dietcolaaddict

I agree, silver is not mainstream. Neither is gold until people are buying, rather than selling, at 'Del Boy's gold bullion stall' at the local marketplace or until Moneysavingexpert/ThisIsMoney/WakeuptoMoney are championing it as a buy-and-hold investment. However, that petition is a trap. How many PM holders are going to give their name and address? Especially Silver holders given the bulk of holding a decent monetary amount - you can't keep that bulk in a safety deposit box, and since you want VAT removed, you have presumably taken delivery. Its a list of people who have silver stored at home, surely........

Quite possible that we may have a new USD all time high by end of play today.............

Significant fall on Nationwide Index....... Average Price £166,507 MINUS 0.9% MoM

For those in the UK : Nationwide house price average - today £166,507 (thats down 0.9% MoM, further falls likely) Price of gold in sterling - £811.19 (and looking bullish) House price to gold ratio = 205.26 Is this the 200 mark about to be broken through for good?

I've started my own blog in the appropriate GEI section containing lots of PM-orientated charts See: http://www.greenenergyinvestors.com/index....mp;#entry181049 One thing I have looked at is the price action in days leading up to, and after, an options expiry date. This is for the past 3 and 10 years. future dates: Daily change in USD gold price around options expiry date - past 3 years and 10 years I wish there was more of a pattern here - but alas not. It appears any manipulation around the expiry date is only occasional (and thus, produces a random pattern when averaged over years), with no systematic takedown obvious.

Like a polar bear before winter, this time of year I intentionally get as overweight as I dare to on PMs. It's the best practice IMHO to take advantage of the seasonality trends. Paycheques for the rest of the year are to restore some cash savings and to pay for the festive season, which is always expensive for me. I can then build a new savings pot from the new year onwards, either for more PMs in the autumn or for stocks should there be a nice crash to make them cheap again. I'd like to diversify more into some boring, safe blue chip stocks, but will only do so following a stock market crash, which I think may be a real possibility In my (non-expert) opinion. . My holdings: 75% Gold 5% Silver 5% Platinum 15% GBP-based assets (I do want more equities here, but only post-crash) I prefer holding gold through the doldrums season (less downside), so may swap my Pt and Ag for Au next year, as I have done in previous years. I don't consider a once-a-year swap of metals as trading, I see it more as a PM equivalent of "switching fiat money from one bank account to another", something people do to improve potential returns, or indeed to reduce risks or to improve access/liquidity of savings.

I've completed my averaging in for 2010 doldrums season - now over 80% PMs in my portfolio. Things looking quite bullish for PMs in the months ahead IMHO, including silver, something I have not always been keen on.

Gold looking bullish and on for a test of its dollar high, perhaps even in the week ahead...... I'm very unsure if it will get through or alternatively fall back before another test then follows in due course - and I am averaging in accordingly. I agree with other posts on here - we have not seen much of a doldrums fall over the summer and the seasonal price increases are already here and seem early. Lots of uncertainty also regarding what will happen to gold following a possible stock market crash, the possibility of which is now being discussed everywhere in the financial news.

Good Question, A.Z. There are not an equal number of months for each of the bar regions: less -2 24 months -2 to -1 52 months -1 to 0 59 months 0 to +1 70 months The uncertainty of each value will depend on two variables for a "standard error" error bar - proportional to standard deviation and inversely proportional to square root of samples numbers N. (to be precise, SQRT(N-1 ) ) So with less sample numbers the very left hand column can only give a more uncertain result than those around it, all other things equal. Hence the exact pattern you expect at very negative interest rates is hidden by uncertainty in the relatively small sample size.

I'm split USD, GBP and CHF with my buying pot. USD for the reason you state, GBP because thats what I earn/spend in (and have this as my emergency cash) and CHF as a sensible third currency for a bit of a hedge against the unexpected.

Here is a recreation, from my own datasets, of the most convincing gold graph I have seen. I think the original was a post from Steve Netwriter a couple of years ago, and it impressed me so much I have wanted to rework the data. It shows the monthly change in gold price against real interest rate (Fed rate - US CPI), geometrically averaged since 1970. The moral of the story is that: + Gold is the place to run when real interest rates are negative, offering a positive return. + This bull market may well end only when real interest rates are above +3% (+1 % for a cautious outlook) + The error bars (one standard error) show how good a bull market this is - that increase for negative rates is most likely statistically significant p< 0.05 over 40 years.

Its worth starting the averaging in process in GBP in my opinion. I'm expecting gold in GBP to touch the 50 MA to complete the seasonality trend of recent years, but it's not really worth the risk of missing a bottom by holding out any longer. http://stockcharts.com/h-sc/ui?s=$GOL...id=p35504570828

Just when it was feeling good to be a housing bear again... "UK house prices rose 0.6% in July, Halifax says" http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-10863152 I guess the first point is that YoY is still falling and the cyclical pattern from the (very clear and nicely presented) BBC chart is still holding. But in a few months time, should prices fall as I and many others expect, this July value will really help support the YoY at above zero. Its only when this goes negative that, IMHO, we will start to see 'Ordinary Joe' panic and any large future falls materialise.

Brilliant pics! Great stuff chris ct, really impressed and fancy trying this myself sometime! (for recreation, not great monetary reward!)

Still quite clear over a 40 year timeframe...... Options expiry on the 26th looks like a good time to be considering a purchase