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Friday’s Precious Metals Melt-Down…. How to Manage It!

“WOW” Friday’s Precious Metals Meltdown is an understatement…. I love seeing all this fear in the market and panic selling volume jump through the roof. This is or is the “start” of the washout bottom in metals I have been talking about for a few months. Critical support levels have been broken on gold, silver and miner stocks today. This is running the stops juicing up the sell side volume.

This size of a move WILL trigger a wave of margin calls come the end of the session and it could start another strong wave of selling into the closing bell. While I like this prices for both gold and silver, I know this could be just the start of more selling. I sound like a broken record but I am not trying to catch a falling knife unless it looks like a perfect setup. I still feel we could get another 1-3 days of selling or chop down here before things go higher so I will just watch the gold and bugs get stepped on again.

Remember this chart I posted a while back… it’s now coming true:

WATCH VIDEO ABOUT TODAY’S SILVER & GOLD SELLOFF: http://youtu.be/7dnM33V8dIo

Last day of the week is the most important for long term trends and investors. Today is going to be wild and may trigger a massive wave of selling which could be really good for those who know how to take advantage of it with me at: http://www.TheGoldAndOilGuy.com

Chris Vermeulen

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Gold Hits Record High in Euros and it’s Setting Up for Another Rally

The price of gold hit a record high this past week . . . in euro terms (at about 1380 euros). The record came after a number of actions by central banks around the world, trying to stimulate their respective economies. The actions, usually centered around money printing, once again had investors looking for refuge in gold.

Since the beginning of September, investors have bought about 75 tons of gold through exchange traded funds. Reuters says that gold ETFs, such as the largest gold ETF – the SPDR Gold Shares (NYSE: GLD), are on track for their biggest quarterly inflows in over a year, of 3.285 million ounces. Finally, according to UBS, investors have also raised their bullish bets on gold futures to the highest level in more than a year.

All the world’s major central banks took action recently including the Bank of Japan which launched a fresh round of monetary stimulus. The main action though was centered in Europe and the United States. The European Central Bank has promised to buy an unlimited quantity of eurobonds going forward. And the Federal Reserve announced its third round of monetary stimulus, QE3, that promises to buy $40 billion of mortgage-backed securities monthly on top of its ongoing Operation Twist program of buying long-dated Treasuries.

Speaking about the monetary easing, Barclays precious metals analyst Suki Cooper put it this way to the Financial Times, “Gold finally found the catalyst it had been waiting for all year after the Fed announced open-ended quantitative easing.”

Another reason for gold’s rise in euro terms, it must be noted, is the continuing fiscal turmoil in Europe itself, particularly in Spain. Spain’s largest autonomous region, Catalonia, manages an economy as big as Portugal’s. The problem is that it has debts of 42 billion euros which it is struggling to service. Catalonia has requested a 5 billion euro temporary bailout from Spain’s central government, adding to its debt burden. In a real show of defiance, Catalonia is also refusing to implement austerity measures. Add to that, bank stress tests in Spain showed that the country’s 14 largest lenders will need 60 billion euros in new capital.

No surprise then that physical demand for gold bars and coins in Europe rose 15 percent in the second quarter, according to the World Gold Council!

Another positive fundamental reason in the corner of gold bulls is the recent currency appreciation in the Indian rupee. India is traditionally the world’s largest consumer of gold. Sales have been slow there this year due to the government trying to slow down gold sales there through rises in a gold import tax. However, the recent rise in the rupee has made gold purchases more palatable and gold sales to India have hit their highest level in two months.

So for now, many of the fundamentals look to favor a move higher for gold, although there is technical resistance at its 2012 high of $1791.

Know when to buy gold, silver, oil and stocks – www.TheGoldAndOilGuy.com

Chris Verneulen

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Gold Standard To Be Reinstated Through The Back Door

For the first time in over 30 years, talk of a return to the gold standard has become part of mainstream politics in the United States. Part of the official Republican policy adopted it at the recent Republican Convention and called for the commission to look at reestablishing the link between gold and the U.S. dollar. No doubt that plank was added to soothe supporters of Texas Congressman Ron Paul.

However, gold bugs holding gold bullion or even those holding gold ETFs such as the SPDR Gold Shares (NYSE: GLD) shouldn’t hold their breath in anticipation of the gold standard returning. There was a similar commission – the Gold Commission – set up in 1981 by President Ronald Reagan. After a lot of ‘commissioning’, the decision was made to go with the status quo of using fiat Federal Reserve dollars.

Any commission set up under the current president would likely come to the same conclusion. There are simply too many practical obstacles to return to a full-fledged gold standard. Even pro-gold advocates including the World Gold Council and the Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee (GATA) don’t see a gold standard returning.

The key problem would be at what price of gold would the United States peg its currency. Great Britain returned to the gold standard in 1925, after going off it in 1914, at the 1914 peg price. This was a mistake made by Winston Churchill (he called it the biggest he ever made) since it basically ignored the vast inflation in the British pound in those intervening years. The result was a vast overvaluation of the pound and deflation and high unemployment soon followed.

What price would a new Gold Commission set as the “correct” price of the U.S. dollar versus gold? $1,000? $2,000? $5,000? The answer is that there is no “correct” price. Whatever price is set will eventually be tested by the financial markets and fail much as the pegged currencies system failed. So there will be no return to the gold standard.

But that does not mean there will not be a ‘back-door’ gold standard. The move to such as a system is already underway as central banks all over the world are rebuilding their stockpiles of gold. After two decades of heavy selling, central banks became net buyers of gold in 2010 and the momentum has built since. Gold will likely end up being used as ‘good’ collateral by global central banks, as opposed to the shaky collateral sovereign bonds are turning into.

Central bank purchases, led by the emerging markets, are on track this year to hit a record high according to the World Gold Council. China alone in 2011 bought around 490 tons of gold. Other countries including Russia, Turkey and South Korea have added gold to their official holdings in recent months. This buying showed up as central bank purchases in the second quarter of 2012 were more than double the level reported a year earlier at 157.5 metric tons. If the buying continues at current levels, central banks gold purchases would total around 500 tons this year, easily surpassing last year’s 458 tons.

The bottom line for investors from the global central banks’ buying of gold? The gold standard is working its way back into the international monetary system through the back door. This should, in the long-term, put a floor under gold and help maintain it on its steady upward path.

Just last week we started to see gold bullion, silver bullion and gold miner share prices start to breakout to the upside of a 12 month consolidation pattern. This could be the start of the next major rally in precious metals as future uncertainty fears continue to rise. The large bullish technical pattern we see on the gold chart points to much higher prices over the coming 24 months. But keep in mind this is a monthly chart and it could still take months to truly breakout to new highs and start another rally.

Gold Bullion Trading

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Chris Vermeulen