Oldtent Archives 2010

Russian Central Bank makes very large gold purchase

Good morning Bill,
On a day like today, I decided to look for some good news. The Russian Central Bank just reported their gold holdings for December 2009.

www.cbr.ru/eng/statistics/credit_statistics/print.asp?file=liquidity_e.htm

The Russian central bank increased their gold holdings by 800,000 ounces in 1 month. That is the biggest one month increase since I started keeping records on October 2006. The 2nd biggest monthly increase was 600,000 ounces in July 2009. In July 2009, the price of gold was around $950/oz.

The Russian central bank may have purchased this gold from the Russian agency, Gokhram. The bottom line is that the Russian central bank is publicly adding gold to their reserves and that this is the largest 1 month purchase since at least Oct. 2006.

I wonder if GFMS would consider the 800,000 ounce gold purchase by the Russian central bank a “lumpy purchase” ? Does a lumpy purchase have to exceed 1,000,000 ounces in a single transaction? Maybe I should send an email to GFMS inquiring how many of these lumpy purchases have taken place over the last 3 to 6 months.

Looking forward to more lumpy purchases.
Paul

Picked up a few AVO.asx @ $1.76

online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704320104575015910344117800.html

….come on guys

…Who has farther to fall china or usa ?

…who has a pension deficit and who has no pensions to lose ?

..Who has Surpluses and who has Deficits ?

…Who has a growing job force and who has a dwindling job force ?

….Who has upside from grossly miniscule per capita wages…who has big downside from grossly inflated wages (GM et al)

….So what if they built a couple million population cities which are presently empty..

…..soon they will be filled with western bankers !

……

There Can Be No Bubble in China and the Madness of the Nobility

Unless you know how many of the sales are that of options which have been exercised, and how many are shares which the insider bought from his own money.

Say insider X buys 500 common stock.  He “earns” 10,000 options as part of his bonus.  Converts 10,000 oppies to shares and sells them.  Whilst you have these insane share option schemes (and we do in Oz too) insider selling will ALWAYS outweigh insider buying, by many multiples.

..Beauty….

stockcharts.com/h-sc/ui?s=&p=W&yr=3&mn=0&dy=0&id=p20245849356

You cannot have enough gold.

This chart will bankrupt the United States.

I have private drawing school promoting the manual style of drawing (pre CAD) and freehand drawing as it used to be done.

Anyway, had architect/town planner come to me about 4yrs ag for 20hrs private tuition as he was moving to China on a contract to design a whole city in Mongolia.

“A whole city”, I said.  “Yes” was the reply, “it’s all on paper”.

He wanted hand drafting skills in addition to CAD as the hand crafted image was still wanted by locals- no argument from me on that aspect.

I suspect it was one of these instant ghost towns we see on YouTube.

Here’s a image of some set-up perspective drawings we worked on;

Insider Selling Outpaces Buying By 24 Times In Last Week

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 01/19/2010 19:24 -0500

What is there to say about the endless barrage of insider sales that hasn’t been said for 9 straight months before. Insiders are selling into the neverending rally, as domestic mutual funds have no equity inflows, yet stocks somehow miraculously keep rising, providing yet more attractive exit price points for directors and insiders. In the past week insiders bought $18 million worth of stock and sold $419 million. There is no way to spin this data. There were no notable buyers, while Nelson Peltz was vacating HNZ shares with a vengeance, selling $30 million worth of the canned food maker. Ralph Lauren also apparently wasn’t too hot on Polo’s Spring/Summer collection.

Overseas private borrowings are extremely high.  Worse than US.  Govt. borrowings nil.  Carry trade with USD and Yen significant too.  LP reckons the carry trade is the most significant part of our strength, I reckon it’s due to our commodity exports.  This difference of opinion has cost both of us heavily, in terms of bottle of red, cases of beer etc.  My opinion is that a collapse in commodities will trigger the unwinding of the carry trade.  Interest rates will rise, and all that personal debt will collapse the consumer economy.

Very interesting info…thank you…

Russia diversifies into Canadian dollars

Russia’s central bank announced on Wednesday that it had started buying Canadian dollars and securities in a bid to diversify its foreign exchange reserves.

Analysts said the move could be a sign of increased diversification of emerging market central bank assets away from the dollar and into investments denominated in other commodity-linked currencies, such as the Australian dollar.

more …

Four years ago I taught  architectural drawing and presentation techniques at a  private Design College in Sydney which was accredited to University Degree standard.

(an example of many)

Had one particular student from China who had a 99% attendance rate for part of lesson but never did any work in class always with the excuse that she had a submission later that day or similar  -being a soft touch I accepted this.

I later became suspicious and fronted her with proof that the drawing submitted as projects were not done by her and I wouldn’t pass her for the semester.

She flew of the handle in defence and claimed I was trying to destroy her future and took the case to the Head of School.

Guess what, - she was passed.

Second guess - what nationality was the Head of School?

I resigned at end of semester.

down under? Are you all heavily levered?

If China collapses, so does Oz.  POG can then go to US$500 for all we care, it’ll be $2,000 in the local currency.

China or Oz?

From my eldest boy five days ago;

(snip from long personal email on future crashing Oz economy)

Interestingly, I had a good long conversation with a Hong Kong Chinese dude who is a commodity trader there.  He was here for Christmas and we sank a few beers.  He made my analysis look like the best case scenario.  He told me every firm in HK has laid bets on a complete failure of the entire system here and they have been buying up….. gold shares in mines… all super very super quiet, but everything that is trading they are vacuuming it allllllll up.  Iron etc are a side game.  They are buying gold and silver like there will be no tomorrow… he was deadly serious too.

LOL, eom.

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