Bumble

Money has been flowing into gold funds, but not gold miner funds. Helps to explain why the gold miners have been lagging behind.

The Fed are certainly talking tough about raising rates, so I would expect to see more raises this year. Realistically, the base rate cannot go above about 2% to 2.5% without becoming too expensive for heavily indebted governments to service. In the case of the USA, its debt payments, military budget and welfare payments are already considerably in excess of its entire tax revenue. But the Fed has to be seen to be doing something about inflation. This is an election year in the USA, and only about 25% of Americans own stocks, while nearly everyone is hurt by inflation, especially the poor. So the Fed, under pressure from politicians, will be ready to throw stock holders under the bus to protect the rest. Yes, it makes your stock portfolio go down and the value of your house go down, but if you have those you've done incredibly well in the last ten years, so a bit of pain won't be too bad for you. Inflation, on the other hand, is insidious and destructive, and can easily get out of control. I suspect the Fed won't return to easing again until the economy crashes and unemployment is rising sharply.

Sprott Inc has now completed its takeover of the North Shore Global Uranium Mining ETF (URNM). It will be run as Sprott Uranium Miners ETF. Given Sprott's big client base, it is plausible to suppose that it will attract quite a bit of investment interest, so it should be a good way to get a broad exposure to uranium miners. Sprott already own Sprott Physical Uranium Trust Fund (SRUUF) which owns uranium directly.

Gold is a chemical element, so you can't make it from other elements, except by a nuclear reaction. That is so expensive, it is unlikely to be commercially viable any time in the near future. There are asteroids that are mostly gold, so one possibility for getting lots of gold is to mine such an asteroid and return the product to Earth. This is still highly difficult and expensive, though it might become feasible later this century. Another possibility is extracting minerals including gold by electrolysis of seawater. Again, the problem is expense. For this to become feasible, we would need to crack the problem of generating electricity from fusion power or from some other very cheap source.

Russia is the largest producer and exporter of palladium. Sanctions will mean buyers will need to buy from South Africa, which is the second largest, or from smaller producers in other countries. The main use of palladium is for catalytic converters for petrol (gasoline) vehicles, so demand is still high, though it will decline over the next few years as battery vehicles become more common.

I am not certain why Kazatomprom (KAP.IL) continues to fall, while other uranium producers are rising. My guesses are: 1. Investors are in panic sell mode and are ditching anything related to Russia and are not distinguishing between Russia itself and its allies; 2. Some exchanges or brokers are blocking all trade in global depository receipts from the region, and Kazakh companies are not yet being distinguished from Russian ones; 3. Some funds that are invested in the region are getting massive sell orders and are liquidating all their holdings equally; 4. Sanctions against Russia might affect the company's access to capital. It is not clear why Kazakhstan would be affected by sanctions. According to reports, Kazakhstan chose not to recognise the two breakaway Ukrainian provinces, and also declined to send troops to the Ukraine when requested to do so by President Putin. Whatever happens, Kazatomprom is still the biggest and lowest cost producer of uranium in the world.

According to astronomers, the diameter of Uranus is bigger than the diameter of Mars, though personally I've never been curious enough to try it.

Τα δάνεια δούλους τους ελευθέρους ποιεί. Loans make slaves out of free men. - Menander (Greek dramatist, 4th century BCE)

Those houses are in Welbeck Avenue, High Brooms, Tunbridge Wells. According to movethemarket.com houses in that street now sell for upwards of £300,000. I don't know the area, but from the look of the design, they were probably built in the 1930s. That gives a compound rate of gain of about 7% to 8% per annum.

Well I suppose that's the fun thing about technical analysis, there are so many interpretations to choose from. You can use classical charting methods, candlestick patterns, Elliot wave, moving averages, Bollinger bands, or Ichimoku clouds, and get different answers from all of them.

Today's price rise sees gold hit the upper Bollinger band. I was hoping gold would just advance slowly and stay within the bands. Hitting the upper BB usually triggers algorithmic selling, so unless we get a war in Ukraine next week, we could be in for a substantial correction.

That Tesco ad indicates that prices have increased by a factor of about 10x to 12x since 1972. That would be roughly in line with official inflation figures for the UK. Some of the items are difficult to compare because the sizes are variable or may have changed. Penguin biscuits for example are listed there at 9.5p for 6, whereas they are now £1 for 8, which is 8.3x, but they are probably smaller now, since most confectionery has shrunk. The easiest one to compare is the butter at 12.5 p per half pound, which equates to 55p per kg, compared with today where you might pay £6 per kg for a cheap supermarket own brand up to £8 for a premium brand, giving between 11x and 14x. The can of baked beans at 6.5 p for 13 oz equates to 17.66 p/kg versus about £1.50 per kg for a supermarket own brand or £2.40 for Heinz, giving between 8x and 13x.

Bloomberg report large inflow to the GLD fund on January 22. Usually a bullish sign.

I'm skeptical about the significance of squeezing. People like to blame short-sellers for causing price falls, but in most cases the short interest in a stock is only a few percent and is too small to matter. Short interest must reach 20% or more before a real squeeze is going to occur. When GameStop short-sellers blew up last year, it was because short interest was 100%, which normally should not be able to happen. WallStreetSilver buyers on Reddit buying silver bullion is nice to see, but I doubt it will make any difference to the price: it's just too small. I believe there may be some supply constraints on refiners at present, which might help to push silver prices up, but if so, it will be temporary. I don't trade in and out of positions, so the present price moves are not going to change my investments. I invest almost exclusively in natural resource companies. I own several gold miners and a few silver ones, some royalty companies, some non-precious miners, particularly battery metals and uranium, and a little in energy. I would invest in forestry, water, and agricultural stocks too, but I don't understand them well enough.

Natural gas prices in Europe are anomalous. In North America they are a fraction of what we are paying in Europe. Also, the source does not say whether they are using spot price, futures price, or some commercial price. My guess is they are using the Henry Hub spot price.