Category: General

Pent-Up Potential for Precious Metals in 2013: Jason Hamlin

Posted on by admin

TGR: Jason, you recently told your Gold Stock Bull readers that you had sold some equities. What were your reasons for selling?

Jason Hamlin: At the time, we were nearly fully allocated and decided to move to a position of roughly 20% cash. Even though this is a high seasonal period for precious metals, we sold a couple of underperformers to take advantage of any potential year-end selloff driven by concerns about the fiscal cliff and its impact on economic growth. There are also year-end opportunities for tax-loss selling and we want to have some dry powder for bargains that may materialize over the next few months in quality resource stocks.

TGR: Do you believe investors should reduce risk and take a more conservative approach until we know what are the repercussions of the fiscal cliff? Continue reading "Pent-Up Potential for Precious Metals in 2013: Jason Hamlin" →

Risk Management Remains Job 1

Posted on by The INO.com Team

I have been writing about risk management for quite a while now in the newsletter and want to be a little more explicit about it now here on the site.  We’ll use weekly charts to illustrate.

The nominal gold price has done nothing unusual, even after yesterday’s hard decline to the 35 week exponential moving average.  If it breaks through that level, then a bearish sign will be in place and the next stop would likely be the noted support zone in the low 1600′s. Continue reading "Risk Management Remains Job 1" →

Rick Mills: Low-Cost Producers Trump Larger Mines in Costly Market

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The Gold Report: Rick, is this a good time to be buying gold?

Rick Mills: There are three key reasons to have exposure to gold bullion. The traditional reason is to protect against inflation. We're printing money. More quantitative easing has taken place and inflation looks to be coming down the pike. I buy groceries. I pay for gas. I can see inflation. I firmly believe it's going to get higher over the coming months and years. Buying gold as a protection against inflation is realistic.

The second reason investors have traditionally bought gold is as a safe-haven investment. There's a lot going on in the worldfrom secession talk in the U.S. to turmoil in Israel, Iran, Syria, the South China Sea region and Turkey.

One of the things that most investors don't know about gold is that adding a gold allocation to your portfolio, especially over the last decade or so, has provided substantial enhancements to the portfolio's return.

Gold helps minimize the downside deviations in an overall portfolio. In 2002, the SP 500 was down 23%. Emerging market equities were down 6%. International equities were down 16%. Yet gold was up 25%.

TGR: That was early in the bull run in gold. Continue reading "Rick Mills: Low-Cost Producers Trump Larger Mines in Costly Market" →

How my worst trade turned out to be my best trade ever!

Posted on by The INO.com Team

Today I’d like to share a hard, but important lesson I learned early in my trading career. At the time, I considered it my worst trade ever, but in retrospect it turned out to be the best trade of my career.

Here’s why…

I started in the commodities business in Chicago as a broker for a company called Conti Commodity Services. Conti was a division of Continental Grain Co., one of the largest and oldest grain companies in the world. Back in the 70s, Conti was just starting a new division to handle customers in the brokerage business. I was lucky enough to have them hire me as I had no experience and very little education. But, I was enthusiastic and willing to learn.

So there I was at Conti Commodity Services dialing and smiling and looking to get business for myself and the company. All this was back in the 70s when grain prices were skyrocketing. After a brief time on the job, I guess I thought I knew better than everybody else.

So here’s my worst trade… Continue reading "How my worst trade turned out to be my best trade ever!" →

Gold Chart of the Week

Posted on by The INO.com Team

Each week Longleaftrading.com will be providing us a chart of the week as analyzed by a member of their team. We hope that you enjoy and learn from this new feature.

Weekly Gold Report (December 3rd through December 7th)

Welcome everyone to the month of December and to trading the February Gold Futures. The futures First Notice Date was last week on Friday and we will move our attention to the February Futures chart.

Last week ahead of the roll date, Tuesday provided a small slip in the price while Wednesday brought a sharp drop that took me by surprise. On the open of the pit traded session,  Warren Buffet made a comment in an interview to CNBC regarding his take on the Fiscal Cliff negotiations that drove Gold prices to trendline support in a hurry. Buffet suggested the Fiscal Cliff agreement would likely be made but said he did not feel that Washington would have the ability to get the job done by the end of the year. This remark was made one day after Senator Reid told reporters that he was not confident in the Republicans and Democrats at all. He thought that no progress had been made yet and traders responded by taking gains from the prior Fridays rally.

So while we are now trading past the December Futures contract, not much has changed. One day the markets are happy and taking the stairs up while the next day the markets are disappointed and taking the elevator down. Even though we started this week’s trade with a continuation of a weaker US Dollar (normally a bullish indicator for Gold) we are seeing little interest in Gold. Continue reading "Gold Chart of the Week" →