Tag Archives: GOFO

Gold Discipline Melts Away or Case Study in Reading the News

This morning I read the news…Oh boy!  –The Beatles

(Editor: Read the following article and ask how YOU, as a reader or investor whether you have no opinion; are hyper bearish or hyper bullish gold or miners, benefit. Is there a particular BIAS? Finally, what is the main question you want answered? So what is the acquisition __________?  Prize awarded.

Gold Discipline Melts Away from Heard On The Street Column (WSJ April 17, 2014)

And they were doing do well. The intensifying battle of Osisko Mining is fast undoing gold miners’ work to restore credibility.

Wednesday Yamana Gold raised its offer to 8.15 Canadian dollars (U.S. $7.42) a share, this time roping in Agnico-Eagle Mines as a joint bidder, valuing Osisko at C$3.9 billion. Goldcorp raised its own bid to C$7.65 a share last week.

Takeover battles, with their risk of overpaying, are always unnerving for investors in the bidders. With gold miners thate is added concern: The sector has dropped about two-thirds since September 2011 as a history of overpriced deals an busted investment budgets caught up with it.

Miners have worked to address this, cutting costs and investment and, in many cases changing top management. Citigroup estinmates the average all-in cash cost per ounce, which includes things such as capital expenditure, fell by a fifth last year.

It remains more than $1,400 an ounce, though–still above today’s gold price of about $1,300. So this is no time to succumb to the old ways. Yet, even before Wed, both Yahmana and Goldcorp had made offers dilutive to their own value, ssays adam Graf at Cowen. That they are engaging in this now suggest talk of discipline is just that–or that their own project pipelines aren’t as robust as though.

Osisko’s stock now trades at C$7.94, and the break fee on the latest bid is worth 44 Canadian cents a share. To counter, Goldcorp would have to raise its bid roughly C$1, or 13%.

It should resist the temptation, but may not. One thing is clear. With the recently rediscovered discipline now apparently crumbling, it makes more sense to own junior gold miners, the potential targets, then their bigger rivals. –Liam Denning.

I will post my “answer” this weekend. Your thoughts?

Editor: Also, this article should spur you to do a valuation of Detour (DRGDF)–hint! hint! See: http://wp.me/p2OaYY-2m2

536584-13976660696117253-Dave-Kranzler

Note the extreme tightness for leasing gold. See: Gofo It will be interesting to see if gold can continue to decline in the face of bullion demand. Leasing rates are close to the most negative since mid-August 2013 when gold rallied to $1,400.

You can update your charts with the gold price vs. 1 month and 3 month GOFO rates.  Is this the canary in the coal mine for financial stress? Gofo Rates and Gold.  Low interest rates mean–all things being equal–gofo rates would be lower, But negative rates can ONLY mean two things:

  1. Investors don’t want to lend their gold because of counter party risk
  2. and/or they don’t have the gold.

Blog for special situations

http://www.cablecarcapital.com/blog/

Anniversary Day for the April Gold Massacre

04-14-2014_GOFO_cleaned (1)

The paradox in investing hinges on the tension between having both the strength of one’s convictions and the intellectual flexibility necessary to admit, relatively quickly, when one is wrong.–Unknown

In the absence of the gold standard, there is no way to protect savings from confiscation through inflation. There is no safe store of value. If there were, the government would have to make its holding illegal, as was done in the case of gold. If everyone decided, for example, to convert all his bank deposits to silver or copper or any other good, and thereafter declined to accept checks as payment for goods, bank deposits would lose their purchasing power and government-created bank credit would be worthless as a claim on goods. The financial policy of the welfare state requires that there be no way for the owners of wealth to protect themselves.

This is the shabby secret of the welfare statists’ tirades against gold. Deficit spending is simply a scheme for the confiscation of wealth. Gold stands in the way of this insidious process.  It stands as a protector of property rights. If one grasps this, one has no difficulty in understanding the statists’ antagonism toward the gold standard.  Alan Greenspan (1966) http://www.321gold.com/fed/greenspan/1966.html

There are two ways to conquer and enslave a country. One is by the sword. The other is by debt. –John Adams, 1735-1826

When you consider the rate at which public debt is increasing, along with the fact that so many countries around the world instituted their own versions of quantitative easing (i.e. printing money) while increasing debt levels, these conditions are unprecedented. We have found NO HISTORICAL example of so many major countries simultaneously engaged in quantitative easing. Just ten years ago we would not have thought such an economic environment even possible. –Arnold Van Den Berg, Feb. 21, 2014

Gold Massacre

Today’s price decline in gold is probably a gift for the long-term buyer. A year ago on tax day the gold market had a large sell-off with rising demand from China.  big gld

Today, gold gets sold off $35 in the New York open, because demand from China is falling due to weakening money supply, credit stress and ?? What else can we make up?  China is relentlessly accumulating gold.

small GLD

However, 2014 is far different in market structure than 2013. 900 tons have already been removed from gold ETFs and demand to hold gold is greater than cash based on negative GOFO rates–see chart at the top and read here: http://www.tfmetalsreport.com/blog/5663/plunging-gofo-rates

Take a look at the negative rates here: http://www.lbma.org.uk/pricing-and-statistics.  An article discussing gold’s anniversary day: http://www.321gold.com/editorials/thomson_s/thomson_s_041514.html

http://investmentresearchdynamics.com/todays-gold-price-take-down-operation-has-the-smell-of-desperation/

The cause of today’s sell-off is not manipulation, contrary to the howls from goldbugs, but traders getting ahead of possible collateral issues tied to swap agreements:http://www.alhambrapartners.com/2014/04/15/the-inconvenient-marriage-of-yuan-and-gold/  So, gold prices could continue to be pressured–welcome to markets. Which force will be greater?

Valuation

Has anyone has attempted a valuation of Detour Mines (DRGDF) mentioned in this post: http://wp.me/p2OaYY-2m2? I won’t post my valuation until the $500,000 prize is awarded.

My quarterly report (The Horror!) :Gold and Miners_April First Qtr Report

A reader wished to share a report on investing in materials:  Fortnightly_Thoughts_-_14_04_14_-_Materials

RISK!

MUSEUM

Risk is a function of market participants having a perception of lower risks while governments increase their intervention of market prices.–Chicago Slim

One Sign of Increasing Risk: GOFO

The lack of liquidity in the leasing market for gold has pushed the gold forward rates (“GOFO”) into negative territory, meaning that gold for forward delivery is trading at a discount to the physical spot market price–a rare situation that has only occurred a few times in the past twenty years–the last time in Nov. 2008 when a scramble for physical spurred a sharp rally in the dollar price of gold.

This week the GOFO rate did something it has only done a handful of times in its long history–it went negative out to three months which means somebody was willing to pay to have gold instead of dollars right now.

Be careful out there!