Posted on 07/01/2010 11:01:30 AM PDT by blam
CHART OF THE DAY: Russia Is On A Crazy Gold Binge
Vincent Fernando, CFA and Kamelia Angelova
Jul. 1, 2010, 1:46 PM
If anyone has been buying gold on strength, then it's Russia. The nation just bought another 22.5 million tonnes of gold reserves in May, after adding 27.6 million tonnes in April. This continues a long streak of gold additions since 2005, as shown in the chart below.
If Russia kept up the April-May 2010 rate of gold additions in June, then Q2 buying will prove itself the largest quarterly accumulation of gold reserves for Russia in recent history. (Note the last data point shown is only a 2-month period comprised of April and May)
Given gold's performance, Russia has been looking smart, so far at least, despite today's golden air pocket. Across the same period, America has added virtually nothing, as shown in blue. Luckily America's stagnant gold reserves are still more than 10 times even Russia's latest 703 million tonne stash.
[snip]
(Excerpt) Read more at businessinsider.com ...
Gold is down hard, any thought to Russians causing the big sell?
I think the author means "tons of gold" Not "million tons." There aren't a million tons on the planet.
I thought Russia was self sufficient in gold.................
And Russia’s around 650 tonnes total...
I’m not sure that being down 3% for the day, 5% off the all-time peak is “down hard.”
8,500 tonnes @ 2000 lbs. per ton @ 16 ounces per lb. @ $1,200 per ounce ~= $326 Billion. And how much interest do we pay annually on our trillions in debt?
No doubt there is much more in private hands. I cannot imagine anybody holds rubles for the long term.
It doesn’t say if it is metric tonnes but if so its 32150 ounces per metric tonne(1000 kilos) Gold has 12 ounces per pound-Troy.
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_many_troy_ounces_in_a_tonne_of_gold
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It’s almost certainly NYMEX pre-holiday shenanigans. (The sharp drop on Monday was also obvious manipulation BTW.) I myself reversed from short to long on Thursday at about $17.90 FWIW, as these buck-a-day drops in silver don’t last as long as they used to.
Ah but that doesn’t logically preclude them from buying more from somebody else. If you think it’s going up compared to your paper money, it’s a good trade whether you also have some in the ground or not.
Also note that their unmined stuff is of course off the market; theoretically, taking a little more off the market would by itself raise the value of their own unmined stuff.
I got in a little better price on the long side than you did; but then again, I didn't make any money shorting on the way down (very nimble trading on your part, BTW), because I'm just too much of a "True Believer" on Silver to risk going short. Also put some UGL in a family trust account; we've traded it profitably before, and we did see a little bit of recovery in the price today.
What's bugging me now is the Stock Market. I cashed in my 300%-Short BGZ position yesterday for a 23% gain over the last 2 weeks, and converted it to a boring old 100%-Short SH position. And yet now the Stock Market is down AGAIN today! Yeah, I'll make a few pennies on the SH, but I'd actually like to see the Stock Market go back up for a week or so, even if it means sustaining some temporary paper losses on the SH, so that I can get 300%-Short again.
Dear Stock Market -- please recover a little before you die. I wish to make more money off your death.
Bump.
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