Journal rk's Journal: Precious metals; Redux 4
In my journal I wrote a couple weeks ago about the prices versus availability of precious metals, particularly silver. It seems to be even worse now, if I can take Kitco's selling site to be any indication.
Your choices are either to buy a large scale bars (the cheapest of which is an $11,000 silver bar), requiring a substantial cash outlay if you're middle or working class, or you can buy the sub 1 oz coins (and the Olympic edition Gold Maple), all of which trade at a substantial premium above spot price. Kitco still seems to be only offering a buy premium on silver at the moment.
More telling, I think, is that while gold and silver have been fairly volatile, trading up and down over the last week, the lease rates have been steadily climbing. Make of that what you will, but I think somebody somewhere knows that there's another time bomb ticking in the financial infrastructure somewhere. 2009 could be an interesting year in the so-called Chinese sense of the word.
Tick tick tick (Score:1)
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aLkOZnNcDmSQ&refer=home [bloomberg.com]
Lehman Credit-Swap Auction Sets Payout of 91.38 Cents (Update2)
"... ...
The Federal Reserve Bank of New York met with credit swap dealers and exchanges today to expedite efforts for a market clearinghouse that would reduce risks and absorb counterparty losses resulting from the failure of market makers such as Lehman.
``But fund managers or hedge funds, once they've used their cash, have only one option: to sell assets.''
"
What
Gold specifically (Score:1)
Interesting hypothesis via cryptogon
http://www.minyanville.com/articles/GLD-etf/index/a/19428 [minyanville.com]
http://cryptogon.com/?p=4427#comments [cryptogon.com]
The short version: "published" price is tied to futures - no-one with sense is prepared to counterparty risk with gold futures.
Re: (Score:2)
Interesting observation. Of course, the spot premiums are a de facto increase in the spot price for physical settlement.
Y'know, I live in Arizona, there's still gold in them thar hills. I should start panning somewhere on the Salt or Verde Rivers. :-)
Re: (Score:1)
"Y'know, I live in Arizona, there's still gold in them thar hills."
I live in Australia and my father damn well knows where there is a sizabkle alluvial deposit. The maps are mine when he goes.
mainstream media warning applies: ...
http://www.news.com.au/business/story/0,27753,24476457-462,00.html [news.com.au]
"In one Sydney bullion house in the past week, a senior Westpac Bank manager walked in and bought nearly $300,000 of physical gold, equivalent at current prices to roughly 6.5kg of the metal.
Gold's sister metal is al