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-- Posted Wednesday, 20 May 2009 | Digg This Article | | Source: GoldSeek.com
Standard Chartered is including gold and silver as one of four main recommendations to its private banking clients, according to a presentation by chief investment strategist, Lim Say Boon, in Dubai today. The UK’s second largest bank by market capitalization has been winning clients in a flight to quality from its crashing rivals, and this global trend has also been evident in the Middle East. Clients are being recommended to purchase gold and silver on price pull backs as the precious metals have a low correlation to traditional asset classes. The bank will recommend on different ways to invest in the metals. Portfolio strategy Meanwhile, the relatively new regional private bank is telling clients to switch away from the US dollar in the second half of this year, buy commodities like oil, diversify into high quality corporate and emerging market sovereign debt, and cost-average their stock investments. However, Mr. Boon cautioned clients against chasing stock markets at this stage after the big rally from the March 6th low. He thought financial markets might be getting ahead of the economic news which is still ‘terrible’, such as the 15 per cent slump in Japanese GDP announced today. ‘March may have been the bottom for stock markets but markets do not move in a straight line. We are advising clients to buy on further weakness but not to chase the market up,’ he said. Not the Great Depression His view is that the current financial crisis is ‘not the same size’ as the Great Depression of the 1930s and that the challenges are very different to the 1970s Oil Shock when interest rates of 20 per cent compared with near zero rates now. ‘We can see major Japanese manufacturers trading below book value,’ he noted . ‘We can see that investment grade debt spreads will narrow. And when the economy recovers, perhaps in a year, oil will cost much more.’ However, Mr Boon agrees that there is presently a disjunct between renewed confidence by investors and the true condition of the global economy and its recovery prospects. Between those two factors lies scope for considerable investor disappointment, and more than enough reason to hedge a portfolio with precious metals.
-- Posted Wednesday, 20 May 2009 | Digg This Article | Source: GoldSeek.com
Previous Articles by Peter Cooper
About Peter Cooper:
Oxford University educated financial journalist Peter Cooper found himself made redundant by Emap plc in London in the mid-1990s and decided to rebuild his career in Dubai as launch editor of the pioneering magazine Gulf Business. He returned briefly to London in
1999 to complete his first book, a history of the Bovis construction group.
Then in 2000 he went back to Dubai to become an Internet entrepreneur, just as the dot-com market crashed. But he stumbled across the opportunity to become a partner in www.ameinfo.com, which later became the Middle East's leading English language business news website.
 Over the course of the next seven years he had a ringside seat as editor-in-chief writing about the remarkable transformation of Dubai into a global business and financial hub city. At the same time www.ameinfo.com prospered and was sold in 2006 to Emap plc for $27 million, completing the career circle back to where it began a decade earlier.
He remains a lively commentator and columnist as a freelance journalist based in Dubai and travels extensively each summer with his wife Svetlana. His financial blog www.arabianmoney.net is attracting increasing attention with its focus on investment in gold and silver as a means of prospering during a time of great consumer price inflation and asset price deflation.
Order my book online from this link
 
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Gold And Silver For Top StanChart Clients
