Finansiella Insikter

De som följer Jim Sinclairs blog har kanske redan noterat att Jim nyligen berättade att guld (enligt en formel) behöver stiga till drygt 12500 dollar för att balansera den utländska delen av den amerikanska statsskulden och att det är till denna nivå som guld är på väg. Det är säkert en del som kommer att skratta åt detta påstående, men det var det många som även gjorde när Jim påstod att guld skulle stiga till 1650 dollar för drygt tio år sedan. Tror Jim kommer att få rätt ännu en gång.

Rekommenderar att ta del av vad Jim har att säga i denna intervju med King World News.

Jim Sinclair har intervjuats av King World News och hade bl a följande att säga:

The bonds are indicating that the psychology which is most supportive to gold is returning to the market place. And the action in gold after the recent reaction in gold, is so stout, so strong, as is silver itself, so stout, so strong in its recovery, that the only conclusion that you can come to is that we have not established a top in silver and clearly we’re nowhere near a top in gold.

Om silver:

The recovery in silver, the fact that it got plowed down, but its character now seems to deny the recent break, I think silver is acting very, very well and as previously stated, I don’t believe we’ve seen a top in silver yet.

Om guld:

$1,764 is calling on gold now and the market is reacting to it. It is calling, it is the magnet pulling most heavily on gold right now.

Om gruvorna:

I know what kind of money these companies are going to make. I understand what kind of cash flow that can be generated from this type of price on gold. There is no way on earth at this point that the hedge funds (short miners) are going to be correct. In fact they are the ostriches with their heads in the sand. No share will remain under pressure of a hedge fund when it begins to put out the type of cash flow that the price of gold now will result in.

Om 5000 dollar är rimligt för guld:

It’s not unreasonable because there’s nothing that you need to add to the present problem, it’s all done. You really don’t need a QE3, QE1 & QE2 have taken care of everything that would be necessary to put gold at those kind of prices. It’s (gold) is going to eclipse that (1980) mania, but it’s not going to do the pratfall that took place in 1980. This time gold is finding its way back into the monetary system.

…This market isn’t the average guy, this market isn’t the average multi-millionaire, this market is giants and those giants are not bearish.

Hela intervjun med Jim kommer att släppas senare idag och kommer att finnas här.

James Turk har både gjort en ny intervju med King World News samt skrivit ihop ett exklusivt inlägg för KWNs läsare som är intressanta att ta del av.

Turk om guld:

I’m taking my cue here from the mining stocks. The XAU once again held above the 200 level which has been the bottom of its trading range. That suggests to me that both the mining shares and gold are sold out here and due for a big bounce.”

The action in gold this week will be important as strength here will indicate the beginning of a move back toward its record high. I expect that high to be probed by the end of this month. After all Eric, nothing has fundamentally changed. The dead cat bounce in the dollar has not altered the bullish outlook for gold.

Turk om silver:

At times like this it is important to stand back and take a look at the big picture. So the key point here Eric is to focus on the chart (above) which does a great job of illustrating this. If we put last week’s price drop into context and focus on all of the factors that have been driving silver higher for ten years, it’s logical to conclude that the big price jump in silver is still ahead of us.

Eventually there will be a mania in silver, but in the fullness of time what we just witnessed will be seen as a first act. The fact is that the final parabola in silver during the climax of the third stage or manic phase will be one for the history books.

Och här är inlägget från James Turk:

Silver’s Correction – We’ve Been Here Before

By James Turk, Founder of GoldMoney.com

May 9 (King World News) At times like this it is important to stand back and take a look at the big picture.  So the key point here is to focus on the chart above which does a great job of illustrating this point.  If we put last week’s price drop into context and focus on all of the factors that have been driving silver higher for ten years, it’s logical to conclude that the big price jump in silver is still ahead of us.

Silver’s price drop last week has been variously called historic, extraordinary and unprecedented.  It was none of those, as is clear from the following chart.  We’ve been here before.

Note the four red ovals.  All four outline similar drops in price over short periods of time.

This chart is prepared on a log scale so that the distances shown on the chart can easily be compared in percentage terms.  In other words, last week’s drop in the silver price from near $50 is essentially no different in percentage terms from the drop that occurred once $15 was approached in 2006 or the drop after $8 was reached in 2004.  In both of these prior instances, silver bottomed after the drop, marking a level from which it climbed to eventually make a new high.

The drop in silver’s price in 2008 was different.  Silver continued lower, breaking down from the red oval, but we all know why that happened.  Lehman Brothers had collapsed, and in the subsequent rush for liquidity, every asset class was hit – even gold and silver.  It was a classic example of the ‘baby being thrown out with the bath water’.

So what is ahead for this current correction?  Repeats of 2004 and 2006, or another 2008?  My guess is none of the above.  It took several months after these three previous corrections before silver climbed above the high price that preceded the correction.  This time I expect silver will take only several weeks before exceeding $49.78, the 31-year high reached on April 25th. The reason?

As evidenced by silver’s backwardation, which began in January and continues to this day, the demand for physical silver has really accelerated.  As a result of last week’s price decline, backwardation has roughly doubled in size.  This is clearly a a signal of strong demand for physical silver, and further evidence of a point I have been making for some time, that the paper silver market is losing its significance as a price discovery mechanism.

Tidigare rapporterade vi om att Peter Grandich har klivit in och börjat köpa guld och silver igen. I följande intervju med King World News berättar Ben Davies att Hinde Capital numera också är köpare av fysiskt silver. Regelbundna läsare kanske kommer ihåg att Ben korrekt förutspådde den kraftiga nedgången vi sett för silver, vilket ger extra tyngd bakom vad han har att säga.

As a firm we have covered all of our hedges on silver and we have started to accumulate physical silver.  Let me add that this is the swiftest 30+% decline in this bull market.  If you are a cash buyer of physical silver then you should now be accumulating silver.  There is always a danger in catching a falling knife, but you have to remember that silver has intrinsic value.”

Nonetheless we are keeping an eye on the US dollar which could continue having a bounce post Trichet’s comments.  There’s clearly an unwind of commodity positions in general with crude down almost 10%.  The market in silver is extremely oversold and it would not surprise me to see a bounce overnight in Asian trading.

We have seen a 10 standard deviation move in silver on multiple periodicities that we track, the likes of which we haven’t yet experienced in this bull market.  I want to reiterate that Hinde fundamentally believes that the silver market had reached a point of criticality at this last peak whereby the market was vulnerable to a swift and violent correction irrespective of any external trigger and that is what occurred.

In our opinion, such moves as we just experienced in the paper silver market have been exacerbated by system traders exiting the market.  This last decline today was more a function of liquidation due to margin calls as a function of the whole commodity sector selling off.

This is the start of a great opportunity to accumulate silver.  All of the key fundamental issues in the world have not gone away nor those specific to silver such as the fact that it is under-owned and short of supply in the medium-term.  All of those conditions are still in place for silver.  KWN readers should remember that on corrections beyond 20% in a secular bull market you are supposed to be buying.

Davies om guld:

The gold market has been dragged down with the precipitous fall in silver, but we believe gold will hold above $1,450.  We believe between now and August we will find a floor and the next up leg in gold will begin.  That next leg higher in gold should take us over $2,000.

King World News har intervjuat Dan Norcini som bl a ger sin kommentar till den dramatiska utvecklingen för silver och vad vi kan vänta oss för gruvorna.

I want to address the silver backwardation issue.  Many investors and traders feel that silver should not be dropping in price because of the backwardation structure.  They point to this fact as proof that silver is in short supply and demand is phenomenal.

That may be entirely true, I don’t know, but the fact is that when we are dealing with the Comex silver market we are dealing with a paper market.  Keep in mind that hedge funds that trade the paper markets do not care about fundamentals.  They are pure technicians who rely solely on their computer trading algorithms to make trading decisions.  These algorithms are utterly indifferent to the realities in the physical market.

The bottom line is once these algorithms move into a sell mode, the hedge funds will unload until they’ve exhausted their selling, regardless of the physical market structure.  Meaning the paper market does not care about the physical market.

Norcini om gruvorna:

It’s evident that while the metals were moving strongly to the upside, the mining shares were lagging dramatically.  In my opinion, this is the effect of the ratio spread trade that I have discussed on KWN many times in the past.

The ratio between the HUI and the gold price had gotten so far out of whack as a result of this spread trade that either the shares had to move higher to catch up to the metals or the metals had to move lower to close the gap between them and the shares.  At some point I think the shares are going to catch up to the gold price.  For this to be remedied you need to have the shares strongly outperform gold to the upside at some point.

Because they (gold shares) so severely underperformed against the metals, I think the shares will bottom first before the metals will.  It looks to me Eric like we may have had the shares bottom today.  We just need to see today’s low hold for a short period of time in order to see this confirmed.  If this turns out to be the case, it most likely means the metals will bottom shortly thereafter.

King World News har intervjuat Eric Sprott för att få hans kommentar till uppgifterna om att Sprott Asset Management (SAM) sålt delar av sitt innehav i den egna fysiska silverfonden PSLV, som vi skrev om igår.

Det visar sig att Sprott inte bara återinvesterat likviden i silver utan att SAM äger mer fysiskt silver än någonsin tidigare, vilket säkert lugnar en del oroliga silverinvesterare. Sprott ser inte oväntat att silver på sikt kommer att stiga till nya rekordnivåer.

Här är Sprotts kommentar:

Any proceeds that we’ve received from selling PSLV have immediately gone back into silver or other silver equities.  And I can tell you we have the highest position in physical ownership that we’ve ever had, and we have not lost one ounce of our encouragement for the outlook for the silver price.

I sort of regard the things that are going on in the (silver) market as basically some group of traders working to get the price down quickly, particularly the overnight action on Sunday night when it (silver) goes from $48 to $42 in whatever it was, 9 or 13 minutes.  It’s a travesty of a trading system that would happen.  

We’ve been committed to silver and the fundamentals for silver and people’s interest in silver, so it would be massively incorrect to suggest we think silver has hit a high.  We don’t think that at all, I’ve suggested it (silver) should trade at a ratio of one to sixteen to gold.  Gold I am sure will be $1,600 not too long from now, and by implication that would suggest it (silver) could trade up to $100 and I’m not shying away from that.

Sprott om storleken på försäljningen:

Well, relative to what we owned it was an incredibly small sale.  As a portfolio manager we have to manage the portfolio and there were other things that were underperforming PSLV that we thought we should reinvest our money in so that’s exactly what we did, all in the silver area…Our position in silver today in physical ounces is higher than it’s ever been.

Här är en länk för den som vill lyssna till hela intervjun med Sprott.

I sin senaste intervju med King World News berättar Ben Davies bl a att han tror att guld lätt kan avancera $400 när vi väl passerar $1440.

Det har knappast undgått någon hur guld har stött på kartellens pappersförsäljare kring $1440 sedan en tid tillbaka, varför denna nivå, som Ben påpekar, är mycket viktig att passera. Det är också värt att notera att guld, till skillnad från silver som kartellen har enorma svårigheter att hålla tillbaka tack vara det obefintliga fysiska utbudet, har konsoliderat kring $1400 i drygt ett halvår och nu är mer än redo för nästa uppgångsfas.

Som Ben påpekar så kan ett besked om att QE stoppas tillfälligt få guld (och silver) på fall, men eftersom det i så fall bara är en tidsfråga innan QE återupptas i någon form (eftersom marknaden annars mer eller mindre skulle kollapsa) så är det inget som den långsiktige behöver oroa sig över.

Här är intervjun med Ben Davies:

The reasons why I believe there is potential for gold to catch up on the upside is that $1,440 level that we have talked about so many times on the show, I mean it’s amazing how that has capped the market, and I said we have to get through $1,440. Once we are through that level on a weekly closing basis we’re going to get discovery which in my opinion can easily take the gold market up $400.

And that’s the kind of price appreciation that I’m looking for. Part of my macro thought process for why that is happening despite all of the talk about exit strategies which I think is to some extent, yes they could raise rates or certainly have some asset sales, but personally I think the increase in rates would have a huge impact on servicing of debt.

People can’t afford to pay that coupon, I think that would be an exit. I think they (the Fed) are posturing so I’m not completely convinced that rates are going up or that there is going to be any asset sales. I’m more in the QE3 camp…because the events in the Middle-East and North Africa, these are, they are definitely seminal events.

We had the Iranian revolution in ’79, we had Yom Kippur in ’73, we had the Iraq invasion in 1980, we had the Iraq invasion of Kuwait in 1990, all of those events are nowhere near as significant as what we are seeing now and gold did tremendously well. In fact in ’79 when the gold price was actually quite high we had a very good year after that revolution. So for me gold prices will remain high and will go higher and I think it will be coupled with higher, but volatile oil prices.

Efter att ha stött på stort motstånd kring 36 dollar under en längre tid lyckades silver till sist att ta sig igenom denna barriär för att fortsätta resan uppåt. Och som många väntat sig så gick det ganska snabbt upp när vi väl tog oss igenom 36,50 dollar och det var heller inga problem som helst att ta sig igenom 37 dollar. Nästa motstånd finns troligtvis i intervallet 38-38,50 dollar.

Guld lyckades inte ta sig igenom motståndet kring 1440 dollar, men ser trots allt ut att vara redo att påbörja resan mot 1500 dollar när som helst. Kanske får vi stå ut med ytterligare test av 1420 innan nästa våg uppåt påbörjas. Med tanke på den svaga dollarn och rapporter om kraftigt stigande inflation (nu senast i Storbritannien) så var det inte oväntat att kartellen skulle göra allt den kunde för att få slippa se rubriker om nytt all-time-high för guld.

Det är värt att komma ihåg att det fortfarande finns en del fysiskt guld som tillfälligt kan dumpas på marknaden för att åstadkomma detta, men för silver finns inte längre den möjligheten, vilket är ganska tydligt med tanke på den kraftiga uppgången.

Så här kommenterar John Embry uppvisningen av guld och silver i en intervju med King World News:

Well my first thought is what took so long? We know what took so long, basically there has been a lot of activity by the bullion banks and their sponsors. But I mean to me it’s a very a simple equation, you can screw around with the paper market for a considerable period of time, but as the physical market gets tighter and tighter and this is really demonstrable in silver, I mean that is going to be what sets the price. What goes on in the physical market, when that takes over the prices are going much, much higher than they are today.

We are on our way to $40 in silver and then I’m sure they’ll fight around the round number for a bit, but I think the upside potential in silver is many, many tens of dollars higher from here.

When asked if gold was finally ready to take off Embry replied, “Yeah I think it is, I think the next move will take us to $1,500 in the near-term. By and large I just think we are moving higher, the question is whether we are going to get a breakaway move, a really big move like hundreds of dollars?

I’m on record as saying there will come a day when the gold price will move over $100 in a day. To date the cartel has been very effective in keeping daily gains to no more than 1%. You can see it when the gold price is up 1%, the unseen hand comes in and a lot of selling shows up.

When that breaks, and it will break, then I think you are going to see moves that will shock the people who don’t understand the true nature of the market.

Här är grafer över guld och silver från Dan Norcini:

Kan rekommendera följande inlägg från Jim Rickards, hämtat från King World News blogg, där han på ett elegant sätt reder ut vad vi troligtvis kan förvänta oss från Federal Reserve angående en fortsättning av QE.

Som Jim visar så kommer Feds balansräkning ha vuxit sig så stor att den i princip inte behöver utökas ytterligare och ändå klara av att finansiera USAs gigantiska budgetunderskott. Detta eftersom man kommer ha en ‘köpkraft’ om drygt 750 miljarder dollar från förfallna obligationer och ränteintäkter som kan användas för att köpa nytryckta statspapper från Timmy Geithner.

På detta vis behöver det i praktiken inte officiellt bli något QE3 program, utan istället en inofficiell oändlig QE. Kanske är det dock detta resonemang med en bibehållen balansräkning som krävs för att Ben skall få tyst på QE-kritikerna. För att inte fortsätta med QE är inget alternativ, och det vet både Ben och Timmy.

Jim påpekar att vi kan vänta oss att Fed läcker ut sina avsikter drygt tre månader innan den sista juni, som med QE2. Nästa FOMC-möte är den 15 mars, så sannolikt kan vi få börja ta del av den läckorna strax därefter. När informationen börjar sippra ut är det alltså viktigt att se upp om ni hör att det inte kommer att bli något QE3, för detta betyder alltså inte nödvändigtvis att Fed kommer sluta med kvantitativa lättnader, bara att man inte tänker utöka sin balansräkning. Det är just denna typ av politiskt spel/propaganda som skulle kunna få guld och silver tillfälligt på fall innan investerare vaknar upp och inser vad det verkligen innebär.

Perpetual QE – The Stock is the Flow

By James G. Rickards

March 11 (King World News) – As a child, I was confused by shouts of “The King is dead, long live the King!” I understood the declaration about the deceased king but didn’t understand why you would then wish long life to a dead King. Only later did I come to understand the distinction between the King who had just passed and the heir who had just ascended to the throne. Then it all made sense.

As we approach the end of the Fed’s quantitative easing program many are prepared to shout, “QE is dead!” Few realize the old royal salute is more appropriate – “QE is dead, long live QE!” Because an heir to the throne is here and will be with us for a long time. QE has now become a permanent part of the financial landscape of the United States.

The reason is that the size of the Fed’s balance sheet is now so vast that the reinvestment of principal payments from the existing assets will be enough to monetize a large portion of the Federal deficit without having to increase the total size of the balance sheet. The Fed’s balance sheet is to the bond market as Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan was to society – a monarch beyond the capacity of its subjects to change. Apart from the obfuscation of words like “stocks and flows” coming from Brian Sack at the New York Fed and Ben Bernanke, there’s nothing hidden going on, it’s just a matter of math. The key fact is that while the Fed will not expand the balance sheet, they will not let it shrink either. Keeping the balance sheet unchanged means reinvesting the entire maturing principal on the existing assets. And when the assets are big enough, that reinvestment becomes enormous. This is what is behind the talk of “stocks and flows.” When the stock is large enough, it is the flow.

The Fed said last November that QE2 would last until June 30, 2011 but reserved the right to “adjust the program as needed” in light of “incoming information.” So they have laid a foundation to continue QE2 if they wish. The negative impact of rising oil prices on the economy might give the FOMC a reason to continue QE2. However, there is not much time to decide. There are only three FOMC meetings before the end of June. These are March 15th, April 26th and June 21st. The Fed might make a formal announcement on June 21st, however, they will want to make a firm decision and leak it sooner in order to guide the market in advance and avoid surprise. Recall that when QE2 was decided the Fed made a formal announcement in November but began leaking their intentions in August, three months earlier. So it seems likely the Fed will reach a tentative decision on March 15th, begin leaking the announcement immediately and confirm this with a formal announcement in June.

The criticism of QE2 has been intense from Republican circles, Tea Party adherents and international trading partners such as China, South Korea, Brazil and others who are suffering the effects of inflation caused by QE generally. The Fed may have pushed this program to the limit. For political reasons, more so than economic, the Fed will end QE2 in June and will make its intentions known. But is this the end of QE? The answer is no.

Recall that QE2 was not really $600 billion but was $900 billion if you add the $300 billion of reinvested principal payments on the original $1.5 trillion of mortgage-backed securities from QE. Since this $300 billion of principal paid out in a seven-month period from November 2010 to June 2011, it’s reasonable to assign a principal payment run rate of $500 billion per year for the next two years on that portion of the Fed’s portfolio. Treasury securities are different because they don’t amortize the same way mortgages do, but the Fed still has about $1.3 trillion of Treasury notes and bonds on its balance sheet today and will likely have $300 billion more by the end of June as a result of new purchases under QE2. So, $1.6 Trillion seems like a reasonable estimate of the amount of Treasury notes and bonds the Fed will own on June 30, 2011.

It is difficult to know the exact maturity structure of all of the notes and bonds on the Fed’s balance sheet, however, the New York Fed has been transparent about the composition of the $600 billion of purchases under QE2. These have been made in all maturities from 2 years to 30 years, however, the purchases are concentrated in the 2-to-10 year sector with a weighted average maturity of about 6 years. Assuming the Fed’s entire portfolio has the same weighted average maturity, this means that approximately $250 billion of securities mature each year. Combining the $500 billion annual principal payments on QE mortgage backed securities with $250 billion of maturing principal payments on the remainder of the Fed’s portfolio gives the Fed about $750 billion per year of buying power without expanding the balance sheet.

The projected U.S. deficit for fiscal 2011 is $1.645 trillion. This will be funded by new issuance of Treasury securities over and above the amount needed to refinance maturing debt plus interest payments on existing debt. About 60% of outstanding Treasury issuance is in the 2-to-10 year maturity range. If we assign the 60% weight to the $1.645 trillion of new debt, we get $987 billion of new 2-to-10 year maturity Treasury notes issued in fiscal 2011 to finance the deficit. Therefore, the Fed’s buying power of $750 billion per year can monetize over 75% of the new 2-to10 year note issuance needed to fund ongoing U.S. budget deficits for the next two years without expanding the balance sheet.

The Fed is now like a 400-pound man who can eat 5,000 calories per day without gaining weight because his morbidly obese metabolism requires it to function. The discussion of QE, QE2 and QE3 has become irrelevant. What we have is permanent QE until such time as the Fed decides to tighten financial conditions. This is unlikely to happen until mid-2012 at the earliest, perhaps later in view of the housing double-dip and increasing oil prices. In any case, QE will be with us for an “extended period” no matter what the Fed announces.

King World News har intervjuat ‘guldgurun’ Jim Sinclair för att få hans kommentarer till utvecklingen på guldmarknaden och vad som väntar. Han ger även sin syn på utvecklingen i Mellanöstern/Nordafrika och varför oljan kan stiga till 150-200 dollar.

Regelbundna läsare vet att Jim hör till de personer som jag respekterar allra mest. Han har bl a förmågan att se händelser i ett större perspektiv och inte ryckas med i det kortsiktiga han kallar för ‘brus’. Läsning rekommenderas givetvis.

Det här är vad Jim hade att säga:

If you would analyze what happened today in terms of economic figures, market sentiment and the action of traders, you’ve got to come to the conclusion that gold is not going to do much more than be violent around the $1,400 level…You’ve got to see that above and below $1,400 is just the same as $1,300, just the same as $1,200 and by God when you see it at $1,500 and $1,600 you’re not going to believe the violence that’s going to go on around the round numbers.

So I would say to any of our audience who is interested in gold, who’s trading gold, who’s buying insurance in gold, that if you analyze what happened today, you’ve got your guarantee that gold will trade at $1,650 and probably an awful lot higher.

When asked if we will get disorder to the upside in gold Sinclair commented:

Absolutely, the guarantee of it is the sentiment…If you take the violence that you’ve got at $,1400, can you imagine what the violence would be at $2,400?  But I love the way Dean Harry Schultz approaches it, he’s told us all not to bother him, but you can wake him up at $2,400…You’ve had an arithmetic rise in gold, wait until you see what geometric looks like.

When asked how frightening will that be for the public (the geometric rise in gold) Sinclair stated:

I’m scared to death right now when I look around and see the people out of work.  I’ve got both husband and wife working for me to give you an idea of the problems that families have had.  If you don’t think that civil unrest won’t find its way to the United States as it has found its way to Ireland, to France and to Italy and the Middle-East, you’re whistling dixie.

Today the sentiment is negative but truthfully the fundamental of today is the most positive fundamental you could possibly get as weakening economic figures demand QE2, QE3, QE4 and so forth.

At the same time the change in the Middle-East is a world change.  It’s not this spontaneous explosion of democracy.  Those guys that are fighting in Libya, take a look at them.  They are wearing bandoliers of 51 caliber around them, this is not exactly your store owner and farmer who is rebelling.  And you’ve got to ask who will benefit the most from what is going on?

This is organized, planned, designed, and anti-west, over which Iran will come out the most powerful entity in the Middle-East.  What that means is that oil will trade at $150, possibly $200 (per barrel).  And if you add into that the fact that we have passed peak oil which was a concept that you would look at 15 and 20 years out, because of peak oil added to that equation…the gold market is going longer and higher because of what’s happened in the last month than it would have before.

Om dollarn:

The dollar and the long bond market are very closely tied.  A lack of willingness to buy our long bonds is in a sense, in a very real sense a negative on the US dollar…So the dollar will be wild, but lower on balance.

The dollar chart has been horrible for a long time.  The dollar’s chart broke down with six head and shoulders.  I mean how bad can you get?  And it developed an enormous head and shoulders.  Not like gold, the dollar will follow its chart which will be a product of the long bond collapse.