Ret45

Just been looking at Bloomberg - DOW down 180 pips, oil down 4 USD. Gold was fluctuating but now firmly up. I think this is a pattern we are going to see into the summer. load up on gold now!

I agree. Your posts have great conviction. I hope your plays on oil work out great for you.

Interesting Bubb, I'd love to get your take on the Irish property market. We had 14 years of rapidly rising property prices from 1994 - 2008, and we have had nearly four years of even bigger falls from 2008 to now. House prices have dropped between 40-50 percent since 2006 and are now back to 2001 levels. It has been argued that the falls have been so big because Irish banks are trying to reduce the size of their loan book and are not lending for property. The level of mortgage lending in Ireland fell from EUR 40 billion in 2006 to just EUR 2 billion in 2010 - that's a 95% drop in lending! So virtually the only buyers out there are the cash buyers who are bottom feeding. How much further do you think prices can fall?

True. And no one really has to own more than one pair of shoes. No one really has to go on holiday. No one really has to go to a football game, attend a concert, go to the pub or the cinema. And yet they do. Predicating your argument only on what people have to do is to ignore human nature. No one has to own a house. But I know many 30 something couples with young kids who want to. They want to put down roots and create a long term home that their kids will grow up in, and not have to leave at the whim of a landlord. They want to choose a location that is close to schools and know they can stay there for as long as their kids are in school. They want to pay down a mortgage and to own their home outright before they retire so they don't have to rely on investments to pay the rent in their old age. They want to pass on an asset to their children. These desires are perfectly legitimate, even if you do not share them. The simple solution is to create a legal and tax climate where people no longer want to buy a house because their needs are met through renting - long term security of tenure with built in ceilings on rental increases and with the balanace of power firmly tipped towards the renter. A tax environment that makes home ownership a very expensive luxury and which will reward investment in small and medium sized businesses. This is exactly the situation that exists in Switzerland - the population there invest their money in thriving Swiss businesses and rent throughout their lives. The government actively discourages home ownership through taxation. The only people I knew who owned their own homes in Switzerland were foreign tax exiles. Its also interesting to note the shift in attitude in Ireland (which has the highest levels or home ownership in the world) - where mortgaged property has gone from being considered an "asset" to rightly being seen as a liability. It would be very easy to change the attitude of the population from pro home ownership to pro renting with a few straightfoward changes to the tax code and pension arrangements. Just think of all the billions currently being "invested" into unproductive property that could be use to finance businesses that actually create and produce things...

Don't know about the rest of you guys but I am loving this opportunity to stock up on EUR 24 per OZ silver. This time next year you'll be kicking yourself that you didn't!

gold holding up quite well so far. If there is a bigger fall in the markets expect some deleveraging and falling prices in all assets, including Gold. that would be a good time to stock up.

Not like Turk to make short term predictions like that. He will lose some credibility if nothng comes of it next month.

Don't know about the rest of you, but this correction in price of gold and silver is manna from heaven to me. I remember a few months ago wondering would a dip in price ever come. I built up cash in my BV account and sold about 10% of my gold when it hit $1400 and now I am buying all the way back down, and my strong euro is a bonus. I am buying with a three to four year time frame in mind. Think we could get back into the low $1200s but only briefly.

I'm sensing growing nervousness about a pull back on this thread. Time to bail?

What's with the gold price - always up up up. Always new highs. Always new floors. Don't they understand i have more gold to buy?

Martin Armstrong is becoming increasingly unhinged

When, roughly, will this happen. This year, 2011, 2012?

Interesting blog about Chinese "mania" for gold. Why do so few people in the West hold gold and why do so many Asians love the stuff? http://www.sovereignman.com/finance/gold-mania-in-china/

Thanks for the replies. My Hotel is close to the Strand so I'll call in on Friday. Let's hope spot price drops tomorrow!

I'm in London next weekend and want to buy some Sovs or Britannias as I don't have any gold coins. Can anyone recommend a bullion dealer in central London. Also, can you buy with a credit card? - I'd prefer not to have to change euros and carry cash. thanks

Sold 10% of my gold on Friday for dollars. Expecting some slippage on pog this week.

I know how you feel. I have more buying to do but have been waiting ages for a decent buying opportunity. Meanwhile have been averaging in a bit and buying more silver. Bet we'll be telling our grandkids about the good old days when gold was under $1000....

How do you work that out???

Good points. Is there any verifiable data on who is buying gold, and how much. Are the banks not buying to cover the crazy amounts of gold ETFs they are selling?

Thanks GF. Are you at all concerned about the fact that the last time we were in this price territory (in the late 1970s) there followed a 20 year bear market for gold? I have spent the last year or so researching gold and am happy to have bought some and watch in grow rapidly in value . I understand the fundamental reasons underpinning the rising price of gold. However, I still have a few nagging concerns, the main one being that at the end of the day gold is about faith. Because it has no real practicial value, you have to take that leap of faith that gold is money (I know its legal tender but in the real world people don't buy their bread with grams of AU). I am not sure that the numbers of people who make that leap of faith will ever grow beyond a small minority. We are a long time past the gold standard - wiill the average Joe still turn to gold in times of crisis?

Is it just me or does that chart look a bit toppy?

thanks, I'll await instructions on the secret handshake. POG in euro back up to all time high territory of over €1000...ah well, the euro was nice while it lasted.

I was expecting a bigger drop in pog today. Maybe its all the talk of Prechter but gold seems toppy right now. But for some reason I can't bring myself to sell. That's partly because I earn in euro (now at 1.21 on the dollar!!) but mainly because I am starting to fall into a fundamentalist state of mind that believes that all fiat is going to slide and dips in pog are just minor blips in an upward trajectory. The fundamentals are so rotten, there is so much malinvestment that must be wiped out in a forest fire of wealth destruction before the green shoots can appear from the charred remains. All that's happening are desperate attempts by the Fed & co. to hold back the tide. But the tide has to go out and to quote Buffet we'll see who is swimming naked. Does that make me a goldbug? What the hell, there is worse company. edit: fat finger spelling