My Gold Party - Blog

For the past few years now I have been reading articles about gold and if it will hit the 1500 mark. The price of gold has steadily increased for the past 3+ years.
Gold has been hanging around the 1495 mark for the greater part of today. Will gold actually reach 1500? I guess we will have to wait and see!

European Stocks Surge; Gold Prices Hit Record Prices
By Andrea Tryphonides

European stock markets surged Monday and gold prices climbed to a record as investors turned once again to riskier assets, including shares and commodities.

The dollar weakened against the euro, providing a fillip to commodities prices. When the dollar weakens, commodities, quoted in dollars, tend to rise in price.

The greenback came into Monday’s session on a weaker note following dovish comments by James Bullard, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.

Bullard told Dow Jones Newswires on Sunday that he wanted the U.S. central bank to continue its extraordinary purchases of mortgage-backed securities beyond the planned cut-off period of the first-quarter 2010.

Bullard’s comments will heighten interest in the minutes from the FOMC due out Tuesday after the European market close. Investors will be watching closely for any information on an exit strategy from the stimulus program and whether recent dovish comments from officials will be mirrored in the report.

With Thanksgiving in the U.S. later this week, financial markets activity is expected to taper off throughout the week.

In equity markets, the pan-European Stoxx 600 index closed up 2.0% at 248.5. London’s FTSE 100 increased 2.0% to 5355.5, Frankfurt’s DAX gained 2.4% to 5801.5 and Paris’s CAC-40 finished 2.2% higher at 3813.2. The stronger than expected November composite purchasing managers index, also helped boost European equities.

At Europe’s close, the main U.S. equity markets were also higher, boosted by energy and materials stocks and significantly better than expected existing homes sales as people rushed to close purchase deals before the expiration of a federal tax credit program aimed at new homebuyers.

Meanwhile, the euro traded close to the $1.50-mark after Bullard’s comments. At about 1650 GMT, the euro was at $1.4971 from $1.4851 late on Friday. Elsewhere the U.K. pound was at $1.6614 from $1.6491.

Gold, which has a strong inverse relationship to the dollar, rocketed. Late Monday in London, spot gold was trading at $1,170.5 a troy ounce, up 2.1%. The metal hit a record high of $1,174 an ounce on the Comex division of the New York Mercantile Exchange earlier in the day. Gold is up nearly 12% this month and analysts said while the metal is increasingly susceptible to a correction, the rally still has legs.
Platinum, silver and copper also touched fresh highs.

Likewise, the price of crude oil advanced on the weaker dollar but also as concerns regarding Iran’s nuclear program returned to the fore. Light, sweet crude for January delivery was up almost 2% at $78.90 on the New York Mercantile exchange at 1700 GMT.

Source: Tryphonides , A. (2009, November 23). European stocks surge; gold prices hit record. Wall Street Journal, Retrieved from http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20091123-710742.html?mod=rss_Global_Stocks

The price of the gold futures hit a record $1,123.40 early Thursday — confounding market analysts who thought there was no way gold would remain so expensive when it first cracked the unheard-of $1,000 mark last year.

The remarkable run has implications far beyond savvy investors. In New York’s diamond district, more people started showing up late last year to sell their gold, and the crush hasn’t let up, said Anthony Iannelli, owner of Iannelli Diamonds.

“They’re bringing in jewelry from the ’70s and ’80s they don’t wear anymore,” he said. “They’re following the news and see prices are high. They realize they have a little cache, and want to take it out of the vault.”

Typically, gold is a safe place for investors to park their money, not something they buy to make money. It doesn’t earn any interest, and because it’s always sought-after, its value tends to be fairly stable. For example, when gold first reached $1,000 it was in March 2008, shortly after the collapse of investment bank Bear Stearns. Investors bought it up then because they feared for the stability of the financial system.

This time is different. Investors — think of them as the ’09ers — are buying gold to protect themselves against the falling dollar.

Currencies are weak investments around the world because of record-low interest rates. Foreign banks that hold substantial amounts of U.S. debt, such as China’s, want to diversify their holdings. News earlier this month that India’s central bank bought nearly $7 billion worth of gold from the International Monetary Fund triggered a frenzy of gold buying.

The surge has been remarkable. Gold is up 7 percent just this month, and 26 percent for the year. Some forecasters see it going to $1,200, $1,500 or beyond — unless the buying frenzy comes to a halt.

Some analysts are panning the gold speculation.

“You just don’t see increases like this over the short term” that last, says Steve Condon, director of investor advisory services for Truepoint Capital in Cincinnati. “This isn’t materially different from gambling.”

Nevertheless, people across the country are cashing in. More than 100 people a day now come to sell their gold at Ernest Perry’s antique and estate jewelry store in Charlotte, N.C., up significantly in recent weeks.

But the rising price of gold has put a dramatic dent in jewelry sales, already suffering from the recession. Far fewer customers are looking to buy gold jewelry because of the soaring price, Perry said.

“I think it will just about kill the gold jewelry business” if the price rises and remains above $1,500 an ounce, Perry said. He predicted silver would become the primary metal used in jewelry if gold prices drive customers out of the market.

For the most part, though, demand for gold is coming from investors and speculators, not from people who actually want to use it. Demand for gold for jewelry and for industrial and dental uses was already falling during the second quarter, according to the latest data available from the World Gold Council.

Perry said customers looking to sell their gold should go to dealers with plenty of experience and expect to get, on average, about 70 percent of the current price. And there are other ways to get into gold than selling family heirlooms.

There are gold funds, publicly traded gold mining companies and gold bullion or coins, depending on what makes someone the most comfortable. No way is certain to be the safest or most lucrative.

And of course, there’s no guarantee the bubble won’t burst.

Gold prices could fall when interest rates rise, the dollar strengthens, or when optimism about the economy takes hold again, as happened briefly the first time gold reached $1,000. If that happens, the damage could be long-lasting: Gold reached $850 an ounce in 1980, then took 28 years to return to that level. (Gold’s peak in 1980 is about $2,300 in 2009 dollars.)

Anyone who’s not sure whether this is a good time to buy can take heart from a Goldman Sachs forecast on Wednesday that said gold prices could reach $1,200 by year’s end. But it’s hard to forget what happened with crude oil prices, which shed more than half their value in less than a year after peaking at $147 a barrel in July 2008.

No one knows when a seemingly unstoppable rally will end badly.

AP Business Writers Stephen Bernard, Candice Choi and Sara Lepro in New York contributed to this story.

Source: http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Booming-precious-metal-prices-apf-4026835623.html?x=0&.v=3

By Nick Godt & Polya Lesova

MarketWatch

SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) — Gold futures breached new highs Tuesday, with the most active contract hitting $1,087 an ounce, after an Indian central bank said it would purchase 200 metric tons of bullion and the dollar, while higher, moderated its gains.

Gold for December delivery, the most active contract, rose as high as $1,087 an ounce — an intraday high for that contract. It recently traded up $32.1, or 3%, to $1,086.1 an ounce in electronic trading on Comex.

In a break with recent trends, the gold and dollar both rose while U.S. stocks fell. Gold has gotten a lift from the roughly 14% drop in the U.S. dollar since early March, moving alongside a rise in the U.S. stock market.

But on Tuesday, India’s appetite for gold reserves pushed gold higher in European trading and underpinned its advance during the New York session. The dollar also rose as investor nervousness ahead of Wednesday’s Federal Reserve meeting pulled investors away from stocks and other so-called risk assets.

“The reason for the gold move today is mostly India’s purchase,” said Doug Keller, managing director at Binary Research, a commodities research firm.

Also driving prices higher, the early advance helped gold break out of a technical range that has capped action in the past month. The moves led to what Keller described as an “anomaly in the market of gold decoupling from the dollar.”

November gold, the less actively traded front-month contract, rose $28.9 an ounce, or 2.7%, to $1,082.3 an ounce. That’s a record high for a front-month contract.

Silver, copper and other metals futures also added to gains.

Helping boost metals, the Commerce Department said factory orders rose 0.9% in September, the fifth monthly increase in six months and more than economists expected. See full story.

The report, and a subsequent moderation in stock losses, knocked the U.S. dollar further off its lows. The moderation helped gold, copper, oil and other hard assets, which tend to gain in value when the U.S. dollar weakens.

Gold had hit highs near $1,067 an ounce in European trading, buoyed by news India’s central bank has bought 200 metric tons of the precious metal from the International Monetary Fund.

The dollar index /quotes/comstock/11j!i:dxy0 (DXY 76.26, -0.03, -0.04%) , which tracks the performance of the greenback against a basket of other major currencies, rose to 76.42 from around 76.247 in North American trade late Monday. It had earlier reached a high of 76.817.

The S&P 500 Index /quotes/comstock/21z!i1:in\x (SPX 1,043, +0.06, +0.01%) fell 3 points to 1,040. It had dropped as low as 1,034 earlier.

December silver futures, down ahead of the factory orders report, gained 72 cents to $17.16 an ounce. December copper futures also turned higher, gaining 1 cent to $2.9640 a pound.

Platinum for January delivery rose $22.9, or 1.7%, to $1,361 an ounce.

Palladium for December delivery struggled rose $1.45 to $327.75 an ounce.

The International Monetary Fund said Monday it sold 200 metric tons of gold to the Reserve Bank of India. That’s part of a total of 403.3 metric tons of gold approved for sale in September.

The news had boosted December gold to $1,066.90 an ounce in European trading.

The India transaction, which is in the process of being settled, involved daily sales that were phased over a two-week period between Oct. 19 and Oct. 30, with each daily sale conducted at a price set on the basis of market prices prevailing that day, the IMF said. The total sales proceeds are equivalent to $6.7 billion.

This news is “very bullish,” wrote analysts at bullion dealers GoldCore in a note to clients.

“The sales occurred over two weeks prior to October 30 when gold was trading between $1,030/oz and $1,070/oz, showing that physical demand for gold is very robust at these levels,” they said.

Gold has also found support due to technical buying and a lack of major negative news, according to Chintan Karnani, analyst at Insignia Consultants in New Delhi.

And gold traders are “position building” ahead of the three major upcoming central bank meetings: the U.S. Federal Reserve, the European Central Bank and the Bank of England, he said, with none of them expected to change their interest-rate outlook until the first quarter of 2010.

“In my view, it will be a very volatile week,” said Karnani.

Analysts at Credit Suisse said further risks to gold prices loom this week as the Federal Reserve holds its interest-rate setting meeting Wednesday.

The FOMC may alter its statement to a “less dovish tone, which could trigger some profit-taking across the precious metals space,” they wrote in a report.

Source: Godt, N, & Lesova, P. (2009, November 3). December gold futures hit $1,087 an ounce india central bank buys give an early lift; dollar in play. WALL STREET JOURNAL, MarketWatch, Retrieved from http://www.marketwatch.com/story/gold-futures-rise-as-much-as-12-on-globex-2009-11-03?pagenumber=2

After weeks of persistent decline, the falling US Dollar continues to drive the Gold rally. The yellow metal has now been trading above 2008’s previous highs for a seventh successive session. This morning’s most recent advance has seen Gold make yet another new high over $1,070, in electronic trading the Comex December contract traded as high as $1,072.

After a consolidating period on Friday and Monday, the gold market changed gears yesterday, gaining more than $20 over the past couple of sessions. Tuesday saw the yellow metal continued to gain momentum and test $1,070 in early trading before easing back as the day progressed.

The latest move was triggered by further broad based Dollar weakness. The US Dollar index on London’s Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) fell another half percent overnight to stand at 75.78. The Dollar index has fallen consistently from its 2009 high of 90 points in March. The US Dollar index represent the relative strength of the Dollar against a basket of the 6 other major global currencies.

Some analysts claim that this most recent movement in Forex and Commodity markets comes as reports suggest that the Federal Reserve will maintain their unprecedented low rates for longer than the other major central banks.

The recent rally in Crude Oil, which has seen crude hit $75, has also supported the wider commodity market.

As investors evaluate the current price action in the gold market, analyst sentiment is beginning to conflict with some pointing to an overbought yellow metal.  On Friday a new monthly investment strategy report from CIBC, ‘Global Positioning Strategies’ seemed downbeat on the gold rally’s sustainability. According to CIBC the main factors behind Gold’s recent surge were fading off with investor worries easing and the US Dollar being poised for a “relief rally” in the next two or three months, having “overshot to the downside.”

On the other hand, more bullish analysts are expecting a sustained rally; some even expect that gold will rise a further 10% from today’s record breaking high, with prices speculated to reach between $1,100 – $1,300 an ounce before the end of 2009.

Source: (2009, October 14). Gold hits $1,070 As the US Dollar Extends its Unrelenting Decline . Retrieved from http://www.proactiveinvestors.co.uk/companies/news/9115/gold-hits-1070-as-the-us-dollar-extends-its-unrelenting-decline–9115.html

As the weakening economy causes purse strings to tighten in many parts of the world, consumers are increasingly looking for new ways to earn some extra money.

Enter My Gold Party, which facilitates Tupperware-style parties that help guests sell their unused trinkets, cashing in on record gold prices.

My Gold Party sells all the equipment minipreneurs need to host parties in which guests can sell their gold, including a scale, karat tester and book of instructions. Party hosts then invite guests to bring gold coins, watches and jewelry to their party, where they assay and weigh each item to determine its current market worth.

The party host pays guests for the items, then ships the gold to a refinery, which in turn pays the host—at a rate the host hopes will be higher than paid to the party guests. The gold is then melted down and reused. My Gold Party’s kit for hosts is priced at USD 699.50.

Consumers in hard times have always been able to sell their spare jewelry in pawn shops, but by bringing the process out of the back alley and into the living room, My Gold Party legitimises and updates it with a social and entrepreneurial twist.

Souce: Whittle, R (2008). Have A Gold Party!. GoBiz, Retrieved from http://www.business-opportunities.biz/2008/05/29/have-a-gold-party/

My Gold Party has perfected the process of helping you get immediate cash for your unwanted gold items. Simply click here. Complete the information requested and we will send a scrap box for you to receive within a few days of your request. The scrap box contains all of the instructions on how to sell your gold including the mailing materials.

Once we receive your scrap box we immediately evaluate the metals and email you requesting approval of the amount you will be paid. Once you accept we immediately mail you the check. It’s that easy to make money! In fact, checks over $1,000 will be mailed overnight delivery. If you decide not to sell your gold we will return the items to you at no cost.

Payment of metals is based on 3 factors:

1. The spot price of gold
2. The karat of each piece
3. The weight in grams.

Unlike other companies, you will know up front exactly how much your check will be. It is such a seamless process to make easy money for selling items that you no longer want or wear. Have a look around your house – send in your gold rings, gold coins, gold necklaces, any gold jewelry and we will help you turn your old unwanted gold into something valuable again.

Visit www.mygoldparty.com or call us toll free at 1-888-44-MYGOLD for more information.