Daily Updates

Say one thing for DaBoyz, they have infinite patience to wait until things turn their way, as things nearly always do. Stocks had been grinding sideways for nearly two months, but yesterday the prop-desk provocateurs instantly transformed the picture to their liking, goosing the broad averages into a powerful short squeeze that could keep the market buoyant for the remainder of the year. What was most impressive about this feat is that it leveraged some employment news that wouldn’t have elicited so much as a yawn in the good old days. Supposedly, the private sector added 93,000 non-farm jobs in November, up from 82,000 a month earlier. This is surely better news than we’ve grown accustomed to, but it is not good news per se, especially considering that jobs would have to grow at several times the current rate for nearly a decade to replace the estimated eight million positions lost to the Great Recession.

I made my annual pilgrimage to the downtown SF Marquis Marriott for the 2010 San Francisco Hard Assets Investment Conference.  I’ve been a pennant-waving fan of this tremendous roadshow since my first visit in 2005, which was the very last year it was known as the Gold Conference.  The name change reflects the broadening base for paid sponsoring companies, who now include explorers and producers of all kinds of minerals. 

China’s ETF Move Propels Gold Prices

Posted by Don Vialoux & WSJournal

on Thursday, 2 December 2010 11:46

An update on GLD – by Don Vialoux

“China’s ETF Move Propels Gold Prices” says the Wall Street Journal. This article reports that Chinese security regulators are allowing Chinese investors to invest in exchange traded gold funds. Gold prices moved to a two week high yesterday with some of the credit given to Chinese buying interest. The SPDR Gold Trust is by far the largest physical gold fund with over $57 billion in assets.

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…..look at more of Don’s Seasonal and regular Charts HERE

China’s ETF Move Propels Gold Prices

Hong Kong: China’s securities regulators are allowing mainland Chinese to invest in foreign exchange-traded gold funds for the first time, unleashing the full buying power of the world’s second-biggest economy on funds that already own more gold than most central banks.

Gold prices jumped Tuesday, as interest in gold ETFs could be strong from China, where investors face negative real interest rates on bank deposits and want to hedge against inflation.

Lion Fund Management Co. received permission to invest in exchange-traded gold funds outside the country, making the fund the first of its kind for mainland China, according to a statement posted on the Shenzhen fund provider’s website.

The new rules open ETFs like the $56 billion SPDR Gold Shares, the largest private owner of physical gold, to a potentially enormous new pool of investors.

Lion Fund’s announcement sent gold prices to a two-week high Tuesday, with the December contract gaining $19, or 1.4%, to settle at $1,385 a troy ounce on the Comex division of the New York Mercantile Exchange.

The move to approve foreign ETFs is the latest step in the expansion of the gold market in China, the world’s second-largest gold consumer behind India, and the top producer of the metal.

It is part religion, part politics. It is a way to voice a lack of confidence in the central banks of the world and a yearning for the world as it used to be.  It is an investment that historically made sense when inflation was rampant, and yet it is soar

Marc Faber is out with his latest report which discusses his outlook for stocks, bonds, commodities, gold, and the dollar. Here are a few highlights:

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