news.goldseek.com >> 23 June 2009

The Depression Case Reiterated
By: Steven Saville, Speculative Investor
In a semi-free country such as the US there are two prerequisites for a peace-time economic depression, where a depression is defined as a period of 5-10 years or longer of economic stagnation or outright contraction. The first is a massive expansion of credit based on fractional reserve banking (supported, nowadays, by a powerful central bank), and the second is a far-reaching attempt by the government to prevent the corrective process from running its natural course after the credit bubble has burst.

news.goldseek.com >> 16 June 2009

The Government Bubble
By: Steven Saville, Speculative Investor
It is clear that a concerted effort is being made to replace the ruptured private-sector debt bubble with a government debt bubble, although the effort is generally not labeled as such. Moreover, the dramatic increase in government debt that we are seeing is really just a symptom of expanding government. In the case of the US, for example, GW Bush presided over a rapid expansion of government power and the trend has accelerated under Obama.

news.goldseek.com >> 2 June 2009

Money Confusion and Inflation/Deflation
By: Steven Saville, Speculative Investor
The total supply of US dollars, as measured by TMS, is about 10% higher now than it was a year ago. Also, the total amount of credit within the US economy is higher now than it was a year ago thanks to the government's yeoman-like efforts to replace the bursting private-sector credit bubble with a public-sector credit bubble.

news.goldseek.com >> 26 May 2009

Thoughts on the Gold Standard, Risk and Speculation
By: Steven Saville, Speculative Investor
The most commonly cited reason against returning to a gold standard is that there isn't enough gold in the world, but no one with a good understanding of money's role within an economy would argue against a gold standard on the basis of insufficient gold supply (for the uninitiated, Frank Shostak explains why in: How Much Money Should There Be?). There is, however, a good reason to argue against a gold standard.

news.goldseek.com >> 19 May 2009

Why We Are Gold Bulls
By: Steven Saville, Speculative Investor
The actions of the US Fed and Treasury between September and December of last year prompted fear in some quarters that the US was speeding towards a Zimbabwe-style hyperinflation. However, while we view hyperinflation as inevitable over the very long-term at no stage have we viewed it as a serious intermediate-term threat. In our opinion, the probability of the US experiencing hyperinflation within the next two years is close to zero.

news.goldseek.com >> 12 May 2009

Everyone Is Wrong, Again (Except The Gold Bulls)
By: Steven Saville, Speculative Investor
One of our readers sent us a very interesting article from itulip.com entitled "Everyone is wrong, again -- 1981 in Reverse Part II: Nine Signs of Inflation". The article is an explanation by Peter Warburton (the author of the book "Debt and Delusion") of why generalised 'price inflation' is likely to become an issue by early next year, with comments by itulip's editor (Eric Janszen) interspersed.

news.goldseek.com >> 5 May 2009

Central Planning Is Back In Vogue
By: Steven Saville, Speculative Investor
At the root of central planning ideology is the belief that a group of well-meaning government officials and/or experts is more capable than the unrestrained free market of allocating resources for the betterment of society. However, whenever and wherever central planning of the economy has been attempted it has always been a failure, with the magnitude of the failure generally being proportional to the breadth of the central planning experiment.

news.goldseek.com >> 28 April 2009

The Effects of Inflation
By: Steven Saville, Speculative Investor
The effects of monetary inflation are three-fold. First, it brings about an unwarranted transfer of purchasing power (resources) to the creator of the new money and/or the first user of the new money. Another name for this unwarranted transfer is theft. Second, it has a NON-UNIFORM effect on prices, leading to mal-investment and the wastage of resources.

news.goldseek.com >> 14 April 2009

Greenspan’s Mistake
By: Steven Saville, Speculative Investor
Former Fed Chief Alan Greenspan has stridently argued that his decision to lower the Fed Funds Rate (FFR) from 6.5% to 1.0% during 2001-2003 was NOT the cause of the housing bubble. Does his argument have any validity?

news.goldseek.com >> 7 April 2009

What’s Happening On the Inflation Front?
By: Steven Saville, Speculative Investor
The Fed scaled back its money-pumping efforts over the first three months of this year, which is not surprising given that it would have been almost impossible to sustain the frenetic pace achieved during the final four months of last year. But even though the Fed's actions have become less frenzied of late, the Fed-Treasury tag team has made sure that the rate at which new money is borrowed into existence continues to exceed, by a substantial margin, the rate at which money is extinguished via debt repayment.

news.goldseek.com >> 24 March 2009

Gold: The Big Picture
By: Steven Saville, Speculative Investor
However, on a long-term basis the gold price generally does what it should do based on our understanding of its most important fundamental drivers, which is why we rarely devote any space at TSI to gold market manipulation. We'll use the following long-term chart of the gold/CRB ratio (gold relative to a basket of commodities) to illustrate what we mean.

news.goldseek.com >> 17 March 2009

Market Value, Money and Credit
By: Steven Saville, Speculative Investor
One of the arguments regularly made to support the claim that deflation is underway goes like this: "While the supply of money is expanding rapidly, the amount of additional money created is miniscule compared to the reduction in the market value of assets." In our opinion, this is not a valid argument.

news.goldseek.com >> 10 March 2009

Sentiment in the Gold, Stock and Commodity Markets
By: Steven Saville, Speculative Investor
When the gold price rose to $1000 in late February there was naturally a lot of enthusiasm about this market's prospects, which, combined with the almost uninterrupted $200 rise over the preceding five weeks, paved the way for a downward correction. The gold price then fell for eight trading days in a row, with the eighth down day being last Wednesday. The stage was thus set for a rebound, but as noted in last week's Interim Update the fact that the 8-day decline had barely put a dent in bullish sentiment suggested that the overall correction from the February high had not yet run its course.

news.goldseek.com >> 3 March 2009

Depression and Inflation
By: Steven Saville, Speculative Investor
Although we are anticipating another great depression we want to emphasize that we are NOT anticipating a replay of the 1930s. We are anticipating a drawn-out period of economic contraction, but the details will almost certainly differ markedly from previous depressions.

news.goldseek.com >> 27 February 2009

Silver in a Deflation
By: David Morgan, Silver Investor
As I have stated many times, the easy money has been made in the precious metals but the BIG money lies ahead, because if you think like I think, once this “disinflation” turns into a dollar collapse people will be looking for anything that will hold value, and that certainly includes both the precious metals.

news.goldseek.com >> 24 February 2009

Arguments Against the Depression Outlook
By: Steven Saville, Speculative Investor
Over the past two months we've explained why we think a great depression is on the cards. We are not 'doom-and-gloomers' who relish the prospect of an economic debacle; in fact, we very much hope that our depression prediction proves to be way off the mark. Our analysis of the economic situation is simply heading where logic takes it.

news.goldseek.com >> 17 February 2009

The End of an Era
By: Steven Saville, Speculative Investor
In a nutshell, there is no limit to the amount of bonds that the US government can issue to the Fed in exchange for newly-created dollars, or that any other government can issue to its central bank in exchange for newly-created currency. The only question is: what will the new money be spent on? The answer to this question gets to the heart of the biggest problem facing the economy today.

news.goldseek.com >> 10 February 2009

The Coming Great Depression
By: Steve Saville, Speculative Investor
In our 3rd December 2008 commentary we explained that the probability of an imminent great depression was uncomfortably high. Our reasoning, in a nutshell, was that the recent credit bubble was much bigger than any previous credit bubble of the past century and that the policymakers of today were blundering much more rapidly and on a much grander scale than their counterparts of the 1930s.

news.goldseek.com >> 3 February 2009

The Inflation-Deflation Debate
By: Steven Saville, Speculative Investor
For many years we have been expecting inflation (growth in the supply of money) and nothing but inflation as far as the eye can see, but there have been times, such as the past 12 months, when we have felt more affinity with deflation forecasters than with most other inflation forecasters.

news.goldseek.com >> 27 January 2009

It’s ONLY A Gold Bull Market
By: Steven Saville, Speculative Investor
One of our themes over the years has been that monetary factors are driving the major trends in the financial markets. To put it another way, we have tended to downplay the effects on market prices of non-monetary drivers such as the expansion of the internet, the industrialisation of China, and "Peak Oil".

news.goldseek.com >> 20 January 2009

Loan Defaults, Deflation and Bonds
By: Steven Saville, Speculative Investor
In the US and many other countries a lot of people are in default on their home loans, causing banks to suffer large losses. It is reasonable, then, to conclude that banks will be less able or willing to make new loans in the future than they were in the past; so although the loan defaults will not directly cause the money supply to fall they could result in slower future monetary expansion.

news.goldseek.com >> 13 January 2009

Bear Market Comparison
By: Steven Saville, Speculative Investor
A scenario favoured by many analysts is that a new bull market commenced last November. This view will undoubtedly gain traction if the stock market continues to strengthen over the next few months (as we currently expect), but it has almost zero chance of being proven right.

news.goldseek.com >> 7 January 2009

Monetary Delays
By: Steven Saville, Speculative Investor
Changes in money-supply trends affect prices in ways that are often difficult to predict, thanks in part to the lengthy and variable delays involved. However, it is still possible to explain much of what has happened to prices and much of what will likely happen to prices in terms of money-supply changes.

news.goldseek.com >> 4 January 2009

Gold Stocks During the 1930s
By: Steven Saville, Speculative Investor
There are some important similarities between the present and the 1930s. For example, in TSI commentaries over the past 6 months we've discussed the similarities between 1937-1938 and 2007-2008, both with regard to the economic situation and the performance of the US stock market. It is therefore apropos to review how the gold sector of the stock market performed during the 1930s.

news.goldseek.com >> 16 December 2008

The Next Bubble to Burst
By: Steven Saville, Speculative Investor
When a market's upward trend is consistent with an existing opinion the market will not be viewed as being in a bubble by the holder of the opinion, regardless of how far the price moves outside the bounds of normal valuation. For example, true believers in the idea that "Peak Oil" was creating a long-term irreversible shortage were not open to the possibility that the oil market was in 'bubble territory' earlier this year.

news.goldseek.com >> 9 December 2008

Deflation and Counterfeiting
By: Steven Saville, Speculative Investor
The problem is not now, and never will be, a shortage of money. One of today's problems in the US, Australia, and several other Western nations is a shortage of savings, and not only will increasing the money supply not help the situation it will very likely make the situation worse because it will lead to a further reduction in real savings.

news.goldseek.com >> 2 December 2008

Increasing Instability
By: Steven Saville, Speculative Investor
Few people seem to appreciate that the increasing instability within the financial world, as evidenced by price oscillations of progressively greater magnitude, is being driven by government attempts to manage the economy. Recent attempts to stimulate the economy and mitigate the financial crisis are classic examples of what we are talking about.

news.goldseek.com >> 25 November 2008

Political Pragmatism / Evaporating Wealth
By: Steven Saville, Speculative Investor
Is it just us, or do others think it absurd that a) "New Deal" style policies are being advocated when the original "New Deal" prolonged the 1930s downturn, and b) similar policies to those tried in Japan during the 1990s are now being implemented/promoted by people who proclaim that the mistakes made by Japan must be avoided?

news.goldseek.com >> 18 November 2008

Gold: Is There a Valid Bearish Argument?
By: Steven Saville, Speculative Investor
When considering the outlook for the next 6 months or longer, the only gold-bearish argument that currently holds any water is the deflation-related one. If the forces of deflation overwhelmed the efforts of central banks such that the total supply of money began to contract, then gold would probably keep performing well in terms of most other commodities but would perform poorly in terms of the deflating currencies.

news.goldseek.com >> 11 November 2008

The “Paradox of Thrift”
By: Steven Saville, Speculative Investor
The "paradox of thrift" holds that what is good on an individual basis can be bad on an economy-wide basis; specifically, it stems from the idea that an increase in an individual's savings may benefit that individual, but if many individuals increase their savings then the result will be a weaker economy.

news.goldseek.com >> 4 November 2008

Long-term Outlook for Commodities
By: Steven Saville, Speculative Investor
In a number of respects, not least being the magnitude of the decline, the closest historical parallel to the equity bear market of 2007-2008 is the equity bear market of 1937-1938. Interestingly, there was also a very sharp downturn in commodity prices during 1937-1938. Even more interestingly, the 1937-1938 commodity plunge proved to be the first major correction in a secular commodity bull market that lasted until the early 1950s.

news.goldseek.com >> 28 October 2008

Inflation Watch
By: Steven Saville, Speculative Investor
Despite what some Federal Reserve researchers happen to believe, inflation expectations have plunged. Moreover, the plunge in inflation expectations translates into a surge in real interest rates because the real interest rate is the nominal interest rate minus the expected rate of currency depreciation. This increase in real interest rates adds to the upward pressure on the US$ and the downward pressure on asset prices. There's actually a self-reinforcing trend at work in that falling prices lead to lower inflation expectations, which lead to higher real interest rates, which add to the downward pressure on asset prices, and so on.

news.goldseek.com >> 21 October 2008

Trying To Get Something for Nothing
By: Steven Saville, Speculative Investor
As if Paul Krugman winning the Nobel Prize in economics isn't reason enough for us to be less-than-sanguine about the future, everywhere we look we see well-respected analysts advocating increased government regulation and spending -- effectively the same policies that transformed a financial crisis into a drawn-out depression during the 1930s -- while completely ignoring the root of today's problems.

news.goldseek.com >> 13 October 2008

The financial crisis will soon abate, but the real crisis will soon begin
By: Steve Saville, Speculative Investor
Further to the above, we think it makes sense to prepare for a very lengthy period of slow, or no, economic growth. In general terms, this should involve strengthening one's balance sheet. More specifically, it SHOULD involve staying (or getting) out of debt and COULD involve building up exposure to gold and income-producing investments other than bonds (energy trusts, for instance). Fortunately, a good balance-sheet-strengthening opportunity is likely to present itself over the next 6 months because the immediate crisis will probably soon give way to a multi-month stock market rebound and the ILLUSION that policy-makers have managed to ignite a sustainable recovery.

news.goldseek.com >> 7 October 2008

Inflation’s New Upward Trend
By: Steven Saville, Speculative Investor
In our 3rd October email alert we wrote: "The Fed expanded its balance sheet by $254B during the one-week period ending 1st October, which follows a $204B expansion during the preceding week. As a result, the Fed's balance sheet has grown by almost 50% within the space of just two weeks. This, we believe, is unprecedented."

news.goldseek.com >> 23 September 2008

Disastrous Policies
By: Steven Saville, Speculative Investor
The US economy has not been remotely close to a "free market" for a long time. Up until recently freedom was eroding at a gradual pace, but the pace of erosion has just accelerated in dramatic fashion.

news.goldseek.com >> 16 September 2008

The Real Interest Rate
By: Steven Saville, Speculative Investor
The real interest rate is the nominal interest rate adjusted to account for the currency's loss of purchasing power. And for lack of a better alternative, most people who do real interest rate calculations assume that changes in the CPI approximate what's happening to the currency's purchasing power.

news.goldseek.com >> 9 September 2008

Bernanke has kept his helicopters grounded...so far
By: Steven Saville, Speculative Investor
In late 2002, when deflation fears were running rampant through the financial markets, a little known Fed governor by the name of Ben Bernanke thrust himself into the glare of publicity by giving a speech in which he explained what the Fed could do to ensure that deflation didn't happen in the US. Like most people, when Bernanke talks about deflation he is referring to falling prices; that is, he is talking about one of the effects of deflation as opposed to actual deflation (money supply contraction).

news.goldseek.com >> 2 September 2008

Gold Supply and Demand
By: Steven Saville, Speculative Investor
The gold market analyses put out by the likes of Gold Fields Mineral Services (GFMS), the World Gold Council (WGC) and most major banks invariably concentrate on things like jewellery demand, new mine supply, and scrap supply. This means, in effect, that they concentrate on supply/demand influences that are so small in relation to the total market for gold as to be almost irrelevant.

news.goldseek.com >> 29 August 2008

The Coming Deflation Scare
By: Steven Saville, Speculative Investor
With the exception of the money-supply backdrop (as discussed in the latest Weekly Update), the current situation is bullish for gold. We don't think that genuine deflation is a serious threat, and both gold and gold stocks performed well during the deflation scare of 2001-2003. So, after the over-leveraged euro bulls have been washed out of the gold futures market there will be a decent chance of gold commencing its next intermediate-term advance, even while industrial commodities remain in intermediate-term downward trends.

news.goldseek.com >> 19 August 2008

Gold and the Money Supply
By: Steven Saville, Speculative Investor
Over the long term there should be a relationship between the US$ gold price and the difference between the rates of dollar and gold supply growth. However, using this relationship to determine a correct value, or "theoretical price", for gold is fraught with pitfalls because assumptions must be made that aren't necessarily correct.

news.goldseek.com >> 12 August 2008

The US$ and the Gold Sector
By: Steven Saville, Speculative Investor
Up until the past week or so there has been almost incessant talk in the press and many newsletters about the weak US dollar, but the US currency hasn't been universally weak since last November. Last November was when the Canadian Dollar and the British Pound commenced intermediate-term declines against the US$.

news.goldseek.com >> 29 July 2008

The Difference between Good Money and Bad Money
By: Steven Saville, Speculative Investor
It is said that the US dollar will eventually reach its intrinsic value, which is zero. This is probably true, but the lack of intrinsic value isn't the main problem facing the dollar and the other fiat currencies of the world. The fact is that money never has any "intrinsic" value, even when the money is gold and silver coin.

news.goldseek.com >> 22 July 2008

Money, Credit, Inflation and Deflation
By: Steven Saville, Speculative Investor
In an article posted earlier this week, Mike "Mish" Shedlock weighed in on the TMS vs. M3 discussion. Mish's article supports our view that TMS (the "True Money Supply" developed by Murray Rothbard and Joseph Salerno) is a more appropriate measure of money supply than M3, although he prefers a measure called "M Prime". The main difference between TMS and M Prime is that TMS includes savings deposits whereas M Prime does not.

news.goldseek.com >> 15 July 2008

Gold Stocks
By: Steven Saville, Speculative Investor
With reference to the following daily chart, over the past two weeks the HUI has moved from resistance at 460 to support at 420 back to resistance at 460. The chart already has a bullish tinge, but a solid break above 460 would enhance the picture (from the perspective of those who are long).

news.goldseek.com >> 8 July 2008

Government Spending and Inflation
By: Steven Saville, Speculative Investor
There is almost universal agreement that as the economy continues to deteriorate the government should "do something" to help, with "something" being increase its own borrowing/spending to make up for the reduction in the borrowing/spending of the private sector.

news.goldseek.com >> 1 July 2008

The 1973 Model
By: Steven Saville, Speculative Investor
Since early this year we've been using the performances of various markets during 1973 as a rough guide to what we should expect over the course of this year. Using 1973 as a model has made sense to us for a number of reasons. First, the equity, gold and currency markets have appeared to be in similar situations in the present as they were back then.

news.goldseek.com >> 17 June 2008

Returning to Gold Money
By: Steven Saville, Speculative Investor
For some strange reason, despite the continual flood of lies spewing forth from the halls of government and the mountain of evidence that economic well-being and freedom from government meddling are positively correlated, there is a general distrust of the free market.

news.goldseek.com >> 10 June 2008

TMS or M3? A reply to Paul van Eeden
By: Steven Saville, Speculative Investor
A few weeks ago Paul van Eeden (PVE) posted an extremely bearish outlook on bonds that he justified, in large part, by the rapid expansion of M3 money supply. We responded that while we are long-term bearish on bonds (we expect bond yields to move much higher over the coming 5 years), we thought that PVE's premise was wrong.

news.goldseek.com >> 3 June 2008

The Stock Market’s Secular Trend
By: Steven Saville, Speculative Investor
There's a big difference between a stock market that's rising in real (purchasing power) terms and one that's only rising due to currency depreciation. The reason is that a smart person invests to obtain more purchasing power, not more money. To put it another way, the amount of money you have is meaningless; what matters is the amount of purchasing power you have.

news.goldseek.com >> 27 May 2008

Monetary Stuff
By: Steven Saville, Speculative Investor
The almost total lack of understanding of the monetary problems underlying much of what is happening in the financial world is why gold is relatively cheap. But people will eventually catch on, so it is also why gold is destined to become much more expensive.

news.goldseek.com >> 20 May 2008

Bonds and Interest Rates
By: Steven Saville, Speculative Investor
Paul van Eeden recently published a very negative article about bonds (he expects bond prices to tank and interest rates to soar). We don't disagree with Mr. van Eeden's view that interest rates will eventually have to move much higher. We are, after all, long-term bearish on bonds. However, his ultra-bearish view on bonds is partly based on the false premise that the inflation (money-supply growth) rate is currently at the very elevated level of around 17%.

news.goldseek.com >> 13 May 2008

Gold versus Industrial Commodities
By: Steven Saville, Speculative Investor
With reference to the following long-term chart*, notice that oil moved back and forth within a wide horizontal trading range between 1980 and the early years of the current decade before finally breaking out to the upside in 2004. Notice, as well, that after it broke above long-term resistance at $40 in 2004 it quickly gained about $15 (37%) and then dropped all the way back to $40 to 'test' its breakout before resuming its upward trend.

news.goldseek.com >> 29 April 2008

Credit Contraction, Economic Bust, and Deflation
By: Steven Saville, Speculative Investor
Members of the deflation camp assert that the large-scale contraction of credit happening within the banking system means that deflation is upon us, even if the money supply is expanding. At the same time, another camp is pointing to the breathtakingly rapid growth in M3 money supply as evidence that hyperinflation is a near-term threat. In our opinion, both camps are wrong*.

news.goldseek.com >> 22 April 2008

The Decade Cycle
By: Steven Saville, Speculative Investor
Since the birth of the floating (sinking?) currency regime at the beginning of the 1970s, the best bull market of any decade has always continued until the beginning of the next decade. To help illustrate what we are talking about we present, below, three charts that represent the best bull markets of the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, respectively.

news.goldseek.com >> 15 April 2008

Commodities: The Topping Process Continues
By: Steven Saville, Speculative Investor
The daily CRB Index chart displayed below reveals an upside blow-off leading to a mid-March peak, followed by a sharp decline and then a rebound. If we are correct to view the March peak as the intermediate-term variety then the current rebound should lead to a secondary (lower) high within the next couple of weeks and then a decline to a new multi-month low.

news.goldseek.com >> 4 April 2008

The Next Word on Gary North's Claim That the Fed is Deflating
By: Steven Saville, Speculative Investor
In our 31st March commentary we discussed the errors we saw in Gary North's opinion that the Fed is deflating. Strangely, Mr. North took this as a personal attack and launched a personal counter-attack at http://www.garynorth.com/public/3328.cfm.

news.goldseek.com >> 1 April 2008

Is the Fed Deflating?
By: Steven Saville, Speculative Investor
Considering the extraordinary measures* taken by the Fed over the past four months in order to inflate (grow the money supply), the idea that the Fed is purposefully deflating (contracting the money supply) is preposterous. So, what should we make of the small decline in the monetary base?

news.goldseek.com >> 18 March 2008

Stagflation and Other Misconceptions
By: Steven Saville, Speculative Investor
"Inflationary recession" is, we think, a better term than "stagflation". In a world where money can be created in unlimited amounts and counter-cyclical monetary/fiscal policies are enormously popular, most recessions will be inflationary.

news.goldseek.com >> 11 March 2008

Gold Stock Scenarios
By: Steven Saville, Speculative Investor
We have two potential scenarios in mind for the gold sector, the first of which can aptly be labeled "the 1973 model" because it involves the financial markets behaving in a similar fashion to the way they behaved during 1973. To help explain this scenario we've re-produced, below, two charts originally included earlier commentaries.

news.goldseek.com >> 26 February 2008

More on Gold Stocks Versus Gold Bullion
By: Steven Saville, Speculative Investor
The current situation is similar to the final quarter of 2000 in that most gold stocks have become very under-valued relative to gold bullion and, as discussed in the latest Weekly Update, there is a potential catalyst for change in the form of a major upward trend reversal in the US yield-spread.

news.goldseek.com >> 19 February 2008

Gold Stocks Versus Gold Bullion: The Pressure Builds
By: Steven Saville, Speculative Investor
Since late 2003 the gold sector of the stock market has been in consolidation relative to gold bullion, but the rapid widening of the US yield-spread over the past 6 months -- as indicated on our chart by the sharp rise in the TYX/FVX ratio -- suggests that this lengthy consolidation will soon come to an end.

news.goldseek.com >> 12 February 2008

Quick Updates on Coal and Base Metals
By: Steven Saville, Speculative Investor
Large vertical price rises are always bearish beyond the very short-term because they only ever happen towards the ends of rallies. The coal market will clearly reach some sort of top over the coming weeks, but there is no way of knowing whether it will be a short-term or an intermediate-term peak (it will almost certainly NOT be a long-term peak).

news.goldseek.com >> 5 February 2008

The Sub-Par Performance of Gold Stocks
By: Steven Saville, Speculative Investor
From our perspective and the perspectives of many other observers of the gold sector, the generally lacklustre performance of most gold shares over the past 6 months in the face of a relentless advance in the gold price certainly qualifies as unexpected.

news.goldseek.com >> 29 January 2008

A Stock Market Bottom
By: Steven Saville, Speculative Investor
The first chart shows the most recent two occasions when the number of new lows on the NYSE exceeded 1100, including this week's event. Notice that the '1100+ new lows day' in August of last year was followed by a strong 2-month advance to a new all-time high, after which the market embarked on the downward trend that led to this week's selling climax.

news.goldseek.com >> 23 January 2008

Bad Economics
By: Steven Saville, Speculative Investor
There's a lot of talk about trying to stave off a recession using a combination of monetary and fiscal stimulus, but you can't stave off a recession that began months ago. And in any case, how could a recession possibly be avoided, or even postponed, by creating more money out of thin air?

news.goldseek.com >> 15 January 2008

Gold Sector Update: No speculative froth, yet
By: Steven Saville, Speculative Investor
A pullback should commence within the next few days, but the fact that the HUI has closed above its November-2007 peak suggests that significant additional gains will be achieved over the next couple of months.

news.goldseek.com >> 8 January 2008

Elephants and Market Stabilizers
By: Steven Saville, Speculative Investor
It is remarkable that even the best financial-market analysts are managing to analyze the on-going debt crisis whilst avoiding any mention of the crisis' root cause. The ultimate blame for the crisis lies at the feet of the central banking community and the inherently unsound monetary system it foists on us, and yet almost all the attention is being directed towards the parts played by private-sector debt creators and financial intermediaries.

news.goldseek.com >> 2 January 2008

Industrial Commodities Update
By: Steven Saville, Speculative Investor
There's a good chance that the price of copper will drop to lower levels over the next few weeks, but the price decline from the early-October high of around US$3.80/pound to the current level of US$2.95 has removed a lot of the short-term downside risk.