Bumble

@goldmember I remember an interview with Peter Hug of Kitko, who is a professional trader, in which he recalled how back in 1979/80 he was trading gold for a firm in Toronto, and people would queue up in the street to buy gold coins. One day he looked out the window and saw their mailman in the queue and he turned to his assistant and said: that's the top, we should sell now. That was right on the peak in 1980. Similar things happened with Bitcoin in December 2017. I started to find articles in general interest magazines about this wonderful new craze called cryptocurrency. People on forums said they were borrowing money on their credit cards to buy Bitcoin. When things like that happen, the bubble is in and it's time to sell. You don't need to short, and you may miss the exact top, but there's no need to be greedy, just be long for the main part of the run-up.

If you bought gold coins as a kind of insurance against governments screwing everything up, then you did well and you should continue to hold them. Selling them would be like selling your seat on the lifeboat of the Titanic. On the other hand, if you bought some gold assets with a view to making some profit, or at least preserving your worth, then you are in the tough position of having to judge whether a top has been reached. It is the same decision you face with any investment that goes up in value: do you let it run because it's doing well, or take profit? It is never bad to take some profit, but you may be able to do better if you can spot the signs of a bubble forming. When the proverbial shoe-shine boy tells you he is buying gold, or you see articles in non-financial magazines about gold, then it is time to get out.

If you bought gold coins as a kind of insurance against governments screwing everything up, then you did well and you should continue to hold them. Selling them would be like selling your seat on the lifeboat of the Titanic. On the other hand, if you bought some gold assets with a view to making some profit, or at least preserving your worth, then you are in the tough position of having to judge whether a top has been reached. It is the same decision you face with any investment that goes up in value: do you let it run because it's doing well, or take profit? It is never bad to take some profit, but you may be able to do better if you can spot the signs of a bubble forming. When the proverbial shoe-shine boy tells you he is buying gold, or you see articles in non-financial magazines about gold, then it is time to get out.

If you bought gold coins as a kind of insurance against governments screwing everything up, then you did well and you should continue to hold them. Selling them would be like selling your seat on the lifeboat of the Titanic. On the other hand, if you bought some gold assets with a view to making some profit, or at least preserving your worth, then you are in the tough position of having to judge whether a top has been reached. It is the same decision you face with any investment that goes up in value: do you let it run because it's doing well, or take profit? It is never bad to take some profit, but you may be able to do better if you can spot the signs of a bubble forming. When the proverbial shoe-shine boy tells you he is buying gold, or you see articles in non-financial magazines about gold, then it is time to get out.

If you bought gold coins as a kind of insurance against governments screwing everything up, then you did well and you should continue to hold them. Selling them would be like selling your seat on the lifeboat of the Titanic. On the other hand, if you bought some gold assets with a view to making some profit, or at least preserving your worth, then you are in the tough position of having to judge whether a top has been reached. It is the same decision you face with any investment that goes up in value: do you let it run because it's doing well, or take profit? It is never bad to take some profit, but you may be able to do better if you can spot the signs of a bubble forming. When the proverbial shoe-shine boy tells you he is buying gold, or you see articles in non-financial magazines about gold, then it is time to get out.

It is not just a matter of billionaire investors. In the USA alone, there is some $15 trillion in 401k and IRA pension accounts. Very little of this is invested in gold because it has no yield and most investors don't understand gold as an investment. If investors woke up and decided to invest even 5% of their pension money in gold, this would create $750 billion worth of demand for gold. At current prices, this would equate to over 16,000 tonnes of gold. It would be a practical impossibility to procure this much gold. The price would probably have to rise tenfold in order to soak up $750 billion worth of demand. I'm not predicting a price rise this big will happen, but the scope for a huge increase in demand definitely exists.

The tough decision now is to decide how much of the recent rise in the gold price is due to ongoing fundamental reasons to own gold, i.e. unsustainable debt, the threat of negative interest rates, the possibility of a global recession, price inflation, etc. and how much is due to current events: trade and tariff disputes, brexit, tankers being attacked, Game of Drones, etc.?
If it is mostly the former, we could see gold continue to rise considerably. There are plenty of traders who don't care whether gold goes up or down - they will just trade the momentum. Also, gold is hugely underowned by retail investors - most investors have no gold at all in their savings - so there is plenty of scope for additional demand.
If it is mostly the latter, we could see profit-taking and a sharp fall back if a trade deal is struck and tensions subside in the middle east.
For myself, I am happy to keep accumulating. But if we see a classic bubble curve developing, there will come a time to bail.

@HighlandTiger The USA has not threatened sanctions as such, but it has warned Germany that if it persists in buying gas from Russia rather than the USA, and if it attempts to bypass the sanctions against Iran, then the USA may withdraw its military protection from Germany and move its troops to Poland. Trade tariffs are another form of threat. The USA is trying to whip its allies into line, which is a relatively recent departure from previous policy.

The markets were waiting for the press release from the FOMC meeting. This was issued at 14:00 EST, which is 19:00 GMT. The Fed's comments were interpreted as 'dovish', meaning less chance of an interest rate increase, or of further monetary tighteninng. This was positive for gold, so traders moved into long positions.

I ordered 100 tons of gold for my personal stash this morning. Somebody at the dealer must have leaked the news.

1262 maybe. Let's not get too excited!

I'm not a Dent fan either, but to be fair to him, he does have one thing right, which is that one of the major factors that influence future developments is demographics. Everybody gets older at a rate of one year per year and this is not going to change, so the future distribution of people by age is entirely predictable. Most western countries are about to tumble over the demographic cliff as the baby boom generation retires and this will have major consequences. Dent thinks that the next financial crash, when it comes, will result in a huge deflationary bust that will send all prices, including gold, downwards. This will only be true if governments and central banks sit on the sidelines and do nothing. We know from experience that they won't. Their response will be to print money and reduce interest rates, and they will keep doing so until price inflation is restored. This will be positive for gold, not negative.

@Mildred"Preventing any possible deliveries" does make sense. You have entered into a long contract, i.e. a contract to purchase physical metal. If you don't sell or cancel this contract, then the counterparty will deliver this metal to you, or rather, to your broker, since the contract is probably in a nominee account. Since your broker does not want their entrance lobby to be filled up with crates of metal belonging to their clients, it is part of their terms of service that you close your position in advance of the completion date.

Andrew Maguire doesn't give any details, but reading between the lines it may be that the German customer he refers to was an owner of Xetra-Gold bonds. These bonds are similar to commodity ETFs like GLD in that they claim to be 100% backed by physical gold and they allow for delivery if a customer owns a sufficiently large holding. Xetra-Gold is issued by Deutsche Börse Commodities and Deutsche Bank is one of its partners. According to the Xetra-Gold website, customers do still have right of delivery and some make use of this facility. Usually with bonds of this kind, there are provisions in the small print that allow the fund to settle in cash if they choose, so refusing to hand over physical gold is not technically a default.
On the other hand, if the customer owned allocated bars, i.e. the gold was his own property, that would be a serious issue. A bank could only legitimately refuse to return a client's property if they suspected criminal activity or if they were under orders from a regulator, a central bank or from law enforcement authorities.
Andrew Maguire goes on to suggest that bullion banks are clamping down on withdrawals of gold in expectation of bank bail-ins. This may be true, though it is just a speculation. It does emphasise the importance of holding gold outside the banking system.

Some perspectives:
1. This venture is attempting to create an entirely new currency to compete with existing ones. This is so ambitious that governments and central banks are likely to try to put a stop to it. The corporation may be based in friendly jurisdictions, but if major governments outlaw its use, or even just regulate it so heavily that it becomes too irksome to use, customers in most countries will not use it. Financial regulators are already gearing up to regulate cryptos. The cryptocurrency space will not remain a wild west indefinitely. The case for banning cryptos will be the same as that for banning cash: it is used by criminals, drug dealers, money launderers, terrorists, etc. Not a good argument, of course, but it carries weight with the ignorant.
2. At a minimum, regulations will require proof of identification, proof of source of funds, anti-money laundering provisions, and FATCA style disclosure requirements. Switzerland, Singapore and Lichtenstein may be sovereign states but they are coming under huge pressure to comply with regulations like these. Some financial institutions have avoided trading in cryptos precisely because they couldn't prove source of funds.
3. Price volatility may become an issue, as it has for other cryptos. Speculators in gold and silver have simpler ways to expose themselves, including leveraged vehicles. Users who just want to transact worldwide at low cost can use Litecoin or the Bitcoin lightning network. Yes, they're not backed by anything but confidence, but most users are unlikely to care: they'll go where the fees are lowest.
4. Cryptos generally are not ready for mass adoption because they are too awkward to use for the non-tech-savvy. You have to install wallet software on your computer and smartphone and learn how to make safe copies of your keys to cold storage. You also have to worry a lot more about security. One piece of malware and all your crypto has gone and is never coming back. Smartphones are completely and utterly insecure. They are designed to share information and that is what they do. You should never put any data on a smartphone that you would not wish the whole world to know. John McAfee has been working on the design of a secure smartphone, but it is likely to retail at $1000 or more. Most people do not know how to secure their computers adequately. This might be less of a problem for Kinesis, if it is centrally managed, but there still remains the issue of user authentication. With my bank, I need my card and PIN to log in to online services, and I have several other channels for authenticating myself if I need to. Without two factor authentication with physical tokens I would be reluctant to trust a transactional money system.
5. Gold backing is nice, but if there is a systemic financial collapse, governments might decide to ban all private ownership of gold. Even if the gold is safely stored in Switzerland or Singapore, it doesn't help me if I can't get it, and I am forced to sell it to the central bank at some nominal price.

Some perspectives:
1. This venture is attempting to create an entirely new currency to compete with existing ones. This is so ambitious that governments and central banks are likely to try to put a stop to it. The corporation may be based in friendly jurisdictions, but if major governments outlaw its use, or even just regulate it so heavily that it becomes too irksome to use, customers in most countries will not use it. Financial regulators are already gearing up to regulate cryptos. The cryptocurrency space will not remain a wild west indefinitely. The case for banning cryptos will be the same as that for banning cash: it is used by criminals, drug dealers, money launderers, terrorists, etc. Not a good argument, of course, but it carries weight with the ignorant.
2. At a minimum, regulations will require proof of identification, proof of source of funds, anti-money laundering provisions, and FATCA style disclosure requirements. Switzerland, Singapore and Lichtenstein may be sovereign states but they are coming under huge pressure to comply with regulations like these. Some financial institutions have avoided trading in cryptos precisely because they couldn't prove source of funds.
3. Price volatility may become an issue, as it has for other cryptos. Speculators in gold and silver have simpler ways to expose themselves, including leveraged vehicles. Users who just want to transact worldwide at low cost can use Litecoin or the Bitcoin lightning network. Yes, they're not backed by anything but confidence, but most users are unlikely to care: they'll go where the fees are lowest.
4. Cryptos generally are not ready for mass adoption because they are too awkward to use for the non-tech-savvy. You have to install wallet software on your computer and smartphone and learn how to make safe copies of your keys to cold storage. You also have to worry a lot more about security. One piece of malware and all your crypto has gone and is never coming back. Smartphones are completely and utterly insecure. They are designed to share information and that is what they do. You should never put any data on a smartphone that you would not wish the whole world to know. John McAfee has been working on the design of a secure smartphone, but it is likely to retail at $1000 or more. Most people do not know how to secure their computers adequately. This might be less of a problem for Kinesis, if it is centrally managed, but there still remains the issue of user authentication. With my bank, I need my card and PIN to log in to online services, and I have several other channels for authenticating myself if I need to. Without two factor authentication with physical tokens I would be reluctant to trust a transactional money system.
5. Gold backing is nice, but if there is a systemic financial collapse, governments might decide to ban all private ownership of gold. Even if the gold is safely stored in Switzerland or Singapore, it doesn't help me if I can't get it, and I am forced to sell it to the central bank at some nominal price.

Some perspectives:
1. This venture is attempting to create an entirely new currency to compete with existing ones. This is so ambitious that governments and central banks are likely to try to put a stop to it. The corporation may be based in friendly jurisdictions, but if major governments outlaw its use, or even just regulate it so heavily that it becomes too irksome to use, customers in most countries will not use it. Financial regulators are already gearing up to regulate cryptos. The cryptocurrency space will not remain a wild west indefinitely. The case for banning cryptos will be the same as that for banning cash: it is used by criminals, drug dealers, money launderers, terrorists, etc. Not a good argument, of course, but it carries weight with the ignorant.
2. At a minimum, regulations will require proof of identification, proof of source of funds, anti-money laundering provisions, and FATCA style disclosure requirements. Switzerland, Singapore and Lichtenstein may be sovereign states but they are coming under huge pressure to comply with regulations like these. Some financial institutions have avoided trading in cryptos precisely because they couldn't prove source of funds.
3. Price volatility may become an issue, as it has for other cryptos. Speculators in gold and silver have simpler ways to expose themselves, including leveraged vehicles. Users who just want to transact worldwide at low cost can use Litecoin or the Bitcoin lightning network. Yes, they're not backed by anything but confidence, but most users are unlikely to care: they'll go where the fees are lowest.
4. Cryptos generally are not ready for mass adoption because they are too awkward to use for the non-tech-savvy. You have to install wallet software on your computer and smartphone and learn how to make safe copies of your keys to cold storage. You also have to worry a lot more about security. One piece of malware and all your crypto has gone and is never coming back. Smartphones are completely and utterly insecure. They are designed to share information and that is what they do. You should never put any data on a smartphone that you would not wish the whole world to know. John McAfee has been working on the design of a secure smartphone, but it is likely to retail at $1000 or more. Most people do not know how to secure their computers adequately. This might be less of a problem for Kinesis, if it is centrally managed, but there still remains the issue of user authentication. With my bank, I need my card and PIN to log in to online services, and I have several other channels for authenticating myself if I need to. Without two factor authentication with physical tokens I would be reluctant to trust a transactional money system.
5. Gold backing is nice, but if there is a systemic financial collapse, governments might decide to ban all private ownership of gold. Even if the gold is safely stored in Switzerland or Singapore, it doesn't help me if I can't get it, and I am forced to sell it to the central bank at some nominal price.

The guy has no more idea than the man in the Moon about what is going to happen over the coming months or year.
There have indeed been some large volume sells going on - this means there have been some large volume buys going on. For ever contract sold there is a contract bought. There are many calls at the moment for gold to go down into the end of the year. When there are many calls about anything you can be sure it is propaganda at the behest of the central planners
The paper markets are managed by the central planners because this is part of their management of fiat currencies and stock market indices. The single seller volumes that get flushed through breach intra-day position limits. These get reported for what it is worth to the so-called regulators who ignore these reports b/c it is their ultimate bosses who are doing the selling. There have been some desperate attempts to cap price at critical moving averages in the last few weeks. The only reason for the big volume sells is the likes of the Bank of International Settlements and agents of the Fed have been selling 100's of tonnes of paper gold and triggering stops of 1000's of tonnes of speculator positions. The problem they face when this happens and price slumps it triggers a tsunami of physical buy orders that sit there waiting. These take a few days to ultimately hit the markets but when these are presented for delivery they can and do push price higher b/c bullion banks have to deliver and they hedge this. The reason price is not at $800 is simply b/c of the physical market.
There is a game being played between Western central planners attempting to prop up the USD and the stock and bond markets on the one side and the Asian physical buyers, including their central banks on the other. For as long as physical can be delivered at bargain prices the physical market participants are happy for this to continue, all the time draining Western vaults until they are dry. i genuinely see this game is reaching a climax. i know large tonnage buy orders have been blocked, i hear 100's of tonnes of gold are going through the Exchange for Physical COMEX conduit which is supposed to be an exceptional event but this has been ramping up over recent months. Here COMEX shorts are actually being confronted with demands for delivery that will not go away even with bribes of large premiums. Even the regulators are feeling inclined to look into this.
This is building up and has been building up over the summer. Physical buying appears to be as strong as in 2008 when gold launched into its huge bull run. None of this will ever be visible from a chart of phantom gold proxies like GLD. Something is brewing and a price reset is certainly not a million miles away. A concerted physical buying frenzy is all that would be needed to close the markets and reset price significantly higher. When this does happen and it will, it will not be a slow process.

I don't tend to worry about the price of gold on the short term. But, for what it's worth, there was a price take down on Friday 10 November.

According to information on Kitco, 4 million ounces, or over 120 tonnes of gold, was sold on Comex in the space of 15 minutes. The 120 tonnes are of course just paper contracts and represent a high level of leverage. This is a lot, even by the standards of previous take downs. In the past, selling 10 tonnes could drive the price down $15 or more. Now it is taking 120 tonnes to drive the price down $10. On the whole I would say this is a bullish sign for gold. Cyclically, gold is often weak in Nov/Dec and picks up in Jan/Feb.

I don't tend to worry about the price of gold on the short term. But, for what it's worth, there was a price take down on Friday 10 November.

According to information on Kitco, 4 million ounces, or over 120 tonnes of gold, was sold on Comex in the space of 15 minutes. The 120 tonnes are of course just paper contracts and represent a high level of leverage. This is a lot, even by the standards of previous take downs. In the past, selling 10 tonnes could drive the price down $15 or more. Now it is taking 120 tonnes to drive the price down $10. On the whole I would say this is a bullish sign for gold. Cyclically, gold is often weak in Nov/Dec and picks up in Jan/Feb.

I don't tend to worry about the price of gold on the short term. But, for what it's worth, there was a price take down on Friday 10 November.

According to information on Kitco, 4 million ounces, or over 120 tonnes of gold, was sold on Comex in the space of 15 minutes. The 120 tonnes are of course just paper contracts and represent a high level of leverage. This is a lot, even by the standards of previous take downs. In the past, selling 10 tonnes could drive the price down $15 or more. Now it is taking 120 tonnes to drive the price down $10. On the whole I would say this is a bullish sign for gold. Cyclically, gold is often weak in Nov/Dec and picks up in Jan/Feb.

On Friday Aug 25 2017 an attempt was made to drive the price of gold down by selling 21,000 contracts on NY Comex in the space of a few minutes. A contract is 100 ozt of gold, so this amounts to over 2 million ounces, or over $2.5 billion worth of gold. This is actually not uncommon, particularly on Fridays, but this time it didn't work. The price bounced straight back. Look at the green lines on the charts below. This seems to me quite positive. In recent years when gold was knocked down it stayed down, but now it is proving resilient. This may well be an indicator that serious amounts of buyers are starting to move back into gold and are keen to buy the dips.

On Friday Aug 25 2017 an attempt was made to drive the price of gold down by selling 21,000 contracts on NY Comex in the space of a few minutes. A contract is 100 ozt of gold, so this amounts to over 2 million ounces, or over $2.5 billion worth of gold. This is actually not uncommon, particularly on Fridays, but this time it didn't work. The price bounced straight back. Look at the green lines on the charts below. This seems to me quite positive. In recent years when gold was knocked down it stayed down, but now it is proving resilient. This may well be an indicator that serious amounts of buyers are starting to move back into gold and are keen to buy the dips.

On Friday Aug 25 2017 an attempt was made to drive the price of gold down by selling 21,000 contracts on NY Comex in the space of a few minutes. A contract is 100 ozt of gold, so this amounts to over 2 million ounces, or over $2.5 billion worth of gold. This is actually not uncommon, particularly on Fridays, but this time it didn't work. The price bounced straight back. Look at the green lines on the charts below. This seems to me quite positive. In recent years when gold was knocked down it stayed down, but now it is proving resilient. This may well be an indicator that serious amounts of buyers are starting to move back into gold and are keen to buy the dips.

On Friday Aug 25 2017 an attempt was made to drive the price of gold down by selling 21,000 contracts on NY Comex in the space of a few minutes. A contract is 100 ozt of gold, so this amounts to over 2 million ounces, or over $2.5 billion worth of gold. This is actually not uncommon, particularly on Fridays, but this time it didn't work. The price bounced straight back. Look at the green lines on the charts below. This seems to me quite positive. In recent years when gold was knocked down it stayed down, but now it is proving resilient. This may well be an indicator that serious amounts of buyers are starting to move back into gold and are keen to buy the dips.