Red-Hot Resources

"Luck is not chance, it’s toil; fortune’s expensive smile is earned.”

Wednesday, September 20, 2006

Here's Some Good News...

Gold Rises in Asia as Price Drops Attract Buying From Jewelers


By Chia-Peck Wong and Debarati Roy

Sept. 20 (Bloomberg) -- Gold rose in Asia amid buying from jewelers, who are increasing their purchases after the precious metal's 8 percent decline this month.

The bullion's drop is attracting jewelers looking to build stocks before next month's Indian wedding season and the year- end holidays. Buying in Thailand isn't related to yesterday's military coup, which appeared orderly, said trader Ng Cheng Thye.

"India, Thailand, Indonesia, the whole region has been buying heavily,'' Ng, head of the precious metals market desk at Standard Bank Asia, said by phone today from Singapore.

Read the rest at: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601012&sid=ayAalfQUFs.I&refer=commodities

The lack of buying by the big jewelers has been of real concern. If they're returning to the market, we could see things turn around.

Meanwhile, what's been happening with the leading gold ETF, the GLD? Have people been pulling their money out of that? Well that's an interesting story.

In the last month, the GLD has added 55,407.79 metric tonnes of gold. That looks pretty good, except that up until the day before yesterday, the fund had added 154,683.55 metric TONNES of gold. You can do the math yourself by following this link...

http://www.streettracksgoldshares.com/us/value/gb_value_usa.php#2

So that dip we saw in gold yesterday? Looks like part of it was panic selling out of the GLD -- 100,000 tonnes worth. Since the GLD consistently added gold all the way through the rest of gold's correction, this could be typical of the kind of panic selling you see at a bottom. See, the vast majority of people buy at the wrong time and sell at the wrong time.

Now, I could be wrong, and eating these words on Friday. Maybe the selling in the GLD will continue, and overwhelm the buying by the big jewelry houses. But I think it's more likely we're near a bottom for gold.

Note that "a bottom" is not necessarily "the bottom." But it's good enough for a rally to 612.
Check out my new gold and energy blog at MoneyAndMarkets.com