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cbs7

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Posts posted by cbs7

  1. saw this in the latest Dilbert newsletter and it made me smile :lol:

     

    http://dilbert.com/newsletter/issue/December_2008_Issue71

     

    Soon Dogbert will claim his rightful place as Emperor of the World, and you will rule by his side, replacing all governments worldwide. Our slogan will be "We're no worse than the clowns who had this job before".

     

    Dogbert plans to turn the economy around by declaring that gold is worthless and regular rocks are highly valuable. It never made sense that rare minerals were worth the most. That was just asking for a recession. Under the Dogbert regime, you'll be able to buy a Prius with a handful of crushed stones.

     

    I realize this concept might cause some inflation. But if the Grand Canyon is such a great natural wonder, think how much prettier the world would be with huge holes everywhere.

  2. Thought this guy's ideas on how to deal with junior resource volatility was interesting. Have copied the ideas below from the documents you can download from his website

     

    Mercenary Geologist

     

    I am looking only for stocks that have a strong chance of a double within 12 months. It’s not that hard to find them. Look at the average Venture Exchange junior: It will have a double or more within any given 52 week period. Many of the high and low share prices correlate with high and low trading volumes. Junior explorers have periods of major activity then periods of dormancy and therefore their share prices fluctuate, often wildly. This is often because of the 6-12 month cycle of equity financing, exploration drilling, assay results, geological interpretation, and resource estimation in the junior resource sector. What I call the “yo-yo effect” leads to many buying and selling opportunities.

     

    I religiously sell one-half of my position when the stock doubles in price plus brokerage fees. It’s probably the only religious thing I do. Because of my busy travel schedule, often in remote parts of the Earth, and the resulting periods when I am incommunicado, I have open orders to sell for all the stocks in my portfolio and these orders are renewed on a monthly basis.

    So I sell half, take all my money off the table, then play the rest of my position with a zero cost basis to maximize profits. I am now playing with someone else’s money—maybe even your money. I also have a disciplined approach to this next trading phase with programmed selling on the uptick, again with open orders. I commonly sell in 25 to 50 cent intervals depending on my perceived upside potential of the issuer. This potential is once again based on analysis of share structure, people, and flagship property.

    I developed this profit taking philosophy after the post Bre-X bear market of 1997-2000. As stocks fell and continued to slowly go south for three years until there was absolutely no junior resource market left, I discovered how mentally difficult it was to sell as my positions lost value. I kept thinking: XYZ.V will rally, it’s hit bottom, but XYZ.V never did and neither did ABC.V or SHT.V or FUC.V. They just went bankrupt, got delisted, and became shells for the inevitable reincarnations which came along in 2003 and 2004 as the next boom commenced. Here’s a quote from the King report today: “As we keep warning, most money is lost buying all the way down in a secular bear market”. So now I sell progressively on the uptick whenever a surging stock allows.

    However, this philosophy has a major drawback. I never seem to stay around for the big kill. I don’t get many five or ten baggers. I always say I’ll keep 10,000 shares for the Big Bonanza. But then I need cash to hit the next 10 or 20 cent no-brainer so I sell my high flyer. After all it’s easier for a stock to double from 20 to 40 cents than $3 to $6. Here are two examples of stocks I bought for pennies and sold out too soon in the last two-three years: Aquiline Resources, sold at $1.50, it went to over $12; Aranka Gold, sold at $2.50, it went to $4.50. But here is one where my philosophy worked beautifully: Gateway Gold which hit an all-time high in late 2003 at $5.14. I sold most of my position on the uptick from $1.50 to $4.79. Gateway is now a 25 cent stock and I‘ve recently bought back in. I think it was famous financier J. Paul Getty who said he made a fortune selling too soon.

    So that’s the gist of my investing philosophy. It’s an infallible way to make money in a bull market. Buy a stock, sell half when it doubles, take that money and go buy another stock which has a strong chance of a doubling in 12 months or less. Keep doing that and watch your profits and tax burden soar.

  3. The possible A-B-C down from the all time high with the C wave breaking down into a 5 wave form looks to be in it's final wave v with just one more low to complete the pattern, probably in the next couple of days.

     

     

     

    GOLD09-09.png

     

     

     

    Rapid price rejection from a new low would be a good start for a bullish move.

     

    .

     

    Hi walden

     

    I hope you are right, it certainly felt emotionally something like a low last week. I wouldn't like to see many more sharp around this low but carving out a low while any remaining bullish optimism is wrung out of the market.

     

    I like biwwii's commentary on the HUI

     

    http://biiwii.blogspot.com/2008/09/hui-wee...e-road-map.html

     

    and I did like the volume on the HUI which suggested a strong powerful reversal.

  4. Back on the SB firms, it's not just the phone security but the web platform is not via SSL. I queried this when I set the account up and they claimed it was due to the large volume of data being piped to my client end. Anyone know if this is just an excuse or a reasonable explanation? Anyone know of any known web attacks/hacks on SB firms due to this secruity hole?

    I hadn't noticed that myself, but it's yet another nail in the coffin for using SBs for serious investing. I think the promise of tax-free gains is very appealing, but the risks are just not worth it to me. Given this security hole it's easier for them then to claim their data feeds occassionally "make mistakes" and i'm sure in the T&Cs it's buried away that they aren't liable, blah, blah, blah...

  5. False. Spread betting is a financial service regulated by the Financial Services Authority--it has been specifically removed from gambling laws per the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000. Spread bettings is as enforceable as any contract.

     

    If the firm fails, you will have standing as a creditor in bankruptcy should you have funds with the firm. See my other historical posts on the advantages of ensuring you are a segregated funds client in anticipation of exactly this circumstance.

     

    If the systems fail, we've already seen that Ker got his trade reinstated, and even when s/he took a wholly agressive, inappropriate approach to lodging his complaint.

    True, but we know how well funded these compensation schemes are... and i imagine in the event of a system shock spread betting clients will get less sympathy, and therefore less likely to be bailed out by the taxpayer / investigated by the FSA. I have heard about and also seen this type of manipulation live so I don't think that these are isolated cases.

     

    Security on spread betting accounts in my experience is also minimal - when I have rung up all they need is my username and my name - not much else and off you go.

     

    I'm not wholly against spreadbetting, but I think the systems are too flaky for any sizeable trading or anything too leveraged. I will use it on occassions for an easy quick trade but not for anything serious, as whatever the FSA say for me they are just a bunch of bookies which means generally they will do things ok, but where it is to their advantage or disadvantage, I suspect there is some manipulation, especially running the stop losses.

     

     

  6. I really would advise against spread betting for long-term positions.

     

    Please remember that in the UK gambling debts are not legally enforceable so there is a good chance in an extreme event any gains you make you could lose if the the firm or its systems fail in any way.

     

    Precious Metals will be extremely volatile and I make sure that all my core positions are 100% unleveraged and 100% owned. If you want to take a long term view buy the shares / metal / whatever it is directly and then you know you own what you own.

     

    For lower-risk leveraged short term trade options or double-long/short ETFs would be preferable in my view.

  7. Interactive Brokers is sooo much cheaper and I dare to say even fairly stable (have a look at their share price history compared to most other brokers).

     

    The interface has improved a lot though it is still orientated to professional traders so it takes some time to get used to.

     

    Customer Service is ok, but not particularly fast.

     

    Trades in currencies outside your base currency (GBP in my case) are debited from your balance in that currency. So you actually have to purchase USD or CAD or EUR in currency trades yourself otherwise you run a debit balance and get charged interest. All of this is confusing to start with if you are used to a typical UK broker who normally converts foreign currency into GBP equivalent (while screwing you on the conversion), but you do get used to it.

     

    You also enter orders directly into the market which again gives you a lot more control over your trading.

     

    I recommend them if you are prepared to take some time to learn the interface.

  8. Don't know about the data series, but charts of that kind of thing here...

     

    http://gold.approximity.com/gold_GBP_monthly_since1952.pdf

     

    http://gold.approximity.com/gold_vs_property.pdf

     

    Thanks wheelybin and dst - exactly what i was looking for! It looks like it might be a good bet to say that the price of an average UK house could eventually come down from the 700 ounces peak to 300 ounces or less. This sort of thing really makes me consider if all the cash I have earmarked specifically for a house ought to just go 100% into gold bullion as whatever the price of gold does I might reasonably expect that if I have 300 ounces of gold at some point I will be able to buy a house with that or even less perhaps!

     

    There are some similar charts I just came across for the US housing market here http://www.sharelynx.com/chartstemp/USHLSPOG.php

    It's a bit strange because the chart for the US suggests the peak for housing in ounces of gold was back around 2000-01 rather than during the more manic phase later 2003-05

  9. Sorry to interrupt the thread but does anyone know where I could download the historical price of Gold in pounds sterling? I would like for as far back as is possible and monthly data would be fine. I'm looking to plot average UK house prices when priced in Gold to see if there is a historical average/trend. Perhaps this has already been done on HPC or here, but otherwise I think it would be very interesting

     

    Thanks!

  10. I was just about to buy more silver thru GoldMoney but realised they chuck a buck on the price of an ounce. I mean, spot rate was $18.86 and they wanted $19.96 :o Considering I was gonna pick up a tousand ounces, that's $900 or £450 . . . no way Jose <_<

     

    I don't remember them being so pricey when I bought silver thru them initially.

     

    Anyone know any other way to buy silver . . . apart from an ETF ?

     

    Hi Justin, that's nearly a 6% premium which although is quite a lot isn't so excessive for physical silver. Unfortunately if you do want allocated physical silver you will have to pay the premiums. If you do get a large enough holding with Goldmoney you can get member's rates which have about 1-2% less premium on the physical purchases, but you need to build up your holding with them.

  11. Fake fears over Ethiopia's gold

     

    By Elizabeth Blunt

    BBC News, Addis Ababa

    Thursday, 13 March 2008, 15:20 GMT

     

    http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/7294665.stm

     

    Ethiopia's national bank has been told to inspect all the gold in its vaults to determine its authenticity.

     

    It follows the discovery that some of the "gold" it had bought for millions of dollars was gold-plated steel.

     

    The first hint that something was wrong reportedly came when the Ethiopian central bank exported a consignment of gold bars to South Africa.

     

    The South Africans sent them back, complaining that they had been sold gilded steel.

     

    An investigation revealed that the bank had bought a consignment of fake gold from a supplier, who is now under arrest.

     

    Other arrests followed, including business associates of the main accused; national bank officials; and chemists from the Geological Survey of Ethiopia, whose job it is to assay the bank's purchases of gold and certify that they are real.

     

    It seems that it wasn't bad enough for Gordo to sell off 1/2 the UK's gold, but that some of the gold we do have left may not even be the real deal

     

    All that glisters may not be gold

     

    I came across this when researching fake tungsten coins. Tungsten has almost the same specific density as gold and it looks like the BoE may have ended up with some dud bars...

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