Wow, What a Week for Gold!
(December 21, 2002) The winter solstice
finds gold making a 5-year high this week, punching through $330, $340,
even $350, in a panic buying surge that peaked at $355 in the early
morning hours on Thursday, finally settling at $340.50 on Friday’s New
York close. War prospects are a factor, but this gold rally has much
deeper roots…
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Gold at Its Tipping Point?
(December 13, 2002) Gold closed Friday at $333.20, up another 2% in a week's time. Bush names a new Treasury Secretary, Scuds are intercepted, the dollar swan-dives, stocks are lower, stores are empty, North Korea steps up its nuclear program, Kissinger steps down, Cardinal Law steps down, and Trent Lott steps into it big-time. We explore gold's ‘tipping point' with some large numbers.
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Are We Running Out of Gold?
(November 18, 2002) Exactly how deep is the gold market? Should anyone be concerned with the disparity between the huge volume of gold traded in the “paper” market versus the short supply of actual gold available? Are shrewd buyers absorbing all the gold bullion available, knowing how hard it is to obtain physical gold in any significant quantity? Goldcorp tries to buy some gold…
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Is This the Time to Buy Gold?
(October 26, 2002) We are often asked to share the ‘inside scoop’ about the future price directions for gold. We’ve even caught flak for publishing a newsletter that doesn’t predict future gold prices. In fact, we think gold is woefully undervalued today, but the gold market is a lot smarter than we are. Here are a few (unedited) ramblings about the nature of markets, and our obvious advice to…just do it.
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Making the Sunny Case for Gold.
(October 1, 2002) A whole new generation of gold buyers is attracted to the fresh, bright promise of gold, despite gold’s 20th Century association with the gloomy and pessimistic crowd known as gold-bugs. Today, the world's most beautiful and brilliant metal is rapidly overcoming a negative public image in the U.S. that had been 70 years in the making.
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Should We Be Allowed to Have Cash?
(September 14, 2002) Reading the popular business press this month, we witness an attack on the idea of the U.S. cash dollar. Forbes and Business Week both ran articles that demonize the simple idea of cash currency in your wallet. They describe a brave new world wherein VISA handles all of our transactions through their computers, takes their cut, and cash is further marginalized in our society. Can we ask why?
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CONFISCATE THIS!
(August 24, 2002) Conspiracy buffs, paranoics, nervous nellies, political fringe-dwellers, and commission salesmen hawking numismatic coins tell us that some day Federal agents, probably armed, jackbooted, and flying black helicopters, are going to come to your house and confiscate all your gold bullion and coins, unless, of course, those coins were made before FDR was President. Can they be right?
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A Few Positive Words about Gold from Royal Bank of Canada
(August 6, 2002) In March of this year, Royal Bank of Canada Investment Management Ltd. issued a bullish report on gold. Or perhaps it didn't. Or maybe it did, but only for the firm's biggest and best clients. Or possibly it was an internal report for top managers. Or a document dashed off by a rogue analyst. At any rate, they disavow it entirely. We bring it to you here:
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We're Back!
(August 5, 2002) Vacation's over and our staff is back on duty! We hope
our annual hiatus didn't inconvenience too many of our clients and
visitors. We present some notes on gold as a socially responsible
investment...
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Onlygold.com is Back From the 4th - Tan,
Fit and Rested!
(July 8, 2002) Our staff is now back in the saddle and ready for a busy
second half of 2002. The general investing populace is slowly coming to
realize that the 18-year bull run in stocks (the Reagan-Clinton Bull
Years, 1982-2000, R.I.P) is over, done, finished, and buried. Gold draws
a larger crowd each day - it offers safety, solace, security, and, yes,
a bull market still in its infancy...
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Is Gold Simply a Retreat to Safety, or Potentially Much More Than That?
(June 22, 2002) Gold now seems solidly locked in bull market territory, and doesn’t show much sign of tiring. After gold prices were held virtually comatose for nearly five years, prices are now up by 25% in a little over a year’s time. With equities and the dollar under pressure, gold’s “safe haven” appeal seems stronger than it has since the 1970s. How safe is gold, and where is it going?
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WSJ to Gold: Drop Dead!
(June 6, 2002) This morning’s Wall Street Journal trumpeted “Was That the End of the Gold-Price Rally?” after yesterday’s 2% correction in gold’s price. “Gold Investors Start to Worry” was the sub-headline. The opening sentence reads: “Gold bars don’t tarnish, but some investors worry that the recent gold rally might soon.” One question for the WSJ: Where did they find all these supposedly worried gold investors? Click for full story
Gold Blows Through the $320 Barrier Like It Wasn't Even There
(May 23, 2002) Gold in New York today gained almost $5, closing at a 2-year high of $322.50. Gold prices have enjoyed a nearly uninterrupted upward run of eight weeks since the $300 level was first breeched. In the U.S., demand for physical bullion is increasing as gold's "perfect storm" continues to gather momentum, attention, and respect.
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Gold Hits a Two-Year High and Starts to Make Some Friends
(May 10, 2002) Gold prices continue to hold higher ground, closing today at $311, capping gold’s sixth week of trading above the $300 level. New price levels and the fact that gold stocks having out-performed all other equities sectors since the start of the year has made the financial press take notice. Gold hasn’t made the cover of Time magazine yet, but the attitude towards it is definitely improving.
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The End of Cash As We Know It? Or, Money Doesn’t Talk, It Swears.
(April 24, 2002) Microchip technology is advancing so quickly that it may soon be practicable to actually insert a tiny identifying chip with an antenna into the paper on which currency is printed. This would make “cash” totally scannable, trackable, and identifiable, rather than the anonymous medium of exchange that it is now. Is 'smart' money a stupid idea whose time has come?
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Gold Closes March at $302.60, Up 18% in a Year
(April 2, 2002) Gold’s “perfect storm” continues, newly fueled by Japanese buying and the elevated state of war in the Middle East. Gold stocks roared as gold overcame a mini-correction and broke through the $300 barrier to the upside for the second time this year. Meanwhile last week, GATA’s lawsuit was dismissed in court, but what an interesting tale it’s uncovered…
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OK, I Bought Some Gold - Now Where Do I Put It?
(March 15, 2002) A lot of people are drawn to the idea of converting some of their representational wealth into physical, tangible money - that is, gold. Gold is compact, portable, and pretty, and having gold in your hand is a powerful thing. Most people store gold in a bank safe deposit box, but what are the other choices?
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The World’s Most Expensive Gold Coin
(February 26, 2002) Since WWII, it has been illegal to own a 1933 double eagle. But on July 30th, 2002 an example once owned by the King of Egypt will be sold to the highest bidder in a single-item public auction widely expected to fetch $3 million to $8 million. The Treasury Dept. struck 445,500 double eagles in 1933, and has been busy confiscating them since 1944. But this one, they promise, comes with a clear title.
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Gold’s Perfect Storm on the Horizon
(February 9, 2002) Gold prices blew through $300 on February 8th, capping a two-week, 10% upmove. Gold's gains in price this time stem from a wide variety of different factors which, taken together, seem to signal a long-term secular change in the gold market, unlike the spike-and-pullback we saw September 11th. Are we looking at the beginning of gold’s “Perfect Storm?”
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What's Going to Follow the Enron Mess?
(January 26, 2002) This morning’s headlines of the suicide of an ex-Enron vice chairman add to the unceasing twists and turns of Enron’s unraveling. Meanwhile, ten Congressional committees hold hearings on the Enron situation, the Fifth Amendment is being invoked, and some people smell a political scandal. In fact, it's potentially much worse than that.
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The British Diet: Hold a Gold Auction & Lose a Few Pounds
(January 16, 2002) This morning’s next-to-last auction of 20 tons of gold by the Bank of England yielded a meager $283.50 per troy ounce. After gold traded overnight in Asia near $290, and fixed in the morning at $287.95, the Brits took home $4.45 below the current spot price. A clinic on how not to flog your redundant material….
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The 20 Year Life of the Golden Panda
(January 5, 2002) This week we unwrapped the first shipment of
2002-dated gold Pandas, and saw the familiar design of 2001 staring back
up at us. So the ugly rumor is true, the annual Panda design change is
no more, and an era that began in 1982 comes to an end. Of course, we’ll
never hear from the secretive People’s Bank of China bureaucracy why
they decided to halt the yearly fun that made the Panda so popular in
the first place.
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2002 To Be a Golden Year.
(January 2, 2002) Gold finishes the year 2001 at $279 spot price, and Onlygold.com begins its fifth year as the most user-friendly gold distribution channel in the United States. We appreciate and thank all of you that have bought and sold gold with us – we're looking forward to big things in 2002.
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