as I have a public profile and represent the Perth Mint, I operate under the same expectation. Might just need to have a detailed read of our social media policy.

Maybe just easier to start a new anonymous blog so I can rant away.