Thread: Gold Buying Frenzy Continues: China, Japan, And Australia Scramble For Physical

Gold Buying Frenzy Continues: China, Japan, And Australia Scramble For Physical

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 04/17/2013 08:47 -0400

We noted here that the plunge in the paper price of gold (and silver) had prompted considerable renewed demand for physical and now it seems the scramble among the "more stable investor base" is increasing. The shake out of ETFs and futures has left the Australian mint short of deliverables and Japanese and Chinese gold retailers seeing a "frenzied" surge in demand. The customers are not just the 'rich' or 'elderly'; in China "they tend to wear water shoes and come directly from the market...;" in Australia, "the volume of business... is way in excess of double what we did last week,... there’s been people running through the gate," and Japanese individual investors doubled gold purchases yesterday at Tokuriki Honten, the country’s second-largest retailer of the precious metal. The panic selling by a weaker 'imminent inflation-based' investor base has sparked physical shortages - "there’s been significant sales made as people see this as great value." It seems our previous discussions of a rotation from paper to physical were correct and this physical demand will eventually leak back into the paper markets.

Australia (via The Age):

Gold sales from Perth Mint, which refines nearly all of the nation’s bullion, have surged after prices plunged, adding to signs that the metal’s slump to a two-year low is spurring increased demand.

“The volume of business that we’re putting through is way in excess of double what we did last week,” Treasurer Nigel Moffatt said, without giving precise figures. “There’s been people running through the gate.”
...

“There’s been significant sales made as people see this as great value,” Mr Moffatt said. “Gold owners are very reactive to significant market movements.”

...

The Perth Mint’s sales of gold coins climbed 49 per cent to 97,541 ounces in the three months ended March 31 from a year earlier

China (via China News):

Beijing gold store two hours to sell 20,000 grams of gold bullion trading volume of nearly 200 million

and (via YCWB):

People have to rush to buy gold, ... gold bullion out of stock yesterday, investors yesterday to spend as much as 600 million yuan to buy 20 kilograms of gold bars

The mad pursuit gold insufficiency is not just a game for the rich. Yesterday, the Yangcheng Evening News reporter learned from the East flowers to Bay store, many growers, pork traffickers, fishmonger recently put down his job went straight to the mall to buy gold.

Japan (via Reuters):

Some Japanese also harbor fears that the expansionary monetary and fiscal policies dubbed "Abenomics", coupled with a national debt more than twice as large as annual economic output, could trigger a crisis down the line.

Skeptics about the radical attempt to reflate the economy -- or those simply worried that a slide in the yen that began in anticipation of Abe's election victory last December will continue unabated -- are still buying gold, dealers say.

"Investors in gold are convinced that Japan's fiscal position will get worse," said Wakako Harada, general manager of Japan's top bullion house, Tanaka Kikinzoku Kogyo.

"What I see at our counter is that more people are getting worried about Japan. That's why we are seeing a lot of buying."

...

"In contrast this time, we are seeing interest to buy on dips to take exposures to gold,"

...

"Investors are using this opportunity to buy gold to diversify beyond bonds, stocks and the yen currency as Japan's fiscal situation could deteriorate."

(via The Age):

Japanese individual investors doubled gold purchases yesterday at Tokuriki Honten, the country’s second-largest retailer of the precious metal.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-0...amble-physical

Buy PHYSICAL Gold. NOW: The Discount of a Lifetime: Or Why You Must Abandon the Fake Paper Gold Market


Submitted by Gordon_Gekko on 04/17/2013 07:00 -0400

For previous articles by the author go to: Gordon Gekko's Blog - http://www.gekkosblog.com

They just showed their hands. The paper Ponzi pyramid is wobbling. It’s time to go in for the kill.

Let me explain. But first let’s get a handle on what’s happening:

“We’ve traded gold for nearly four decades and we’ve never … ever… EVER… seen anything like what we’ve witnessed in the past two trading sessions,”

Dennis Gartman, via The New York Times

“This is an orchestration (the smash in gold). It’s been going on now from the beginning of April. Brokerage houses told their individual clients the word was out that hedge funds and institutional investors were going to be dumping gold and that they should get out in advance…it is the Fed’s concern with the dollar because the dollar is being printed in huge quantities at the same time that other countries are abandoning the use of the dollar as international payment.

The exchange value of the dollar is (being) threatened, and if that collapses the Fed loses control over interest rates. Then the bond market blows up, the stock market blows up, and the banks that are too big to fail, fail. So it’s an act of desperation because they’ve got to establish in people’s minds that the dollar is the only safe place, it is the only safe haven, not gold, not silver, and not other currencies.

And to help protect this policy they have convinced or pressured the Japanese to inflate their own currency. The Japanese are now going to print money like the Fed. They are lobbying the ECB to print more. So I see this as a dollar protection policy...I know where the gold is coming from in the market, it’s just paper. It’s naked shorts, there is no gold there. If somebody wanted to take delivery on those contracts nobody would be able to provide it. I don’t know what the source of the (physical) gold is...

..I think the power of the West has already been lost. When you have off-shored your manufacturing and professional service jobs, you’ve hollowed out your economy. So gold or no gold, the United States economy has been severely damaged and I don’t think it can recover...

This gold business (smash in price) is something to do with the dollar….They are trying to destroy gold as a (safe) haven from the dollar in order to carry on the Fed’s policy of negative real interest rates. That is what is driving the illegal policy of selling naked shorts in order to manipulate a market. If you and I were to do something like this without the government’s instruction or protection, we would be arrested. So the fact that it’s illegal, being done by the authorities, tells me that they are seriously worried about the dollar.”

(All emphasis mine.)

Paul Craig Roberts, Former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury (via King World News)

If there is one thing this latest shock-and-awe “theater” in the Gold market tells us, it’s that the government and banksters (i.e. the oligarchy) must be REALLY pissing their pants. It doesn’t show their strength – it lays bare their weakness. They just made it abundantly clear (again) how important Gold is in their scheme of things. A rapidly rising Gold price would reveal the utter fraud of their paper money Ponzi scheme and reveal them as simple hucksters, charlatans and scamsters counterfeiting money and hiding behind all the elegant regalia. The emperor would be naked. Can’t let that happen. The franchise of the paper dollar – arguably the most profitable franchise in history enabling theft on a global scale - must be protected at all costs. Something is or must be about to go seriously wrong with their empire of fake paper money (perhaps the recent gyrations in the JGB market is a tell).

With this recent paper Gold market “drama” they have only shown their desperation and weakness. The level of their desperation this time is so great that they had their bought-and-paid-for shills in the media mouthpieces attack and mock Gold and its buyers even before the sell-off (which further goes to proves that it was orchestrated; I’ll provide more evidence below). Consider this in an article “Lust for Gold” which appeared in the New York Times on the 11^th April by none other than the lead bankster shill and cheerleader Paul Krugman:

After all, historically, gold has been anything but a safe investment…John Maynard Keynes famously dismissed the Gold standard as a “barbarous relic”, noting the absurdity of yoking the fortunes of a modern industrial society to the supply of a decorative metal…for a while, rising gold prices helped create some credibility for the goldbugs even as their predictions about everything else proved wrong, but now gold as an investment has turned sour, too. So will we see prominent goldbugs change their views, or at least lose a lot of their followers.

Its funny how the paperbugs liken Gold buyers to a cult, while not realizing they themselves sound like one, with their irrational faith in and defense of paper money (well, not completely irrational - they know where their next paycheck is coming fromJ). While I may provide a full rebuttal to Mr. Krugman in a later article (it barely deserves one, childish and inane as it is), I will point out this: If Gold is so inconsequential and such a “barbarous relic”, why is the government lapdog media busy trying to discredit it and all those who buy it? I mean just look at the sheer gloating:

From the Business Insider:





The WSJ also joined in the fun:



I’ll tell you why - because underneath all the bullshit they are spewing they know that buyers of Gold are not actually buying anything but voting against their paymaster government and bankster oligarchy. There is nothing spectacular about Gold except for its ability to reveal the truth about the scam being run by our ruling feudal masters, and this is the one and only reason why Gold and all those who buy it are so vilely derided by the establishment.

The global economy is still in shambles and the oligarchy have shown that they can’t do ANYTHING of ANY real consequence except manipulating the public opinion – either via “market” shenanigans or media mouthpieces. Just think about it – a global empire, a powerful and apparently invincible oligarchy threatened by just an inanimate piece of metal. But they know that because all their power is based on lies and deception, a simple truth - the rising price of Gold indicating the massive dilution of currency - can completely destroy it. Having become thoroughly corrupt, impotent and incompetent, unable to fix anything (they couldn’t run a lemonade stand if their lives depended on it) and fast becoming desperate with Gold having risen more than seven-fold from about $250 in 1999 to $1900 in 2011 exemplifying the worthlessness of their paper money and reality catching up to them, they did the only thing they knew: attack the messenger - Gold. It’s a short term fix which perpetuates their paper money franchise and thus their power, but longer term it’s meaningless. It doesn’t fix the massive misallocations which have occurred and are occurring due to central control of money via the paper money system and it doesn’t change one bit of the truth of the present dilapidated state of our economy and society which is a direct result of it. In fact it’s making the situation worse as by not allowing the misallocations to correct and reallocation of capital to productive hands to occur, huge amount of scarce resources – both human and material – continue to be wasted on unproductive enterprises.

Unless and until the following factors are no longer true, there is and will remain a case for buying Gold. These factors did not vanish overnight because of a single orchestrated plunge:
1. Exponentially increasing Government and private debt
2. Exponentially increasing money supply
3. Consistent rise in the price of items of daily need (yes I know there is no “inflation” but anybody who goes to the supermarket knows what a crock of bullshit the government CPI numbers are)
4. Rising unemployment and falling incomes
5. Corrupt government and politicians

The banksters are acting like a child throwing a tantrum because daddy (Gold) is going to take their toy (paper money) away from them, so they simply wail and try to hit back at daddy, as if that would accomplish anything. People who know the truth should simply sit back and laugh at the banksters and their shenanigans while using the opportunity to buy even more.

The Discount of a Lifetime

The way this price fall occurred makes it clear that there were NO fundamentals behind the move and, paradoxically, strengthens the case for Gold even further. Let’s take a look at exactly how this latest plunge in Gold price happened (via Ross Norman):

The gold futures markets opened in New York on Friday 12th April to a monumental 3.4 million ounces (100 tonnes) of gold selling of the June futures contract in what proved to be only an opening shot. The selling took gold to the technically very important level of $1540 which was not only the low of 2012, it was also seen by many as the level which confirmed the ongoing bull run which dates back to 2000. In many traders minds it stood as a formidable support level... the line in the sand.

Two hours later the initial selling, rumored to have been routed through Merrill Lynch's floor team, by a rather more significant blast when the floor was hit by a further 10 million ounces of selling (300 tonnes) over the following 30 minutes of trading. This was clearly not a case of disappointed longs leaving the market - it had the hallmarks of a concerted 'short sale', which by driving prices sharply lower in a display of 'shock & awe' - would seek to gain further momentum by prompting others to also sell as their positions as they hit their maximum acceptable losses or so-called 'stopped-out' in market parlance - probably hidden the unimpeachable (?) $1540 level.

The selling was timed for optimal impact with New York at its most liquid, while key overseas gold markets including London were open and able feel the impact. The estimated 400 tonne of gold futures selling in total equates to 15% of annual gold mine production - too much for the market to readily absorb, especially with sentiment weak following gold's non performance in the wake of Japanese QE, a nuclear threat from North Korea and weakening US economic data. The assault to the short side was essentially saying "you are long... and wrong".

The CME's 10% reduction in the required gold margins in November 2012 from $9133/contract to just $7425/contract made the market more accessible to those wishing both to go long or as it transpired, to go short. Soon after we saw the first serious assault to the downside in Dec 2012, followed by further bouts in January 2013 - modest in size compared to the recent shorting but effective - it laid the ground for what was to follow. One fund in particular, based in Stamford Connecticut, was identified as the previous shorter of gold and has a history of being caught on the wrong side of the law on a few occasions. As baddies go - they fit the bill nicely.

The value of the 400 tonnes of gold sold is approximately $20 billion but because it is margined, this short bet would require them to stump up just $1b…. By forcing the market lower the Fund sought to prompt a cascade or avalanche of additional selling, proving the lie ; predictably some newswires were premature in announcing the death of the gold bull run doing, in effect, the dirty work of the shorters in driving the market lower still<sup>1.

(All emphasis mine.)</sup>

If someone is selling anything, the rational thing to do would be to get the best price possible, right? Would you get the best price if you sell your lot in one go flooding the market? Would you want to overwhelm all the bids and crush the price? Yes, but only if exactly that was your objective – to crush the price. Nobody sells 400 tons (!) of gold in one go if they are trying to get the best possible price. So this wasn’t a case of varied market participants selling their gold holdings having considered the fundamentals for Gold and arrived at the conclusion their long position didn’t make sense anymore. This was a case of concerted selling by one single entity whose sole intention was to drive down the price. Not only that, nobody sells $20 BILLION worth of Gold in ONE GO without some sort of state/CB backing. You think some piddly hedge fund manager would have the balls to do this while risking prosecution and jail time? So not only was this market manipulation, but state-sponsored market manipulation completely unrelated to the reality and the fundamental basis for buying Gold, which remains as strong as ever.

But it gets better. While this is the probably the most spectacular takedown of the Gold price ever, but by no means is it the first or the only one. Anyone who has actually traded the Gold futures market for any length of time knows that this happens on a regular basis. So basically the government/Central Banks use the paper gold futures market as a price control mechanism for Gold (of course, they can’t impose price controls on Gold overtly as it would reveal the lie - if Gold is a barbarous, meaningless relic why would you need to impose price controls on it?). But what happens when price controls are imposed on something? Shortages start to occur resulting in an even greater moonshot in price than would have otherwise occurred. A “black” market (which is actually the free market at play and depicts the true price of the commodity) eventually emerges where it sells at a premium to the official price. There are two reasons for this:

1. Buyers - aware that the commodity/good is available at a discounted price - beat a path to the door of whoever is foolish enough to sell it at the government mandated price. Availability at that price soon runs out.

2. The good becomes even scarcer as the costs of producing and selling it are no longer covered by the government mandated price. Aware of this, sellers withdraw from the market and demand ever higher prices for the good.

And remember: for marketable goods, the “out” is money, but the only “out” for money is a superior form of money. When the paper currencies become unstable, the only “out” is Gold so you can be sure there will be no lack of buyers, only sellers – and there is no upper limit to high it can go. Theoretically, the price will be infinity when no seller is willing to sell Gold in exchange for paper. You want to be “out” of paper before we reach that event horizon.

If the rigging in the futures market keeps continuing, the futures price at some point will decouple from the physical and become meaningless. This is exactly why you should use this opportunity to buy as much physical as possible at discounted prices while there are foolish sellers still willing to sell at the stated official (futures) price. I’m sure many of you remember Gold’s spectacular fall from about $1000 to $680 circa 2008. How many of you have regretted not buying at those levels while you have been watching Gold’s inexorable rise since? You’ve been waiting for a price drop, haven’t you? So what are you waiting for? We saw the same scary headlines in the MSM that we are seeing now with the same bullshit reasons – while the reality hasn’t changed ONE BIT. Some media mouthpieces are proclaiming a bear market in Gold has begun while others are hoping that their paymasters’ moronic ideas are finally working but remember this is the same media that sold you real estate before the bust, the same media that sold you DOW 36000, the same media that sold you Obama’s “hope and change” and has pilloried gold and gold buyers whenever its price crashes but has been largely silent throughout the past 13 years of the gold bull run. There’ve been many of you saying Gold is too expensive and waiting for an opportunity to buy in. Well, the banksters in using the futures market as a propaganda vehicle against Gold have unwittingly provided you with one. Overcome your fears for fortune favors the brave. It’s time to go in for the kill.

Don’t Pick Pennies In Front of The Steamroller – Get Out Of The Paper Markets

First, you must be clear why you are buying Gold. Sure, paper gains are nice to have but are only a side effect. The real reason is this (from one of my previous articles):

Any type of financial asset that has a counterparty – which is pretty much all the paper assets in the world – bonds, futures, any and all derivatives and yes, even the paper currency – will crash. What will they crash against? Yes, that’s right - Gold. All the world’s capital – trillions, perhaps quadrillions of it - will come rushing into the very tiny physical (NOT paper) Gold market. Remember, the world’s real physical capital – real assets such as land, oil-refineries, mines, infrastructure, etc. will not vanish, only it will be re-priced in terms of Gold and its ownership transferred to those who hold it. Since everything stays on this planet, it is a zero-sum game and the winner will be Gold. In other words, an ounce of physical Gold will command a lot more in real purchasing power than it does today. Just like a national currency is a claim on goods and assets within that country, Gold will be a claim on global goods and assets worldwide.

In other words, wealth preservation in the face of a currency collapse and an insurance policy against the idiocy and depredations of our monetary masters.

For those of you who have read my work, this current smash shouldn’t come as a surprise. In fact – not to beat my own drum – but if you understood and followed my advice, you would have been out of the paper markets and not affected one bit by these shenanigans. If you wish to trade the paper market for short term paper gains, by all means do it (at your own risk though - and you just saw what that “risk” looks and feels like), but in the end always – ALWAYS – convert those paper gains to real profit by buying the physical metal because Gold will never ever attain its true price in the futures markets. They can always issue an unlimited supply of naked paper contracts. The following extract from one of my previous articles explains the reality of the futures market:

The futures market is nothing but a tool for the dollar managers (US Government/Fed/Bullion banks) to manage/control the price of Gold. Any rational observer with an iota of brain who has watched the gold market for any reasonable length of time can tell that the price is intentionally driven down during the Comex trading hours. If you don’t believe this, either you’re in denial or worse – collusion - and IT WILL end up costing you big time. Given the massive, concentrated and long-term (the entire past decade - they haven't been net-long - not once - during that time period) nature of their short positions, it really isn’t that hard to deduce that the banks do not nearly have enough metal to cover their shorts and that the sole intention of the massive short position is to control the price. Whenever the price rises (or threatens to rise) the big bullion banks ala JP Morgan create massive naked shorts introducing fake supply of Gold in the market, thus driving the price down. “But the price has been rising for the past decade, hasn’t it? So how can you say they are driving it down?”, many people ask. Well, the constraint on the bullion banks has been the availability of the physical metal. If the metal is not available, the fraud of the paper market is exposed and they lose their price managing ability. So they allow the price rise to a level at which there are some weak hands willing to sell and then they hold it there till all the sellers have been exhausted (I am assuming the Fed has already sold all the US Gold during the past decade). So strong are Gold’s fundamentals that despite the massive rigging, all they have been able to do is slow its rise. The weak hands who sell the physical metal at every price rise have helped them in this endeavor. But soon, as the bond market implodes, they will run out of sellers. Treat the availability of real metal at today's paper price a gift and buy as much as you can.

To those who think that the Comex shorts will be crushed one day and the price of paper Gold will do a moonshot, to them I will say that you are dreaming. The Comex shorts will be crushed, but not in their own casino! If and when a majority of paper Gold longs demand delivery a force majure (who do you think the US Government will side with?) will be declared with cash settlements and/or offers of equally worthless GLD shares (don’t tell me you didn’t know about this). By some accounts, this is already happening. What will happen to the paper price then? That’s right – it will utterly collapse even as the physical’s price is rocketing. Paper gold holders will dump it all to buy the physical – which, unfortunately – will most likely not be available at all…in light of the sum total of the recent developments mentioned in this update I think it is too risky to be trading right now and one should just sit 100% in physical Gold and some currency for day-to-day needs…Trading paper markets for paper gains is like picking up pennies in front of the steamroller. It’s time to stop trading and just buy the physical metal….

They don’t have nearly enough Gold to cover all the contracts they’ve sold in the market. If you’ve bought one, stand for delivery. I’m sure many will be offered cash premiums in place of Gold. Refuse. Demand the metal. This is the right time to tighten the screws on them while they are vulnerable having sold 400 tons of non-existent Gold in the market.

Getting out of the fake paper market and collapsing it will have a threefold benefit:

1. Buying physical with cash preserves your anonymity and safeguards your wealth in your hands away from the prying eyes of the looters posing as “the government”.

2. Counterparty risk is eliminated as there is none. You’re home free.

3. The fake paper market will collapse due to non-availability of the physical and non-participation of the majority. The sooner it happens, the sooner Gold will attain its true value and the emperor will be naked for all to see. This fake money system needs to collapse so the work of reallocation and rebuilding can begin. The cancerous tumor of banksters needs to be eliminated from the economy.

Make no mistake, this is a war. A war for your freedom, liberty and life. They have won the battle but they are not going to win the war. It is upto you to make sure they don’t take you down with them. Those buying gold are not in it for the short term pleasure of paper profits but because they understand that it is the only way to safeguard your wealth and a claim to a chair when the music of the paper pyramid Ponzi finally stops.

To me, the only question is: Who Would I Trust With My Wealth?

This:




Or This:




The best time to buy is when there is blood in the streets. That time is NOW.

So don’t panic. Just buy the physical, sit back, relax and enjoy the show!

---

Some people may find this description of events to be too “conspiratorial”, but rest assured, if anyone does the diligence, I’m sure they won’t find things differently. This is how things are “done” in the “markets” today.


http://www.zerohedge.com/contributed...-fake-paper-go

India's Response To The Gold Sell Off: A Massive Buying Frenzy


Submitted by Tyler Durden on 04/16/2013 22:35 -0400

Panic, depression, rage, suicidal ideations: watching the US mainstream media, one would think that these are the prevailing sentiments among those who unlike the prevailing "developed world" speculative class, are invested most heavily in physical old - Indians, who collectively comprise the largest end-demand consumer segment for gold products. One would be very wrong.
Because while apparently it is incomprehensible to the "sophisticated" financial crowd in the US that someone may have conviction in their beliefs, and not just lunge from extreme to another, merely riding momentum and technicals like so many "professional" investors, Indians are doing precisely what a buyer should do when the price of the desired product plunges: doubling down, literally.
Bloomberg reports of the immediate aftermath to the past few days' gold plunge: "Gold buyers in India, the world’s biggest consumer, are flocking to stores to buy jewelry and coins, betting a selloff that plunged bullion to a two-year low may be overdone." Wait, so instead of jumping out off high buildings, Indians are being cool, calm and collected and... buying more? Unpossible. Do they not get CNBC in Mumbai? Apparently not: "My daughter is just six months old, but I think it is never too early to buy gold,” said Sharmila Shirodkar, a 28- year-old housewife, while displaying a new pair of earrings she bought from a store in Mumbai’s Zaveri Bazaar. “I had been asking my husband every day if prices will go down more. I couldn’t wait anymore.”

Indeed - the buying frenzy in India has been unleashed:

While the drop in gold prompted investors worldwide to pare holdings in exchange-traded products, surging physical demand in India may help stem the 17 percent slide in prices this year. The plunge after rallying for 12 straight years may make bullion more affordable to Indians, according to Mehul Choksi, chief executive officer of Gitanjali Gems Ltd. (GITG), the nation’s biggest retailer of jewelry and diamonds by sales.

“This is a perfect time to buy as prices will only go up from here,” said Vishal Mehta, a 33-year-old garment dealer, while ordering coins from Choksi V. Naginchand & Co. in Zaveri Bazaar. “I usually buy one gold coin a month, but this time I am buying two.”

Hence the true value of the word "double down". Here is another word US "investors" can learn from the Indians - value.

“It has been very hectic in the last two days,” said Deepak Tulsiani, owner of Dwarkadas Chandumal Jewellers in Mumbai as he surveyed his 11 employees, who were busy with customers. “There has been a rush to buy gold because now people are getting jewelry 15 percent cheaper than before. It’s value for their money.”

Zaveri Bazaar, the largest bullion market in the country, buzzed with customers, who were browsing through collections of bangles, bracelets, necklaces and rings displayed in trays ahead of the wedding and festival seasons. Most buyers were women in groups of two or more, accompanied by a male who paid the bills.

“Whatever be the price, Indians buy gold because it is an age-old tradition,” C.P. Krishnan, a director at Geojit Comtrade Ltd., said by phone from Kochi. “It has become an unavoidable expense during weddings and festivals. With the sudden crash in prices a lot of buying is happening across India as people are thinking of it as a golden opportunity.”

Yes: tradition! That's what the Chairman said too. And the chairman is never wrong. Even when he is selling the synthetic paper representation of that tradition and in the process allowing all those who trade on "value" and not "moment" to average down in terms of infinitely dilutible fiat paper.
Back to India:

“Some customers are still scared to buy now as they feel the price will go down more,” Chetan Ranka, owner of Choksi V. Naginchand, said after answering a call from a prospective customer on one of the four phones at his desk. “I have received more than 250 calls on Monday inquiring about the prices. Normally I get maybe 50 calls a day.”

The lower gold drops, the more people will buy.

“I had been keeping a tab on gold prices daily by reading the newspapers,” Sakshi Jain, a 39-year-old housewife, said as she held an intricately designed necklace against her neck in front of a mirror in Zaveri Bazaar. “I had some wedding purchases to make and as soon as prices dropped I came to buy.”

And the rub: once the correction is over, and prices resume their inexorable rising, the double down will become a buying frenzy, as everyone will realize one simple thing. Just because the BLS says inflation is has not arrived, it merely means the central banks, who are laboring under some $40-50 trillion in excess debt, will have no choice but to also double down. And one of these days not even the BLS' best efforts at fudging reality will fail.

Incidentally, they are already are. As the MIT's Billion Prices Project shows, there is just a slight disconnect between reality and what is being spoonfed.



Finally, for some actual numbers, we go to Bank of America which has calculated that the disconnect between the paper selloff and physical buying spree can only last so long before gold shoots right back up to $2000 as the surge in buying overwhelms the paper selling.

With prices now below $1,500/oz, we expect a pick-up in jewellery demand in the medium term and see considerable pain for miners should prices dip below $1,200/oz. As such, we believe the downside to gold prices may be limited to an additional $150/oz. In fact, we estimate that jewellery demand may become so pronounced by 2016 that prices could trade above $1,500/oz even if investors remain net sellers. Looking at sensitivities from a different angle, investors would need to buy merely 600t of gold to sustain prices at $2,000/oz by 2016, compared to non-commercial purchases of 1,798t in 2012.

And some more thoughts from BofA:

Cyprus’ announcement to sell nearly 14t of gold reserves was a key trigger behind the recent collapse in gold prices, as it raised concerns that other peripheral nations may follow suit. Given our estimate that every $45/oz represents a net sale of 100t, the move over the last two days would suggest net sales of 480t, or about 20% of yearly mine supply. In short, the market seems to have discounted the combined future gold sales of Portugal and Greece. As we believe additional gold selling in the European periphery is highly unlikely, we find it hard to fully justify the sell-off.

So please go ahead and sell. All we can say is, well, thanks.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-0...-buying-frenzy

Dylan Grice: "The Gold Market Is Healthier Now"

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 04/16/2013 20:28 -0400

"Gold has become much more affordable in recent days as the price has collapsed. Such a collapse is unpleasant, but not cause for concern," advises Dylan Grice. "Gold remains durable," as a source of protection from loss of confidence in the system, and, he adds "a correction was overdue. Now, the gold market has become healthier." Critically, Grice warns during this interview with Finanz und Wirtschaft, "gold will not protect against a crash in the financial markets, it showed 2008," since if many investors simultaneously urgently need cash, they sell everything they have, including gold. However, Europe is a time-bomb, China's credit bubble is ow where the US was before the financial crisis, and while inflation may not be an imminent threat (and likely shuffled more gold holders out leaving "a more stable investor base,") Grice concludes, "Gold endures. If confidence in the currency is lost, or in the bond market; Gold is a safe haven." There are good reasons to own gold. And to buy gold, there is now a reason more than a week ago: It's 30% cheaper.

Via Finans und Wirtschaft,

Why the gold price has suddenly dropped so quickly?
There are many opinions, ranging from conspiracy to cyclical or chart-based technical reasons. I have no idea. And I know no one who really knows. Although many people believe, to know the reason, but that's not the same.

Do you have at least a guess?
We still do not know what caused the stock market crash in 1987, and we'll probably never find out. The same applies to the slump in the gold market in recent days. To know the cause, would be nice, but is not so important.

What does the falling gold price?
Each boom has large corrections, and these are often violent. In the gold market, there was a break in the mid-seventies, the price fell more than 40%. This was painful, and many people wrote back then: for gold - it felt like the end of the bull market; not true. This was a healthy correction. 1987 shares fell 25% in one day, that did not mean the end of the bull market. 1994 broke the bond market. In 1997, the Asian markets, but in both cases continued to rise.

Can the translate that directly to the gold market?
The collapse does not necessarily mean that the gold bull market is over. They could indeed be over, but I think not. And in view of the great whole, such a collapse is not important, even if it is violent and unpleasant course. There are good reasons to own gold. And to buy gold, there is now a reason more than a week ago: It's 30% cheaper.

So is this a buying opportunity, or should we come to doubt the bull market?
I have no idea if the gold price rises or falls in the coming months. But gold endures. The market strategist Marc Faber argues, the share price of Apple had fallen much more than gold. But what will happen with Apple in ten or a hundred years? That nobody knows, and this applies to all companies and for most currencies. All we know is: A gold bullion a hundred years ago is the same as a gold bullion now. In Roman times, they said "let himself pay one ounce of gold a decent toga and a meal," that is still true today.

The price of gold fluctuates but violently.
Yeah, we just saw a spectacular fluctuation. But owning gold brings with it durability. This makes gold as an investment is very attractive.

Discontinuity does not fit into a durable investment.
Gold is up for twelve years in a straight line, which is extremely unusual. Since it takes a downsizing, a certain liquidation. This is not unnatural. While this largest price drop in the past thirty years is unusual, on the other hand, these unusual incidents occur quite often in financial markets. A correction was overdue. Now, the gold market has become healthier.

Gold will now be seen as less?
The mood in the financial markets has changed. Investors have become more confident that the worst is over and everything will be all right: Europe has solved its problems in principle, that the U.S. is on track, and China beat well. I had predicted that China will have a difficult year 2012, but it has not materialized. All this ensures optimism. Those who had bought gold for fear of imminent higher inflation, perhaps now sees no more danger of inflation and thus an end to the gold price increases - why should he keep gold?

Is inflation coming?
I was never bullish for gold, because I assumed higher inflation is imminent. Inflation is slow and is a long-term problem. You will not see it suddenly - such fears I've never understood. But those who acquired gold for the wrong reasons, it may now be sold. Those who maintain it now belongs to a more stable investor base.

The market sentiment has not brightened rightly
Look around: States and financial systems are deeply in debt, interest rates can not fall further, real interest rates are negative, we live in a world of financial repression. The best possible outcome would be a gentle rise in interest rates in the coming years. This would be accompanied by negative real interest rates, because that is the only way for governments to gradually reduce their debt burden. In this scenario, long-term interest rates remain extremely low and therefore overvalued stocks and bonds. That's not a bad environment for gold.

What are worse scenarios?
The danger is that the central banks lose control of inflation and interest rates. This is a deadly combination for the bond market, and also for stocks that showed up in the seventies. There are also other dangers: Europe is a time bomb. The euro was supposed to bring peace and prosperity and has instead caused a split. China deregulated the financial system, and the debts have grown significantly. The country is now where were the U.S. was before the financial crisis. This is a dangerous game. On credit expansion sooner or later followed by a reduction in debt. The consequences of this are evident in the U.S., Spain, Ireland, in the euro zone - also politically and socially. That will not be any different in China.

Gold rose in parallel with the expansion of central bank balance sheets. This is no longer?
I am very careful of such correlations. As I learned as a student with extensive econometrics, you can in fact establish a correlation between rainfall in Scotland and the money supply in the UK. Correlations do not mean much, even if the relationship between central bank balance sheet, fear of inflation and the gold price is reasonable. The fear may subside, then breaks up the correlation.

Should central banks in emerging markets buy more gold?
I do not know. If I were central banker, I would certainly do that.

Gold is not a safe haven anymore?
Gold will not protect against a crash in the financial markets, it showed that in 2008. If many investors simultaneously urgently need cash, they sell everything they have, including gold. If confidence in the currency is lost, or in the bond market, then gold is a safe haven. This happened to some extent in the seventies. Holding gold before the last crash was the right choice and it is now more than ever.

I suppose I do not know how to evaluate permanence, but it is worth a lot to me.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-0...-healthier-now

http://www.alipac.us/f19/jim-willie-...1/#post1339184

http://www.alipac.us/f19/%93people-r...6/#post1339196