US Toll Free: +1 877 228 2034
Panama: +507 396 9011
As seen in the Miami Herald
  1. A Basket
  2. B Basket
  3. C Basket
  4. D Basket
  5. Silver

Gold Prices

Bankers, Precious Metals, And MF Global

">
"/>

Gold Nugget

Did bankers use the MF Global (MFGLQ.PK) bankruptcy to suppress gold and silver prices and create the panicked appearance of collapsing precious metals to give themselves additional precious time to delay the crash of the euro and the U.S. dollar? As crazy as this sounds, a closer investigation of some key data seems to imply this possibility. Though bankers claim that they created futures markets to provide a mechanism for commodity producers to hedge against volatile market prices, I have never bought the Kool-Aid the bankers were selling in this explanation for the rationale behind their creation of futures markets.

Given that today, futures and spot prices for gold and silver in the short-term are entirely set by banker manipulation of the supply and demand for paper derivatives that often have no backing of any physical metal, I believe that bankers created futures markets for the explicit intent of allowing themselves to manipulate the prices of commodities and to enrich themselves, and themselves only, through the process of alternately and artificially inflating and deflating prices as would not be allowed in any type of free market. In other words, bankers invented futures markets to allow themselves to siphon off and steal money from other parties that wanted to invest in commodities with a mechanism, risk-free to them, that required deception and zero honest work and zero integrity.

The futures markets in commodities is such a deceptive market that it is hard to know even where to begin to unravel its many mechanisms of deceit in all their glory. Futures contracts traded on the world’s largest commodity markets such as the COMEX in New York and the LBM in London allow bankers to commit reverse alchemy, turning real physical gold and real physical silver into nothing but false paper contracts and air.

Secondly, through futures contracts traded in New York and London, bankers routinely defy the economic principles of supply and demand, and set short-term prices for gold and silver that have zero to do with the supply and demand dynamics of the physical gold and physical silver market. In the world of physics, such an illogical, comparable feat of deception would be the indefinite suspension of the law of gravity. Bankers invented paper-derivative gold and silver markets to allow themselves to defy and suspend every sound economic principle that exists.

This is important to understand because not only does understanding this concept make the bulk of what you learn in business school a lie and entirely useless, but also because bullion banks, such as Deutsche Bank (DB), Citigroup (C), JPMorgan Chase (JPM), Goldman Sachs (GS), et al, that serve as the puppet conduits for more powerful families that control Central Banks, routinely used to lease physical gold into the open market as their primary mechanism to suppress the price of gold and silver.

However, as their mechanism of fractional reserve banking began to threaten the viability and utility of the most widely used fiat currencies in the world, the USD and the Euro, bankers understood that they needed to utilize and/or create another mechanism to suppress gold and silver prices that could replace selling physical PMs into the open market as they no longer wished to give up a solid asset with no third party counter-risk for what they knew they were turning into essentially worthless pieces of paper.

Thus bankers increasingly turned to the paper futures markets to manipulate and control the price of gold and silver and also served up additional bogus derivative products to the public like the GLD and SLV ETFs. Bankers knew that there was no way they could possibly control the price of gold and silver if the supply and demand determinants of physical gold and physical silver had anything to do with the price, so they conspired to fool the world into believing that the fake paper price they set was set by the supply and demand of the physical markets.

Collapsing of Gold/Silver Futures Markets Directly Related to MF Global Collapse?

And here’s where MF Global enters the banking cartel gold and silver price suppression scheme. Today, short-term futures and spot prices of gold and silver have almost nothing to do with the physical supply and demand dynamics of gold and silver, as odd as that may sound. Bankers created the futures markets and paper derivatives in gold and silver to kill free markets and for the express purpose of suppressing gold and silver prices.

Today we have no idea what the free market price of gold and silver should be or could be, besides the fact that both would be multiples higher than their current price, because of the fake paper market in gold and silver that the bankers created.

As well, bankers ensured that they armed a legion of worker bees in commercial investment firms all over the world that would represent these paper derivatives backed by very little physical gold and silver to their clients as the equivalent of investing in 99.999% pure physical gold and silver. In doing so, the worker bees thereby lured people all over the world into what will turn out to be the fatal mistake of not buying millions of troy ounces of physical gold and silver and instead buying their offering of fool’s gold and fool’s silver.

When we receive a massive default of gold and silver futures contracts that stand for delivery on the COMEX or LBM, or if the SLV and GLD default, then, and only then, will the public start to see true price discovery of physical gold and physical silver in action. However, for clients of MF Global, unfortunately, they have already experienced the mistake of buying fool’s gold and fool’s silver from the bankers and have received air in exchange for gold and silver futures contracts they purchased that stood for delivery.

Bankers invented fake paper gold and silver contracts, because they knew that if they could not fulfill contractual obligations to deliver physical gold and physical silver because the contracts were a binding lie to begin with), that they could always renege on these contractual obligations and give the people the nothingness they truly owned in return. And thus, we have the story of MF Global.

Ratings agencies downgraded MF Global on Oct 25 and MF Global declared bankruptcy on Oct 31. If one scours the data that the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) releases via its aggregated Commitment of Trader reports during this time period, one may not notice any data that immediately stands. However, investigation of the disaggregated reports reveals far more interesting patterns that almost undoubtedly can be traced back to the collapse of MF Global.

In a period just preceding the MF Global collapse, from late August to mid October, the open interest (OI) in longs in gold and silver futures within the Managed Money category collapsed by 33.75% in gold (202,430 to 136,103) and 44.74% in silver (29,849 to 16,494). During this exact same time period, shorts in the gold and silver futures in the Managed Money category increased by 19.3% and 83.82% respectively (see the chart below).

Within the Managed Money category, between Sept 13th and 27th, in just a two-week period, the drop in OI in the longs in gold and silver futures was even more pronounced, with a 25.41% plunge and 34.3% plunge in silver. I imagine if someone could trace the connection of this plunge in OI in the Managed Money category in the gold and silver futures markets, one would discover that a good deal of the plunge was somehow directly tied to the impending MF Global bankruptcy and its freezing and/or liquidation of gold and silver futures accounts in its possession.

After Phase I of the collapse in OI in the gold and silver futures markets, Phase II followed. When the story about MF Global’s legalized client theft hit the presses, an enormous public distrust of the entire futures markets started to build. If clients lost millions of dollars in gold and silver futures accounts due to forced liquidation or freezing of contracts that they were holding for delivery, anyone that had considered using the futures markets to take delivery of real gold and real silver following the MF Global debacle obviously reconsidered their options.

Thus, due to the massive fraud of the futures markets that was revealed by the MF Global collapse, another huge drop in the OI of gold and silver longs in the Managed Money category occurred during Phase II (as labeled in the above chart) that respectively amounted to an additional respective 11.79% and 7.48% plunge. In essence, it appears that the MF Global collapse served up the exact same price suppression effect as a CME issued initial or maintenance margin hike in gold and silver futures, which forces a tidal wave of unwanted and involuntary liquidation of gold and silver longs that consequently violate technical support lines and trigger technical sells.

Of course, we also have to factor in the temporary OI-increasing effect of the risk-on CME event when they lowered initial margins to a 1:1 ratio with maintenance margins at the onset of November. Still, given the figures presented in the chart above, it seems that bankers used the MF Global collapse to force liquidation of gold and silver longs in the futures market quite rapidly and drastically. Why is this important? This is important because typically strong hands ride out any temporary banker manipulations of gold and silver prices downward.

In this case, strong hands, if they existed at MF Global, were not given this opportunity and were forced to liquidate or had their accounts frozen whether or not they desired such an outcome. Furthermore, if primarily strong hands were forced out of the futures market, this would leave the majority of volume in the gold and silver futures markets primarily in the hands of the criminal banking cartel.

We’ve seen repeatedly, this past year in the US SP 500 index, when low trading volume primarily controlled by the banking cartel has translated into curious and inexplicable market bounces of 2% in a single day. In other words, low trading volume allows bankers excessive and easy manipulation over markets. If this was indeed the scenario bankers deliberately created with the MF Global collapse, then the MF Global collapse and simultaneous collapse of open interest in gold and silvers futures certainly would have paved the way for the banking cartel to easily manipulate gold and silver prices.

There was also further circumstantial evidence that bankers used the MF Global collapse to collapse gold and silver futures markets at the end of 2011. For example, in an article posted on the SilverDoctors blog by Jim Willie in which he gathered data regarding the amount of physical gold and silver ounces represented by the longs at MF Global that were standing for delivery in the futures markets before these contracts imploded, he stated: “JP Morgan increased the amount of registered silver and gold by precisely the amount that was suppose to be delivered [by MF Global]…JP Morgan effectively averted both a Comex default and a European Sovereign Debt implosion.”

Silver Lining in the MF Global Debacle?

Can there be a silver lining in the MF Global debacle? I believe that in the long-term, this extremely unethical, negative event could transform into a positive game-changer in the way people buy large amounts of gold and silver. Obviously, the futures market is not a safe market for anyone seeking to take delivery of millions of dollars of physical gold and silver as many MF Global clients learned. The GLD and SLV ETFs, of course, are no safer than any gold or silver futures contract for the same reasons.

So in the future, and I mean the immediate future starting now, I believe that large buyers of physical gold and silver will now opt to bypass the bullion bank’s middle men in the futures market and go directly to the gold and silver mining companies to buy large quantities of bullion. This should eventually help usher in the death of futures markets as a mechanism for buying physical gold and physical silver and be a step towards establishing a free market for gold and silver prices for the first time in our lives.

Mark Cutifani, CEO of AngloGold Ashanti, recently echoed the same:

“Major [asset management fund] buyers are finding it is hard to get physical gold. People are coming directly to us [for large gold purchases,] people who want tonnes of physical gold, people with serious financial muscle, because they are finding it is very difficult to secure the volume of gold they want. That is something we have noticed over the last 18 months, and it has been increasing in the last six months. People are finding it’s hard to get physical gold.”

People that want to own physical gold and physical silver never should have been buying the GLD, SLV, or gold and silver futures. Now, in light of the MF Global debacle, scores of people will stay away from these fraudulent vehicles for good.

About the author: JS Kim is the Chief Investment Strategist and founder of SmartKnowledgeU, a fiercely independent investment research and consulting firm with a mission to help re-establish the monetary freedom that bankers have stolen from us. Despite believing that gold and silver will remain highly volatile in 2012, JS believes that long-term holders of physical gold and silver will be richly rewarded as bogus paper gold and silver derivatives start collapsing and reach their intrinsic value in coming years. Follow JS on Twitter and Facebook.

Republishing rights: The above article may be reprinted as long as all text, links and the author acknowledgment remain intact and exactly as printed above.

Article source: http://seekingalpha.com/article/316197-bankers-precious-metals-and-mf-global

Buy Silver…Now!

">
"/>

Precious Metal - Silver

Silver is an amazing metal…which is why it’s likely to soar over the coming years…

You see, silver has more than 10,000 uses. It’s one of the world’s best conductors of heat and electricity. Inventors filed more patents on silver uses than any other precious metal in the world. And when silver is used for most industrial and technological purposes, it is used up forever… It simply costs too much to try to recycle the tiny bit of silver from every cell phone or casino chip.

I’m not saying industry is going to use up all the world’s silver. That simply can’t happen. But scarcity is a real issue.

Our rapid consumption of silver leaves very little to meet any uptick in demand from investors. A spike in interest will send prices spiraling higher…

Here’s a breakdown of the silver market. The table below shows the percentage of the total amount of silver consumed by each category over the past four years…

As you can see from the table above, only 12% of the silver supplied to the market made it to bullion in 2010. That means only a little more than 100 million ounces of silver became bullion for the entire investing world.

That’s a tiny fraction to sop up all the investment interest in the world.

Of that silver, about 43 million ounces went to exchange-traded funds like the iShares Silver Trust (SLV) and the Sprott Physical Silver Trust (PSLV).

That means you could buy all the extra silver bullion for about $2 billion. We could buy all the surplus silver bullion from the last four years for about $10 billion.

That’s the same as the market value of the iShares Silver Trust today. If you wanted to build another silver fund, you couldn’t. There just isn’t enough silver bullion out there to fill the order.

Even trying to amass that much physical silver would send the silver price soaring. It’s a simple market fact… When there is more demand than supply, it drives the price up.

And the economic problems confronting Europe and the United States have increased interest in precious metals… Silver gained a colossal 174% from August 2010 to April 2011.

In May 2011, however, the price collapsed 31% in just four weeks. The bull market simply ran up too far, too fast… and the decline wiped out many highly leveraged silver traders.

The big money is tiptoeing back into silver.

Last month, commodity trading advisors, pool operators, and hedge funds — the “big money” — weren’t interested in silver AT ALL…

But as they move back into the market, silver prices could soar. Let me show you what I’m talking about…

Jason Goepfert created SentimenTrader, a service that tracks investor sentiment toward various asset classes. According to Jason, silver just bounced off its most pessimistic reading in four years.

The so-called “commitment of non-commercial traders” hit 10,352. That’s incredibly low. The last time sentiment numbers were that low was in August 2007. Six months later, the price of silver was 59% higher. It rose from $12 per ounce to $19 per ounce.

I went all the way back to 2002 and found that silver sentiment bottomed near 10,000 six times… On average, the price of silver rose 33% in the next six months and 54% over the next year. This chart shows the last four times it bottomed…

Here’s how the silver price performed after each of the last four times silver sentiment bottomed out…

The best return came after Bottom No. 2, which coincided with the US banking/credit crisis. Silver soared an eye-popping 405%, including its parabolic rise in 2010.

As those numbers indicate, silver is one of the most volatile assets in the world. Over the last year, silver has seen massive price swings, including an 81% rally and two 30% drops. That forced many traders to liquidate their silver holdings in order to meet emergency short-term requirements. (Plus, the debacle at commodity broker MF Global has scared many folks out of the market.)

But the long-term drivers of gold and silver’s uptrends are still in place. Enormous and growing Asian economies like China and India are getting richer…and they have deep cultural affinities for precious metals. Plus, the Western world has lived way beyond its means for a long time…the debts and liabilities it has taken on can only be paid back with devalued, debased money. This is bullish for “real money” assets like gold and silver.

With sentiment so negative toward silver (and just beginning to turn back up), it’s a great time to take a position in this long-term bull market.

If gold and silver prices are nearly certain to rise over the next few years (and probably rise dramatically), the simplest way to play that trend is to buy bullion…real, hold-in-your-hand silver coins.

And I recommend everyone do just that… Buy some silver and store it away.

Regards,

Matt Badiali ,
for The Daily Reckoning

Buy Silver…Now! originally appeared in the Daily Reckoning. The Daily Reckoning provides over 400,000 readers economic news, market analysis, and contrarian investment ideas.

 

Gallium Helping Us Stay Connected

">
"/>
Rare Earth Metal - Gallium

The element so instrumental in the success of CIGS or Copper Indium Gallium Selenide solar panels garners little respect. If you do some research on Gallium you will see very few articles on this element. What you see is people talking about how to make melting spoons, and talk of the metal melting in your hand due to its low melting point of 85° F or 29.8° C. Here we are going to go over the history of Gallium and its uses in technology today.

Gallium has the symbol of Ga and the atomic number 31 on the periodic table of the elements. In 1875 Paul Emile Lecoq de Boisbaudran discovered Gallium spectroscopically. He saw Gallium´s characteristic two violet lines. Gallium does not occur free in nature. Lecoq was able to obtain the free element using electrolysis.

Gallium is found in bauxite, sphalerite and coal. It is primarily extracted from Aluminum and Zinc production. The exact amounts mined and recycled are very difficult to quantify. According to the United States Geological Survey the total amount mined in 2010 was approximately 106 t and the total recycled was approximately 78 t. Gallium supply is highly reliant on other Aluminum and Zinc mining for its supply, when the prices of the base metals fall the amount of Gallium available will be highly affected. Similar to other rare industrial metals, mining companies will not invest in the production of these metals because the markets are so small.

The uses of Gallium are found all around you. Semiconductors, LED´s, medicine, electronic components, CIGS solar and new tech like IGZO (Indium, Gallium, Zinc and Oxygen) LCD screens. The new iPhone 5 will have this kind of LCD. Over 90% is used in electronic components in the form GaAs (Gallium Arsenide). Recently CIGS solar panels reached an unprecedented 20.3% efficiency once again proving that CIGS is the most efficient form of solar on the market. The technology that will greatly increase the use of Gallium is smartphones. Analysts predict that smartphone use will grow at a rate of 15-25% over the next several years. Recently LED´s backlit screen TV´s and computer monitors have been all the rage. The LED screen market will continue to grow, further putting strain on the small Gallium supply.

The top producers of Gallium are China, Kazakhstan and Germany. Once again China has a strong position in the production of a rare industrial metal. The difference with Gallium is that almost 40% of the metal produced every year is coming from recycling.

With all of the new technologies coming along using Gallium what will the market for this metal look like in a few years? Unlike some metals like Silver and Gold, Gallium is not traded on the LME (London Metal Exchange). This makes the price of Gallium very stable. Rare industrial or technical metals are small markets with big possibilities. So if you are looking for an investment that is rarely talked about, Gallium could be a good option.

 By: Randy Hilarski - The Rare Metals Guy

Bismuth, Stepping Out of Leads Shadow

">
"/>

Rare Industrial Metal - Bismuth

Today we hear much about the demise of lead and its uses because of its toxicity.  This will have a huge impact on the value of the rare industrial metal we will discuss today.  Enter bismuth, the brittle white metal an element symbol of Bi and atomic number 83.  Bismuth was discovered in 1783 by Claude Geoffroy the Younger.  This rare industrial metal is mined as a by-product of lead, silver, copper, molybdenum, tin and gold.  The element is 86% as dense as lead.  Bismuth is the most naturally diamagnetic metal meaning it is the most resistant to being magnetized.  Mercury is the only metal that has a lower thermal conductivity.  It also has a high electrical resistance.  Bismuth has been classified as the heaviest naturally occurring element.

One of the most interesting aspects of bismuth is its crystalline structure that forms a spiral stair step structure.  It is caused by a higher growth rate around the outside edges than on the inside edges of cooling bismuth.  The beautiful colorations of the crystals are caused by variations in the thickness of the oxide layer that forms on the crystal surface which causes wavelengths of light to interfere upon reflection.  When bismuth burns with oxygen present it burns with a blue flame.

Bismuths uses are growing all the time.  Some of its largest uses are in cosmetics, pharmaceuticals, catalysts, metallurgical additives, galvanizing, solders, ammunition and fusible alloys.  The one most people associate with bismuth is, Pepto Bismol.  Lead-Bismuth Coolant is also used as a coolant for nuclear reactors.

There are a few issues that are causing alarm within the industries that use bismuth.  The first is that China is implementing export controls over all rare earth elements and rare industrial metals.  China produces about 80% of all the world´s refined bismuth.  The second issue is lead acid batteries will soon be replaced by nickel-cadmium and lithium-ion.  Lead mining is the main source of bismuth mining worldwide.  Crude lead bullion contains approximately 10% bismuth which is taken out when lead is refined further using the Kroll-Betterton or the Betts process.  This leaves us with 99% pure bismuth.  The long-term sustainability is in jeopardy because of the lead storage battery.  There is a distinct possibility that we will soon see this battery replaced.  Overnight 80-90% of the lead market would be gone.  This will be catastrophic for bismuth industries.  The mining of bismuth would then have to rely on its other sources which provide much less metal.  Recycling would have to be a major source of bismuth in the future.  The problem with recycling bismuth is that many of its uses, almost 60% in pharmaceutical and cosmetic uses, would make it very difficult to meet the demand.

Once again we have the story about a rare industrial metal that is used in so many products that we use every day.  How will this affect the end prices of these products?  History tells us not much initially, but in the future the story could be much different.  Bismuth with its many uses may be worth enough that mines open exclusively for this metal.  Recently the British Geological Survey 2011 put bismuth on its list of at risk metals.  Countries like Bolivia, Canada, Peru, Mexico and China will no doubt profit greatly if we have a significant rise in the value of bismuth.  How will you profit?

By: Randy Hilarski - The Rare Metals Guy
Source: www.buyrareearthmetalschinaprices.com

|

Silver Futures Near 31-Year Highs On Economic Recovery, Inflation Fears

NEW YORK (Dow Jones)-Silver futures neared 31-year highs Friday as investors flocked to the metal as both an inflation hedge and beneficiary of the global economic recovery.

Silver for February delivery rose 72.6 cents, or 2.3%, to settle at $32.298 a troy ounce on the Comex division of the New York Mercantile Exchange. It was the metal’s strongest close since March 7, 1980.

“It’s riding on the back of gold at the moment, which is being driven by inflation fears,” said Stephen Flood, director of Dublin-based bullion dealer GoldCore.

Silver, a precious metal akin to gold, is benefiting as a hedge against rising consumer and producer prices, with inflation gaining in Europe and China. While inflation in the U.S. remains tame, some believe the Federal Reserve won’t be able to control longer-term price pressures stemming from ultralow interest rates-which also boost the allure of non-interest bearing silver and gold-and Fed purchases of U.S. Treasurys to stimulate the economy.

At the same time, the economic growth that is sparking inflation fears is also prompting a resurgence in manufacturing and consumer purchases. That’s a further boon for prices of silver, which is more widely used in manufacturing than gold.

“It’s benefiting from optimism on the global economy,” said Ralph Preston, market analyst at Heritage West Financial.

Silver’s use in electronics, solar panels and medical applications is helping offset declining demand for use in photographic film as digital photography becomes ever more ubiquitous.

Silver, which has gained 5.4% this year and 20.5% since a two-month low hit Jan. 25, would probably be at record highs now but for that spike in 1980, when the Hunt brothers of Texas famously attempted to corner the silver market and pushed prices above $40 per troy ounce.

“It’s a much more orderly market” nowadays, Flood said.

But as silver’s allure as an inflation hedge and quasi-industrial metal rises, short-term investors have been piling in, prompting some concern that the metal may be due for a big price pullback.

 Recent buying in silver has been a “fund feeding frenzy,” including a “camp that refuses to see it for being a bubble in the making,” Jon Nadler, an analyst at Montreal bullion dealer Kitco Metals, said in a note.

Silver is a short-term investor darling because it is cheap compared with gold prices, and its market is much smaller and more volatile than gold’s, increasing both the risk and the chances for quick profits.

“It continues to be the favorite of speculators,” said Bill O’Neill, a principal with Logic Advisors.

Investor interest is also surging in silver-backed exchange-traded funds, which trade like stocks and back their shares with bullion bought on the market.

Holdings in the world’s largest such fund, iShares Silver Trust, rose 1.611 million ounces in the week to Feb. 17. Zurich Cantonal Bank’s silver ETF reported silver inflows of 296,000 ounces over the same period.

In addition to the outlook on the economic recovery and rising inflation, silver is gaining extra support as a cheaper so-called safe-haven investment than gold amid worries about unrest in the Middle East and sovereign debt problems in Europe.

On Friday, Portugal’s debt problems were of particular concern as the cost of insuring Portuguese debt rose amid renewed pressure from within the euro zone for the country to seek a bailout from the European Union and International Monetary Fund.

Amid the price gains, UBS upped its one-month silver forecast to $35 from $25.50. The bank also increased silver’s three-month price estimate to $33 from $27.

Gold and silver are also receiving a lot of attention from the physical market, particularly in Asia, where demand for metal bars, coins and jewelry is particularly high.

Some support may also be coming from silver miners boosting their hedging programs as they expand production and seek insurance against increasingly volatile prices.

-By Matt Whittaker, Dow Jones Newswires; 212-416-2139; [email protected]
-Francesca Freeman contributed to this article.

Swiss Metal Assets appears on Deutsche Welle Television Show