Member Info for carvegyber

JMT, you are right. I got carried away on prospect of nuclear war and rationale to buy gold. LOL

They should appoint you mediator for this conflict. Chief slapper.

DrJ. Western media has a lot to blame. There has been no balanced analysis of why Nato matters to Russia and how the conflict can be avoided and resolved. All there is, is a one sided view of big tough boy beating up a little boy picture being painted. Anyone who tries to understand why and pipes up is immediately labelled an apologist and that culture runs right through BBC.

Gav, you work for BBC?

These regional autonomy are hard for outsiders to understand. Even us here in the UK have our own version of it in Ireland.

Back to my loud music example, you could support the music player and say he is a free man and he can play whatever music he wants and whatever volume he wants. Does it lead to peace and harmony? Sometimes freedom of choice doesn't mean you should just do it. Same with Nato.

I agree with DrJ that I don't think Putin has any intention of expanding into Eastern Europe. Putin prior to this has co-existed and cooperated with the west economically very well. He hasn't shown any aggression towards Eastern Europe whatsoever. Ukraine is different. It has a large Russian population and a few Russian regions.

I think the invasion was a miscalculation by Putin thinking he would steam roll Ukraine in 2-3weeks hence setting a warning for the west to take them seriously about Nato. We still don't take him seriously on his grievance about Nato. All the west and the western media is focussed on is to push Putin. We could well succeed in backing him into a corner but I can tell you now, the lash out will not be pretty.

Buy gold.

No doubt there has been Russian atrocities just as there has been in Iraq and Guantanamo. My point was, all this could have been avoided.

If someone set up massive loudspeaker at the fence of your backyard and blare loud music at you, you would warn them to cut it out. You tell the loudspeaker supplier to stop the supply and cut it out or you will take action. Instead of cutting it out, the volume gets turned up. What do you do?

Just talk, stop the music and there would have been no bombs. The autonomy and support for regions within a country is complicated and you have this all over the world. Iraq, Azerbaijan, Syria, Georgia, Moldova, Yugoslavia, Sudan and what I know is, every time the west gets involved, it gets messy. I am getting more pessimistic about nuclear war now after Liz Truss saying we should give them planes. It has gone from 30% chance to 75% chance if that were to happen.

I don't condone invasion of Ukraine but Russia was provoked. Biden could have easily ended it before this all started by agreeing with Russia that they will not make Ukraine a NATO member. There were months of warning and build up. I never favour conflict and I would always say talk your way out of it if you can and America clearly could.

Now I am afraid the West and Russia is sleep walking into Nuclear war with the new ratcheting up of tension. Someone needs to slap US and Russia in the face and say talk properly. Ukraine is just a pawn.

PB, we have different views on the longevity of USD. This is a slow play so us sitting here talking in horizon of couple of years and usd's dominance being eroded over decades is probably like playing violin to a cow.

I actually agree with you that $3k gold is far fetched but I would expect gold to reach $2300 in the next couple of years. Silver should get to $50 in that scenario though.

Interestingly, governments of more than half the world's population didn't join in the US sanctions on Russia. They can see through the bully boy tactics of US and don't want to pick sides. As these economies grow, and the US ones go into decline, USD will become less and less important. Nobody outside the US want to drive US cars anymore and the same with many manufactured goods. I can definitely see gold's importance increase under current trends. Long term.

JMT, just guessing here but I suspect the Fed is in a hurry to raise rates by 0.5% quickly so that they can slash it when the rate rises and inflation sends the economy tanking. Then there will be money printing. Funnily enough, countries that have been used to high inflation like China and the emerging markets will do OK.

To invest in gold stocks, you really do have to believe in gold as an inflation hedge that is 6000 years in the making. When people are selling stocks (China lockdown), they by default hold dollars. That I believe will change but it will not change in days or months. Already the world's reserves are made up less in dollars. Ukraine will just hasten that and also shift trade into other currencies. It is not an overnight job.

Slater, you missed my point. If you use short term volatility to base your gold or miners investments, then this game is not for you. If you look at gold chart (and Fres) from 2000 to 2011, then you will see that the rise is not in a straight line. It is jagged punctuated with many sharp drops. To get the real value out of gold, your horizon will need to be much longer and have the stomach for sharp drops. Or just take advantage of the volatility and trade some. Like I do. Love it.

High inflation has only become a reality in the last 12 months after disappearing for many many years or even decades. It doesn't look like it will go away. Companies that makes stuff or have low margin will come under pressure. When they start closing up shop or going bust, a recession will be at hand. Add to that unpredictability of Russia, gold and miners look good to me. You can come back and argue about the price of Fres 12 months ago or 3 years ago or whatever but my eyes are on the longer term so I won't bother about the short term volatility. This is the nature of gold price and Fres price. You haven't the stomach for the ride, get off....

Barhut, actually, PM miners have outperformed almost everything in the last couple of months. Gold has risen from around 1800 levels and GDX has gone up 20%. What are you on about?

These are great times. If inflation and rate hikes causes stocks and economy to go down, we then have stagflation and you can sit back and watch miners fly....

Nqm, you really can't make it up. A multimillion project run by a company with the clout of Penoles in Mexico can't get the electric board to speed things up. Meanwhile drug lords run riot on the streets.

Laugher, you are right. USD will not disappear overnight. Just that world trade will become more fragmented after this war and % trade in USD will be lesser and lesser as their economy's share of the world's GDP shrink as the rest of the world catch. Meanwhile, its continual meddling in other people's affairs will further alienate countries around the world and China will be happy to include them into its circle of influence.

No so long ago uncle sam was waving a stick at venezuela and Iran. Now their oil should be ramped up to provide us with our daily needs....everyone else can see uncle sam is an unreliable partner.

People holding dollars are gonna look at it and start wondering how many of them is the feds still printing out of thin air? When the world starts having less need for dollars and start selling them it will hasten the collapse that will accelerate. The big unknown is China. If it will throw its gold hat into the ring, then we could have a real show.

Russia is self sustaining food wise being a wheat exporter. It controls many of the resources the world needs and in fact, it is now exporting more than its imports. Its currency should appreciate as a result. ROW will start trading with it using Roubles pegged to gold or gold itself. Oil and gas becomes linked to the gold price by default and weakening the world's need to USD. What does the world need from USA? Netflix? Apple Phones? Chevy? Tesla? We buy resources (things we need) from outside US and goods from China. For the basics, the world needs Russia and China more that US.

Russia will just have to get used to eating at McDonski restaurants. The chess game is being played.

I am no chartist but I can tell you that HUI index is outperforming the gold price which means that more attention is being paid to miners. I am sure you have noticed this recently when gold fell back but Fres didn't.

Looks like Putin is not as mad as I originally feared. He seems to be beating a retreat dressed up as refocussing. I was worried that he was going to escalate it into chemical warfare when he can't make advances.

Looks like those British antitank weapons are pretty effective. Brilliant.

Exactly, Demo. Another western injustice. We cut down our forests to build ships to conquer the world, started the industrial scale pollution with our invention, enslaved the natives for labour and got rich as a result and now we lecture the farmers in South America not to cut theirs down to feed themselves. Tell them no to burn fossil fuel for their power needs but instead have to pay for unaffordable green means. I can't see why India would agree to that. China possibly because they are quite advance in greening their economy but India is firmly stuck in the fossil era because they have no money to invest.

After 2014, Russia made itself self sufficient food, energy and resources wise. They can hunker down and sit it out. China can supply them all the manufactured goods they need. The people will have to do without MacDonald's for a while but really, the effect is just to push the east closer together.

China would be very pleased with the outcome and would really not appreciate a long line of western old men lecturing it. Hong Kong had no democracy under British rule but under China, we queue up to lecture because we are self righteous thinking our way is the right way. I can tell you an overwhelming vast majority of Chinese citizens are very happy with their rulers unlike here and US.