Metals Currency Watch

The Cost of Gas/Petrol in America





http://www.kitcosilver.com

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The dollar and oil.
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15th Mar 2008 - NYMEX home heating oil futures - $314.65
the dollar was 1.5674. Nymex/Brent 110 107
Brent Spot $106.59 (12 march 2008)

19th Mar 2008 - NYMEX home heating oil futures - $300.00

USD: http://www.bloomberg.com/markets/currencies/fxc.html

OIL: http://www.bloomberg.com/markets/commodities/energyprices.html

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THE ISEQ: http://www.ise.ie/app/popup_graph.asp?INDEX_TYPE=
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http://www.kitco.com/charts/livegold.html

The big drop in silver from 22 dollars shows the danger of futures and spread betting. It can swing against you and if you don't have faith, courage and cash you can be squeezzed out. This drop does not bother me as I am advocating buying and taking possession in this market. As regards a flutter with small money though I would buy on spread bets here. They were very overbought an corrections in bull markets are quick and steep.

Futures is betting on a price in the future - over a period of time or on a particular day...?

Gold dropped dramatically too.. I'm still interested in buying silver and the cheaper the better. It seems good in the long term and i;m thinking of for my retirement proper. It's a bugger to get it though - 20% tax on it and all

When I am talking about the importance of getting silver or gold, the intention is not to make a profit but to preserve some wealth regardless of the turmoil in the markets or the value of currencies. For a small cost now you will have something that in years to come will be very valuable. For profit one can buy mining stocks or try the spreadbetting. A futures contract is something you buy that will allow you to buy a quantity of something on a certain date in the future. The reason speculaters buy them is because they only need to pay 5% cash so the movement is amplified 20 times. You can sell the contract at any time and the value of the contract changes continually. If the price of the commodity goes against you the money put down will no longer be 5% and you will be asked to add more to bring it up to that level. This is a margin call and can happen very quickly with the leverage factor. When the time period is over the person usually if he still holds the contract will just sell for a profit. However he can also take delivery of the contracted amount of the commodity if the price is higher than the contracted price. If the price is lower the contract has no value. In the silver futures market the contracts are for 5000 ounces. The guy who sold the contract must then delivery 5000 ounces to the smarter or luckier guy. If he does not have 5000 ounces he is short and must buy them in the spot market. A short squeze is when this happens to many at the same time and their forced buying drives the price further against them but they are caught. Not a good outcome for them

Auditor #9 wrote:

Futures is betting on a price in the future - over a period of time or on a particular day...?

Gold dropped dramatically too.. I'm still interested in buying silver and the cheaper the better. It seems good in the long term and i;m thinking of for my retirement proper. It's a bugger to get it though - 20% tax on it and all

Depending on when your retirement is, I might suggest some good agricultural land or an aquifer. For the longer haul, food and water is my bet.

You are right there Cactus. A good spring well will be vital to have for those lucky enough to have a bit of land. A good relationship with the local garda is very important and also usually easy to achieve. Ones interest in shooting a rabbit and odd fox would see to the granting of a shotgun and 22 license with a favourable word in the superintendents ear.

That drop in silver of over 5 dollars is exremely unusual but unusual things do happen. The lads in futures or spread betting would be losing their shirts. However we are back to where we were I month ago and a holder would not be bothered.

It's still cheap at twice the price dan (if you could get it).



$300 for these 10 ounce bars.
http://lynncoins.com/barsten.htm

They are saying it's 100 ounces of silver.

When was the Fed rate cut? Wednesday? It seems to be having an effect on the markets above, anyhow - all the values are falling - USD now 1.54, Crude 101, Gold 920, Silver 17

These prices are too much above the price of the actual silver because these stores have the upper hand now as can be seen from the fact that a lot of their products are sold out. Coles on P.ie on Feb 21 at 9.20pm had a very good post dealing with getting metal in Ireland from his experience. From reading it it seems the best plan by far for silver there is getting what is known as silver bags or 1/2 bags which is old coinage from the days the coins were made from silver. I never got any of these bags as I can buy whatever I wish with zero tax. A pm to Coles perhaps would be called for as I believe he would be only too willing to assist.

Auditor #9 wrote:

When was the Fed rate cut? Wednesday? It seems to be having an effect on the markets above, anyhow - all the values are falling - USD now 1.54, Crude 101, Gold 920, Silver 17

I was reading the Indo during the week. Virtually all of the commodities listed in the financial reports had fallen in price.

There were reports that a chinese trader failed to make margin calls which would have added to the selling but how much this added is unknown. the cut was Tuesday

youngdan wrote:

There were reports that a chinese trader failed to make margin calls which would have added to the selling but how much this added is unknown. the cut was Tuesday

If you find out the details of that trader, could you post it up here? Thanks.

*runs off to watch Eggheads*

PS: No funny business, I'll be back before long!

Last night I was reading up news articles on silver because it had such a drastic fall. Drops in a rising market are par for the course and are steep and big but this one was a monster. Anyway I was reading an article by Jason Hommel from Wednesday where he was reporting that many dealers were sold out of silver. Comments were added at the bottom where people were reporting that their local shops had little if any silver inventary on hand. I checked the sites listed and there were indeed many items sold out. Today I went to the coin shop I frequent to get a feel for things. I asked the man there if many people were bringing in coins to sell as this would be a time where many people would need cash for taxes. He said that this was now reduced to a trickle. His opinion was that anyone that had any silver or gold left had it all sold by now. These sellers would not be waiting for higher prices because they are only selling as a last resort when they are desperate to get some cash. It will be interesting to see what happens next week.

Sounds rough, youngdan.

What do you see happening?

Silver Shortage gets Worse, Price Drops Again!
I hope this link works. Kate I tried to explain the workings of the bond market off the top of my head and pointing out how selling in the bond market drives up interest rates. The futures market can be complicated but there is a method by which speculators can sell any amount of silver they wish even though they own no silver. This is called Naked Short Selling and is extremely risky and only for the pros. You will hear people talk of the paper market which is what is happening on the futures exchange and the physical market which is real activity. The guys who had sold short as the market went above 22 dollars would have been in serious trouble so they would have jumped on weakness with more selling to crash the price. Then they close out their positions at a big profit. What this guy Hommel is reporting is a silver shortage in the physical market. How accurate his reading of the situation is remains to be seen. If it is as bad a he believes then the short sellers would be in big trouble. If people think there was going to be a shortage then everyone would buy and there would definately be a shortage then. To morrow I will call a big shop in Boston and another to see if I can get an idea if they are out of stock.

I don't think you posted the link, youngdan.

The market is hardly limited to silver and gold, is it?

youngdan wrote:

It did not link for me but if you google the words it will come up. All types of probucts are traded. In the funny movie Trading Places in was orange juice that was traded. I think there is even a market for wool

Does this mean I'll have to change the title from Oil Metals Currency Miscellaneous Commodities Watch?

youngdan wrote:

It did not link for me but if you google the words it will come up. All types of probucts are traded. In the funny movie Trading Places in was orange juice that was traded. I think there is even a market for wool

Naturally but why the song and dance here about silver and gold chiefly, as opposed to say, zinc, copper... whatever

And the same link form the Food Oil thread(since it's about commodities in general):

Running out of steam

A lot of commodities should be falling at the onset of what some are predicting will be a depression. I am confident of real fear pushing the metals much higher though. I am keeping an eye on Lehman Brothers. I saw another interesting headline here today. Ad revenue on newspapers dropped the biggest percentage ever at -9.4 year over year. I expect newspapers will be a thing of the past within 2 years. Local newsletter types may survive but the likes of the Boston Globe will be gone soon. Advertising will be the first thing companies will cut.

youngdan wrote:

A lot of commodities should be falling at the onset of what some are predicting will be a depression. I am confident of real fear pushing the metals much higher though. I am keeping an eye on Lehman Brothers. I saw another interesting headline here today. Ad revenue on newspapers dropped the biggest percentage ever at -9.4 year over year. I expect newspapers will be a thing of the past within 2 years. Local newsletter types may survive but the likes of the Boston Globe will be gone soon. Advertising will be the first thing companies will cut.

The overall trend should remain positive anyway. Peak oil will ensure a long-term gain of at least 10% per annum in the price of oil.

I believe that we have passed peak oil. Ye will all be delighted to know that Americans drove less last year for the first time ever. Yesterday I saw a man get gas in a nissan altima 2.5 litre which would be a modest car. It was fairly new but when he pulled away I saw that his purchase totalled 6 dollars. I believe that there are many down to their last pennies in this country. The owner once told me that tiny sales happen all the time.

2.5 litres is a modest car ??! Feck dan, what'll happen when the price of petrol doubles in a year?

I've been watching some youtubes of some fella called Matt Simmons who is a peak oiler of Doom. Yet there are a trillion barrels of oil left in the world and we are consuming it at the rate of 87 million barrels a day... we're shagged in ten years unless there's rakes under the Atlantic and even then...