13 June 2014

Still alive

Apologies for not posting for some time. I have been busy with real work, which is counter-intuitive consider how dead it is for Perth Mint generally in terms of people buying PMs. Main time suck has been involved in finalising a tender for new website software. Over the next year we will be replacing our perthmint.com.au and pertmintbullion.com websites (both run on different platforms) and merging them into one and hopefully improving the connectivity into our backend ERP, which should help with our ability to handle load and avoid these problems.

Other time sucks include ongoing ERP replacement project, annual report prep and general dogsbody work which "Analysis and Strategy" in my job title seems to act like a magnet for.

I will be in Malaysia 23rd/24th June and Singapore 25th/26th for business, including the LBMA Singapore Bullion Market Forum, details of which you can find here. Topics include:

Session 1: The Singapore Market
Session 2: Next Steps for East Asia's Growing Physical Market
Session 3: Gold ETFs - What Future in Asian Portfolios?
Session 4: India - Effect of Regulatory Changes in the Indian Bullion Market and the Road Ahead
Session 5: Is Less More - How Many Gold Futures Contracts Does Asia Need?
Session 6: From West to East - Is It Really a One-Way Ticket for Gold?

If you have any (sensible) questions you want me to ask, leave a comment and I'll consider them. I suppose the thing these days is to live tweet, but not sure if this is a private meeting or Chatham House Rules, although I think the tweets will be quite dry - not sure of the interest in "Wrapping Gold ETF to retail investors in Thailand". I would imagine with the focus on how the silver fix is run, the LBMA would be all for transparency, we'll see how it goes.
 
Having stuck my head up and mentioned the silver fix, I suppose I should comment on it - see next post shortly.

6 comments:

  1. By shortly I did mean today, but got sidetracked again. Will have something up tomorrow.

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  2. good to here from you.your perspectives are much in need

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  3. Nice to hear from you again.

    My main question I now have been wondering for a long time:

    Why is the daily trading chart of gold&silver almost always identical? Makes no sense to me, since regardless of what you think about PM, gold is a completely different animal than "commodities" like silver, platinum and paladium. Still gold&silver trade always identical, whereas platinium and paladium differ.
    Any ideas?

    Greets, AD

    P.S.
    http://moneysaverhq.heraldsun.com.au/news/government-grabs-360-million-from-idle-household-bank-accounts/story-fnkrnsiy-1226950657835

    reading stuff like that I am now convinced not to even leave a single penny in Australia. Who knows, next time your gold account will be seized (of cause, just for your protection..."dont have to worry about your money, we have it, it's gone".)

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  4. The gold and silver co movement is one of those accepted wisdom things - if traders see a big move in one they trade the other one accordingly.

    There is some logic to it in that gold and silver both have monetary demand elements, but silver is more industrial and less monetary so don't always move exactly the same.

    Re the idle money story, there has always been some sort of unclaimed cash laws is most countries but this Federal change is quite aggressive in having such a short timeframe in what is deemed dormant.

    I would note that the government doesn't steal your money in that if you find your bank has handed over the cash, you can go to the government and claim it back, it is not like it is forfeited.

    In respect of gold, it does not fall under these laws as it is not money - Perth Mint checked. Secondly, Perth Mint isn't a bank so its accounts aren't bank accounts.

    Finally, most Federal laws only apply to entities incorporated under Federal company law (which the states passed their power in this matter over to the Federal govt) and as Perth Mint is a state statutory authority, and such Federal laws don't apply to us.

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  5. Just came across this, looks like the unclaimed money period will be change back

    http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/unclaimed-money-grab-to-be-cut-20140614-3a4ji.html

    The Abbott government will reverse Labor's policy of taking money from people's ''unclaimed'' bank accounts after just three years.

    Senior government sources say the Coalition is now certain to scrap Labor's three-year policy, which collected $520 million for the budget in 2012-13.

    The only question being debated is how long an account should remain dormant before the government intervenes.

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  6. Hi Bron,

    "if traders see a big move in one they trade the other one accordingly."

    no doubt about such effects/explanation, but we are talking about almost 1:1 intraday correlation in about 60% of the days.
    Which leaves me to believe there are other effects in place.
    Greets, AD

    P.S.
    Regarding the confiscation/seizure: I think the scary part is not to discuss for how long or the fine print, but rather the action in itself!

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