Is gold back to being looked at as a safe haven investment?
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Cory – I agree that it is probably a good trend that Gold has started to decouple slightly from the US dollar, oil, and the general markets (Dow/S&P). This means it is becoming more of an uncorrelated asset in peoples portfolios, and the miners have had a nice start to 2015 with a tiny pop.
Thanks for your input Lawrence!
Interesting, but can you say from where and how the imports are being transacted?
Are the increased Communist Chinese oil imports coming from purchases made in dollars off the futures market or are they direct purchases, say in rubles from Russia, outside the futures market? Maybe a mixture of the two or a blend of other direct purchases from other countries that America has embargoed–where the trade is in Chinese currency. In the last decade or so we’ve burned a lot of bridges, maybe a bridge too far.
I heard they mostly bought from middle east. They are building a pipeline from Russia as well. I am sure they import from Russia as well since China has to support Russia. Not sure they bought any from North America. I think US forbids export and Canada does not have pipeline to the sea shore, well, maybe a little one from BC as LNG but I don’t know they sell to China or not. Most likely Japan.
The main change I’ve noticed in the past two weeks seems to be gold’s ability to provide a couple days rise to one step back instead of the day up, day back, day up and then back that we witnessed in December. There does seem to be a bit of a shift in sentiment towards gold and the miners……at least the seniors. HUI seems to be able to hold the majority of its gains far better than in the near past.
Obviously, JMO. Like that silver rise today!
Silverone
You have a good point Silverdollar
Lawrence, supply/demand factors do not begin to explain what is now approaching a 60% decline in the crude oil price. In round numbers, global production recently of around 93 million barrels a day only fractionally exceeded demand by a few hundred thousand barrels.
Instead, this is a financial market event caused by way too much funny money in the system, AND the ability of non-user “investors” (i.e. – speculators) to command big positions in oil contracts one side or the other. This is why some governments over the years that were NOT owned by banking/finance as a matter of policy prohibited speculation or other activity in markets for basic/key commodities unless the participants were producers or end users.
Back in 2008ish when oil was last down low we started to get speculators buying up tankers full of oil and simply not delivering them – they began to park themselves off the shores of the UK, Japan, Europe, etc, and thus they manipulated the price back up.
chinese are buying oil for their reserves–traders here are renting tankers again–remember with BDI at all time lows, its cheap to rent a tanker ship
I think BDI does not include oil tankers. Oil tanker rate is high now.
Off Topic, I just got some important information I would like to share.
I
f people believe that the drop of demand for oil causes the oil price crash, think twice. Hong Kong iFeng Financial News has published an article outlining the Chinese demand in the last few years including the oil import in last December. December oil import saw a 20% increase compared to previous year and a jump of 13% from November. The import is going up steadily. The article was titled “Oil drops below 45 dollar per barrel, ignoring Chinese historic record import”. There is a nice graph showing the oil import. The unit is million tons per month.
http://finance.ifeng.com/a/20150113/13426712_0.shtml