“Gold-backed money retained its real value for 350 years in the United States and Great Britain. It’s only just clawed back to that level for investors today…” BY THE TIME the War of the Spanish Succession was finished in 1715, the French King – who admitted that he “loved war too much” – owed the equivalent of £300 million. Across the Channel, Great Britain owed only £49 million. Which might have looked a little like financial victory…
February 4th, 2009 | Adrian Ash | 49 comments | ContinuedArchive for Adrian Ash
City correspondent for The Daily Reckoning in London and formerly head of editorial at Fleet Street Publications Ltd, Adrian Ash has been studying and writing about the investment markets for the last 9 years. He is now head of research at BullionVault - giving you direct access to investment gold, vaulted in Zurich, on US$3 spreads and 0.8% dealing fees.
Gordon Brown’s Gold Sales, 10 Years On
Almost two decades after gold’s then-record top of $850 an ounce, the Nasdaq index would end the year 80% higher, discounting tech-stock earnings until A.D. 2129. Cue the FT, Economist and BusinessWeek to announce the “death of gold” as a store of value. Because who needed gold when you had Boo.com? But those British investors who saw life in the metal, however, have now tripled their money…
January 12th, 2009 | Adrian Ash | 4 comments | Continued
Quantitative Easing Explained
The Easer. You know, for the Quantitative Easing. Now, if you could just keep facing the wall for me… Does it really have to be so big? Jeez, it looks…it looks medieval… Aw, but this is state of the art. Ground-breaking, in fact! And you are a very sick man, as we discussed. The blood-tests would prove it… if only we had time to wait for the lab to come back with the results…
January 9th, 2009 | Adrian Ash | 3 comments | Continued
ODD THINGS Were Happening to the Price of Volkswagen
ODD THINGS were happening to the price of Volkswagen – the world’s third-largest auto-maker – long before it leapt 187% higher inside two days at the end of October…
November 5th, 2008 | Adrian Ash | 3 comments | Continued
Prices of Gold in the Top 10 World Currencies
After failing to breach $930, this collapse marked the third step lower from March’s all-time high of $1,032. And from a technical perspective, the Gold Chart looks horrible – recording lower lows and lower highs for the last six months and more. Right? Well, fact is, the action has actually been greatly muted if we allow for the shocking volatility in gold’s No.1 competitor for “safe haven” funds, the almighty US Dollar. Read on…
October 30th, 2008 | Adrian Ash | 5 comments | Continued
Strong Dollar is in our Nation’s Interest
“I believe that a strong Dollar is in our nation’s interest,” claimed Henry Paulson in his first speech as US Treasury secretary, made at Columbia University two years ago. It’s a phrase he then parroted time and again, repeating the formula first dreamt up by Robert Rubin 13 years earlier.
October 24th, 2008 | Adrian Ash | 0 comments | Continued
Gold Bullion’s New 14-Year High
With the Dow Jones index dipping below 9,000 last week, the price of gold held near $850 an ounce – at least until last Thursday’s AM Gold Fix in London. (It’s since lost $100; more in a moment.) So the Dow/Gold Ratio – which simply divides the one by the other, thus pricing the Dow Jones Industrial Average in ounces of gold – fell to a little above ten, making the 30 stocks of the DJIA cheaper in Gold Bullion terms than at any time since January 1995…
October 23rd, 2008 | Adrian Ash | 0 comments | Continued
Irish Govt Pledges Bailout, Who’s Next?
National governments are fighting to squish the risk of collapse amongst their domestic savings and loans – the industry that now matters most – by pumping money into local banks and guaranteeing the security of cash savers.
October 2nd, 2008 | Adrian Ash | 8 comments | Continued
S&P 500 Index Total Return Was Actually Negative
What a difference a decade can make! Over the last 10 years of the 20th century, anyone buying and holding US stocks made a total return approaching 18% per year. Their initial stake, as a 2002 research paper noted, increased five times over. Now that’s real money! But roll forward ten years, and the total return on the S&P 500 was actually negative for the decade ending on 30th June 2008…
August 25th, 2008 | Adrian Ash | 1 comment | Continued
Inflation and Deflation Battle is a Long Way from Won
The shooting match between inflation and deflation remains far from finished today. Which ‘flation will win – inflation and soaring prices…or deflation and a collapse in all things but cash? Richard Russell remarked way back in 2004 that a battle between inflation and deflation then lay ahead. Looks like they’re both re-arming today. Private investors fearing collateral damage might want to take cover. Gold bought near $800 an ounce might just provide some kind or armor.
August 22nd, 2008 | Adrian Ash | 2 comments | Continued
Gold Standard Doubles as the Greenspan Fed Makes Real Interest Rates Negative
“The reason there is [now] very little support for the gold standard is the consequences of those types of market adjustments are not considered to be appropriate in the 20th and 21st century. I am one of the rare people who have still some nostalgic view about the old gold standard, as you know, but I must tell you, I am in a very small minority among my colleagues on that issue.”
August 7th, 2008 | Adrian Ash | 3 comments | Continued
Private Investors Can Make 230% of Emerging Asia’s Super-Soar-Away Gains
There’s no fee for investing in the bank’s new Asia ex-Japan Protected Growth Plan 5. (We guess here at BullionVault that means there are already four in issue.) And with the exception of a transfer charge of £100 plus VAT (approx. $230), “all other charges are taken into account in setting the terms offered,” says the brochure. Nor could you ask for better timing…
July 7th, 2008 | Adrian Ash | 1 comment | Continued
Today’s Current Gold Price
Big institutional players in the New York futures market slashed their bullish betting on Gold in the week to June 10th. Data from the CFTC – the US regulator – shows a net reduction of 11% in the long gold positions held by what it calls “large speculators”. And this “reduction in the gross longs maybe a further sign that gold is losing its attraction,” reckon analysts at the Swiss banking and wealth management giant…
June 19th, 2008 | Adrian Ash | 0 comments | Continued
Lull in Gold Price Shouldn’t Deter Bullion Buyers
A little less than 12 months ago, the world’s biggest financial players suddenly found they could not turn some $1.3 trillion of their assets into cash. These assets – bonds backed by US home-buyers with low (or no) incomes – had become utterly illiquid. No one would buy or lend against them, not at any price. And an asset you can’t sell or borrow against is worth precisely nothing. The resulting mayhem? It would have sounded frivolous two years ago.
May 13th, 2008 | Adrian Ash | 2 comments | Continued
40 Years of Inflation, 80 Years of Dow/Gold
If Wall Street stocks can surge 160 points on falling earnings, an 11% drop in housing starts, and a 16-year record for consumer-price inflation, then so can everything else that doesn’t carry a picture of George Washington. Crude oil, rice, Gold, the Euro, wheat, emerging market bonds, copper…anything that’s not stamped with the all-seeing eye of the Dollar looks a great bet once again.
April 17th, 2008 | Adrian Ash | 0 comments | Continued
