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China top bank sees explosive growth in gold demand and voracious appetite for silver
SHANGHAI (Reuters) –
Demand in China for physical gold and gold-related investments is growing at an “explosive” pace and its appetite for the yellow metal is poised to remain robust amid inflation concerns, said an Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC) executive.
ICBC, the world’s largest bank by market value, sold about 7 tonnes of physical gold in January this year, nearly half the 15 tonnes of bullion sold in the whole of 2010, said Zhou Ming, deputy head of the bank’s precious metals department on Wednesday.
“We are seeing explosive demand for gold. As Chinese get wealthy, they look to diversify their investments and gold stands out as a good hedge against inflation,” Zhou told Reuters.
“There is also frantic demand for non-physical gold investments. We issued 1 billion yuan worth of Read more…
Confiscation of Gold and Silver by the U.S. Government
I received an email with the words “RED ALERT”. I received this from someone heavily involved and an expert in the metals and mining. I highly respect both men involved, as they know and always telling the truth about what is happening in the world of metals.
David Morgan of Silver-Investor, an absolute expert in silver and the mining field and has a wonderful and very insightful news letter. I am a member and get the newsletter due to the amount of his knowledge of silver/gold and mining. In fact, David Morgan has given me the green light to post bits of information from his paid subscription newsletter. I am thankful he is allowing that, as there is information in it that is not found any where else on the internet. His newsletter gives investment information of metals and mining as no other person I have read. I believe many benefit from the newsletter and I hope what small blurbs I reproduce here will also help others in keeping the value of their money as it is (but it is dropping fast every day – so action needs to be taken by all – in my opinion). I will start doing some postings with his insight within days. But I encourage Read more…
Gold-Silver Ratio: Silver value highest in five years
NEW YORK (Commodity Online): As precious metals continue to lead the commodities boom globally, the most frequently asked question these days is where does the gold-silver ratio stand.
Over the years, gold has been the high value beneficiary commodity in comparison to silver. But last week, the gold to silver ratio fell to just above 45:1. According to Wayne Atwell, Managing Director of Casimir Capital, the silver value in comparison to gold is the highest in the last five years.
“This is because people—investors—are regarding silver as a safe haven investment just like gold,” he says.
Atwell said: “Suddenly with the anxiety level that’s surfaced about sovereign debt and municipal deficits, people are turning to alternative ways to hedge themselves and I think people felt silver was cheap based on where it has been historically, so they jumped on the bandwagon.”
Gold-Silver ratio is the most important barometer for commodities traders and futures market dealers. Even though Read more…
$2,000 Gold And 10 More Surprising Predictions From Credit Suisse
Gold is negatively correlated with real Fed fund rates
You’re not going to make money betting on the consensus. So if you’re looking for contrarian investments, Credit Suisse’s Andrew Garthwaite has picked out 11 economic events that are more likely than anyone thinks.
Surprise scenarios include $2,000 gold
by year-end. Several factors support this “surprise” including:
- Gold goes up when real Fed fund rates are negative — and they are
- Excess leverage leads to money printing or default
- China and Japan haven’t started Read more…
Gold buying spree grips Chinese households
In this world of chaos and tumult, the Chinese people know what to do to preserve their wealth – they buy gold. When Americans finally wake up, if that ever happens, there is a good chance that there won’t be any gold to buy at any price.
By David Lew
BEIJING (Commodity Online):An unprecedented investor interest in gold is turning Chinese households as store houses of wealth these days as people are on a gold buying spree across the rural and urban areas of the dragon country.
Bundles of news stories are these days written on the gold buying spree by the Chinese households. If not an overstatement, it is now a fact that people’s houses in China have soared in value thanks to the rising prices of gold in the last two years.
“People in China are buying gold like never before. They believe that gold is the best form of investment. So they are buying gold coins, bars and jewelery items and stocking up safely in their homes,” says Beijing-based bullion dealer J Kim Lee.
Quoting the World Gold Council figures, Lee says that if the gold buying spree by Chinese households goes on at the current pace, private gold Chinese demand may overtake Indian gold demand by 2014, giving the world’s two most populous nations two ounces of gold in every five sold worldwide that year.
Indian households are estimated to be owning 15,000 tonnes of gold. India continues to the largest consumer and importer of gold worldwide.
According to precious metals analyst Steven Jon Kaplan, a significant percentage of gold’s price increase in 2009-2010 was caused by the incremental demand from Read more…
Egypt is Just the Beginning for Gold’s Next Move
Watching CNN, its easy to be lulled into the sense that the cute little third world African country that is home to Cleopatra, mummies and pyramids is having a little revolution to get rid of a tired old tyrant. That the old goat is putting up such resistance to the national message is to be expected, and might be forgiven. Unleashing bands of paid thugs under the guise of ‘supporters’ reveals true brutality and illuminates the character of the man, Hosni Mubarak – a sociopath.
This phenomenon, originated in Tunisia, a nation of 10 million, and now raging in Egypt, of 85 million has spread to Yemen, population 25 million and Jordan, population 6 million is no mere regional political shift: this is the beginning of America’s loss of control over the region.
That the democratic process even got a foothold in the tribal and historically despotically governed middle east is due to a series of historical power plays, and not so much to a nascent and organic inclination towards the idea of democracy. When oil emerged to become the most strategic substance on earth after the second world war, the United States, armed with the economic windfall from the war machine, set about toppling governments and seeding insurrection through the offices of the C.I.A., bolstering governments that were ‘incentivized’ to protect U.S. interests, and destroying those that were not.
Back then, before the light-sped connected world, the C.I.A. could operate with Read more…
Take a look at how many ounces of silver have been needed to buy a median-priced home in the US:
For most people, there are some surefire luxuries that signify wealth, a few pearls of conspicuous consumption that say “you’ve made it!” For me, it’s always been a second home. My grandparents owned a vacation home in Arizona and then Florida when I was a kid, and it was an annual highlight to travel there every year.
But something happened on the way to my generation’s iteration of the American dream. Of all the people I know that have second homes, only one acquired it through his own hard work and success. The rest inherited them.
With high unemployment, shaky business conditions, desperate governments, weak real estate demand, and a suspect stock market, owning a vacation home is not even on the radar these days for most Americans. Paying their existing mortgage is the primary concern, something millions of homeowners still aren’t able to do. So, how is it that I can suggest a way to buy a vacation home in this market?
Because there are two trends in motion that I believe will continue working in our favor. And it likely won’t take long for them to reach a culmination point, allowing those of us with such a goal to see it realized.
First, Read more…
China should increase precious metals
Sungwoo Park
SEOUL – China should increase its gold and silver reserves, the Economic Information Daily reported on Monday, citing an interview with China’s central bank adviser Xia Bin.
Increasing gold reserves at the “appropriate time” is in line with the strategy of internationalizing the yuan, the report cited Xia as saying. “Related departments” should employ a “buy in the dip” strategy over a very long period of time, Xia said.
Bullion soared nearly 30 percent in 2010, advancing for the 10th year, as the dollar dropped and investors sought a store of value amid currency debasement. China is allowing greater use of its currency for cross-border transactions, seeking to reduce reliance on the dollar.
The report is “a positive factor for gold prices in the mid-and-long term,” Hwang II Doo, a senior trader at Seoul-based Korea Exchange Bank Futures Co, said on Monday. Still “it didn’t have immediate impact on prices as gold’s gain has more to do with the unrest in Egypt at the moment.”
Total gold consumption in China, the second-largest buyer, may gain 15 percent in the first-half, fueled by growing demand for alternative investments and a hedge against inflation, the China Gold Association said last week.
Imports of gold by China jumped almost five-fold in the first 10 months of last year from the entire amount shipped in 2009, the Shanghai Gold Exchange has said. Shipments were 209 metric tons compared with 45 tons for all of 2009, said exchange Chairman Shen Xiangrong.
The country increased gold reserves by 454 tons to 1,054 tons since 2003, the State Administration of Foreign Exchange said in April 2009. The metal only accounts for 1.6 percent of the nation’s reserves held by the People’s Bank of China, according to the World Gold Council. China doesn’t regularly publish gold-trade figures and rarely comments on its reserves.
Bullion for immediate delivery gained as much as 0.7 percent to $1,346.27 an ounce, and was at $1,339.25 at 12:53 pm in Seoul. The price rose 2.5 percent on Jan 28, the biggest intra-day increase since Nov 4 as escalating tensions in Egypt fanned concern that unrest may spread to other parts of the Middle East, increasing demand for an investment haven.
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