The latest Investing Matters Podcast with Jean Roche, Co-Manager of Schroder UK Mid Cap Investment Trust has just been released. Listen here.
Mr. Smith was a rapid-fire trader who used his mouse to manually enter and cancel orders so fast that colleagues joked he needed to put ice on his fingers to cool them down, according to trial testimony. Mr. Smith spoofed “all the time,” according to Christian Trunz, a former junior trader who pleaded guilty in 2019 and testified that he learned the tactic by looking over Mr. Smith’s shoulder...and so on and so forth LOL
The DOJ’s fraud section, which tried the case, won convictions in two prior spoofing trials in Chicago, where the futures exchange operated by CME Group Inc. is based. Former gold and silver traders at Deutsche Bank AG and Bank of America Corp. were convicted of spoofing-related crimes in 2020 and 2021, respectively.
In the Deutsche Bank case, the defendants were sentenced to serve one year and a day in prison. The former Bank of America traders haven’t been sentenced. Messrs. Smith and Nowak will be sentenced at a future date.
Would you trust a financial and legal structure that allowed such behaviour...or at best, gave them a little smack....
Fine : Profits +losses +50%
Jail Term: 5 x period of bad beahviour
completely riiculous, and yet it happens again and again..and why is it "allowed" Who benefits ?
the gnome
The $40m paid for 4 m ozs resource (they never bothered to update the resource to my knowledge is about $10/ozs which is basically a very good grass roots discovery cost.
To be very clear they bought the Batie West Permits AND the Doropo permits. Doropo stands at about 5 m ozs, and probably will grow
So the $40m investment has given them access to the ground which contains at least 9 m ozs, which is not too bad.
I have not seen anything that would pass for a DFS on Batie, and the mina questions were
1. the high stripping ratio
2 the refractory nature which required a fine grind to acheive gold liberation (sub 10 micron). What I dont know is how many samples and what volume of earth was used to decide the entire volume of the ore was all refractory?? Or how was the Geomet model constructed? and/or How many Geo met samples were actually measured. The Batie affair smells sub -standard professionalism, at least in disclosure to their share holders.
best
the gnome
Listening to some of the banter from Diggers and Dealers, there are few take homes....Would you trust the same people who put the world in this ridiculous situation to now clear it up and manage the mess they created? There is a good logical argument to suggest an emphatic no?
Given that trust in the Fed who "manages" the US dollar is really the onlying source of value in the US dollar, would one suspect the US$ is overvalued. Simply would you trust the Fed?
Given the Feds behaviour over the last 50 or so years has been to devalue the US$, what is the future price of the uS$ going to be? How much if any US$ would be in your long term investment portfolio?
Strange times, but my bet is that the gold price will be a lot higher in the next 12- years. How high?
best
the gnome
Spoon..
Independent and balanced discussion on anything these days? tough call...! In Australia, arguaby US's most subservient and silliest ally, our government is provoking one of our largest customers and trading partners, that has greatly helped us through the pandemic... LOL> After fiasco's in Vietnam and Iraq (etc), following the leader of the free world, out we go again. With our 3 torpedo boats, a couple of subs, and a few planes.... Dependable? Intelligent?? Balanced and in Australia's best interests???
The Australian government is now sending the wrong message to the Asia-Pacific region by selectively criticising China’s live-fire military exercises around Taiwan, while saying nothing about US Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelsoi’s visit to Taiwan that provoked China’s response.
The message the government is sending is that Australia’s subservience to US strategic objectives trumps its declared interest in having, in the words of Foreign Minister Penny Wong in a 5 August media release, “a region at peace and not in conflict”.
Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan was an intentional provocation of China, as even the Biden White House and the Pentagon acknowledged beforehand by advising her not to go.
China does not accept Biden was genuine in his opposition to the trip, however, as Pelosi’s provocation was consistent with US policy that China sees as saying one thing but doing another: on the one hand affirming the One China policy, while on the other hand elevating US-Taiwan relations, arming Taiwan, and supporting Taiwan’s independence movement.
If the Australian government were genuine about maintaining peace in the region, and believed Biden was genuine, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Foreign Minister Wong should have issued a statement in support of Biden’s opposition to the visit, emphasising Australia’s preference that Pelosi not go to Taiwan.
As the USA’s most loyal ally, such a statement by Australia would have carried serious weight in the US Congress and been very hard for Pelosi to ignore, and could have helped to avert this current escalation of tensions.
Instead, both PM Albanese and Senator Wong refused to comment on Pelosi’s trip.
“I make no comment about the US Speaker’s decision to visit there”, Albanese said on 5 August. “That really is a matter for them.”
Senator Wong “Obviously the level of US engagement with their Taiwanese counterparts is a matter for them.”
By contrast, Senator Wong: “Australia is deeply concerned about the launch of ballistic missiles by China into waters around Taiwan’s coastline. These exercises are disproportionate and destabilising.” She does not seem to realise how disproportionate and destabilising the Australian Governments views appear to be?
Difficult to keep a straight face when reading the news ... whatever are they thinking of? Thinking ???
At it again...
best
the gnome
Balanced discussion on the Ukraine..7 years ago...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-pUj3Vqptx8
Klein predicts US$2-US$3,000/oz gold price for this time next year
Is a wave of merger and acquisition activity coming in the ASX and anywhere else for tat matter, gold space?
Barry Fitzgerald reckons so...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ql4dF7wHPM
The gold sector is about to receive a big boost from a surging price, if Evolution (ASX:EVN) boss Jake Klein’s prediction of between US$2,000-US$3,000/oz by mid-2023 is correct.
“If Klein’s view is shared by others in the industry, standby for a wave of merger and acquisition activity where the bigger companies move on the developers and explorers with 1m-plus ounce gold resources with upside,” Fitzgerald says.
“The developers and developers are looking vulnerable to low-ball bids as they have to enjoy much of a recovery from their smashed levels from the March gold price fall, notwithstanding the gold price rally since.”
Interesting times for investors, and trying to time the market/s
A $10,000 investment in US shares with a diversified portfolio, in 1993 (with income reinvested) would now be worth more than $182,000, more than five times the same investment in cash would have made and representing an annual compounded return of more than 10 per cent. or 17200%
The same amount invested in Australian equities (again, with income reinvested) would now be worth $131,000, representing an annual compounded return of more than 9 per cent. Australian shares offered the second-best returns over 30 years...
Keeping money in cash – the worst-performing asset class over 30 years – would have generated returns of about $36,000, or about 4 per cent.
In 1993 Gold had an average closing price of $362/oz or you could buy 27.6 ozs of gold and stash under your mattress...and for 2022 that is worth about $51,132
I guess I might top up? and enjoy an extra double malt....
best
the gnome
Certainly some very exciting numbers in the mine exploration, and even some fo the extensional exploration around Sukari are not shabby,
Diagrams which show the scale are mandatory in under-graduate geology courses...the very difficult to see the scale in the diagrams they have in the exploration update, which is not good enough for a professional company.
Gripes aside, the thicknesses and grades are very exciting, and I think this will continue to surprise on the upside in the future,
Perhaps a long bow to draw, but there are some potential simialrities with Fosterville...the worlds highest grade underground gold mine...Mining at Fosterville has been focussed underground since 2008, with the Phoenix and
Harrier systems being the main focus of exploration and development. Mined grade from both
orebodies in the years between 2009 and 2014 achieved an average of 4.7g/t Au with
production consisting of sulphide ore from surface to an approximately 800m depth below
ground.
Fosterville Gold Mine celebrated production of its one millionth ounce of gold based firmly
within this history of refractory sulphide gold mining. Compared with other Victorian gold
mines, the disseminated nature of the sulphide gold allows for a deposit that exhibits low
estimation variance combined with systems and processes established to accurately
delineate the controlling structures. The systems in place had been established and worked
for the majority of the 1 million produced ounces.
In late 2014 diamond drilling intercepts into the Lower Phoenix system started showing
coarse visible gold hosted within quartz carbonate veins. Fosterville had several historic drill
intercepts showing visible gold. However, the occurrences were found to be localised and
were not reproducible with follow up drilling, so the initial intercept was received with some
reservations as to the significance. Drill holes continued to target the Lower Phoenix mineral
resource corridor with results continuingto reveal the presence of a coarse gold orebody, growing in magnitude with each subsequent intercept.
By the end of 2016, Fosterville Gold Mine’s Mineral Reserves increased from December 31, 2015 by 66% to 643,000 ounces of gold, with Mineral Reserve grade 9.2 g/t Au from 7.3 g/t Au (Fuller et al, 2017). These increases firmly secures Fosterville’s position as one of the highest grade gold mines in the world and is on the back of sustained
world class drill intercepts including 1,429 g/t Au over 15.15m (Estimated True Width "ETW" )
They will be mining at Sukari and surrounds for many decades to come remains my guess. Q?: Will they have a Fosterville equivalent emerge at depth???
https://smedg.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/papers-2017-pdf/3_orogenic-deposits/1_Fosterville%20Gold%20Mine_DFoulds.pdf
best
the gnome
The Inflation Reduction Act is the latest example of the trend that has transformed the U.S. government into a gigantic bank. The U.S. now lends or guarantees loans totaling over $5 trillion in areas including housing, education, small business, energy, disaster relief and transportation. This figure doesn’t include the assets of semipublic corporations such as Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and lesser-known government-sponsored enterprises, which total more than $6 trillion. The world’s biggest bank, the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, has slightly more than $5 trillion in assets; America’s biggest, JPMorgan Chase & Co., less than $4 trillion.
The federal government appears to have become the biggest bank in the world. How? Over the past century, Congress realized it could create programs to win allies now and absorb the costs years or decades later when the loans default. As early as the New Deal critics assailed President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s spending through lending, or “splending” policy, and warned of the dangers this practice carried for future taxpayers.
The government has endured generations of defaults on its lending programs. Solyndra, a solar manufacturing corporation, defaulted on $535 million in loans guaranteed under the 2009 stimulus act. Few remember the default of the $1.54 billion federal loan to the Great Plains Coal Gasification plant in 1985 or the multibillion-dollar losses the Farmers Home Administration incurred after farm prices dropped in the 1980s. And those defaults are trivial compared with the $188 billion bailout to Fannie and Freddie Mac after the 2008 financial crisis.
Defaults would be less of a problem if Congress was honest about their likelihood and cost. But in 1990 lawmakers passed the Federal Credit Reform Act, which set the current lax standards for government loan accounting. A studyby the American Action Forum found that federal lending programs cost at least $90 billion more than congressional accountants estimated. One reason is that, as Lawrence Summers, then a White House economist, wrote in a 2011 email in the aftermath of the Solyndra default, “gov. is a crappy vc,” or venture capitalist. It has little incentive to make good investments.
When loans don’t default, Congress has found the political pleas of borrowers irresistible. In the early 20th century, the government began by extending payment deadlines on irrigation loans to farmers, but eventually gave up on collecting on billions of dollars in loans. The federal government later forgave many loans made to cities during the Great Depression. Demands by student borrowers for forgiveness and extension are the latest variation of an old story.
The Inflation Reduction Act would set up innumerable opportunities for defaults and forgiveness. The government would be authorized to guarantee loans of up to $20 billion for tribal energy projects,...and so on and so forth
Robust financial system eh? Believe in Gold?
GG
Fair question Cowichan.
I think if I was the CEO I would
1. Define achieveable goals for mining
2. Deliver on those goals consistently, to rebrand, and differnetiate from the chaos of the previous "mngt"
3. Examine closely for sustainable upside within the mine
4. Where there is sustainable upside (different to a short term fix), I would look to deliver this. Sustainable means >>5 years
5. Work the pipeline of opportunities within trucking distance of the mill and infrastructure, to achieve further upside and LOM..say radius of 50 kms
6. Open new Mining opportunities (pref organic) after proper DFS, financing. I would look at trying to derive a debt book to finance the new miing opp, which maybe disposed towards long term, and structure to reduce financing risk for bring the mine to production
7. Maintain the dividend to investors.
Any other CEO's out there, who want to have a go?
Note1: Metals prices are up, but mining companies aren’t spending. Their restraint could keep supplies tight and magnify shortages of raw materials such as copper and zinc that are critical for the transition away from fossil fuels.
Metals prices are up, but mining companies aren’t spending. Their restraint could keep supplies tight and magnify shortages of raw materials such as copper and zinc that are critical for the transition away from fossil fuels.
Project spending by 10 large mining companies, including Rio Tinto PLC, RIO -1.58%? BHP Group Ltd. and Glencore PLC, GLNCY -3.13%? is expected to stay at roughly $40 billion this year and next year, according to figures compiled by Bank of America Corp. That would put capital expenditures well below a 2012 peak close to $80 billion, the bank’s figures show.
Much like the oil industry, mining companies are responding to pressure from investors to give priority to dividends and share buybacks, rather than heavy spending. PAY ATTENTION
the gnome
Its been normal practise for a long time now. The fact that its so obvious does suggest something about the regulators, and their real concern for a fair and equitable market access. Like so many things we see these days the "talk" (legislature) is seriously amiss from "the walk" (what happens in the market/world). The easy question. Who benefits from this? and why?
The point of having a public market is to have it as a fair and transparent place where equities and commodities are traded, with all sellers and buyers having equal rights including access and transaction costs, This is not the case. The gold market is one notorius case, but once you start digging away you find them all of the place. High speed traders. Here are some notes
"Yes, where “unfair” means violating the premises of free markets: many small, independent agents, free flow of information, forces of supply and demand free from intervention by government or other authority, no barriers, tariffs, taxes, monopolies, or any forms of economic privilege, monopolies and artificial scarcities. Popper, Karl (1994). The Open Society and Its Enemies. Routledge Classics. ISBN 978-0-415-61021-6
It’s not mere speed, but the special privileges and benefits which exchanges give to their “best” customers. 'Hide Not Slide' Orders Were Slippery and Hidden
Common sense says so. Banks match issuers and investors for stocks and bonds. To give issuers permanent capital BUT allow investors liquidity, banks offer trading as a follow-on service. Traders deserve a small service fee and premium for inventory risk. Anything beyond that is a zero sum game. When an HFT makes a billion, it means tens of millions of retail savers have each lost hundreds.
HFT simply cheat the system and offer nothing, no liquidity, price discovery or matching, in return."
and on the farce goes...https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2015-01-13/hide-not-slide-orders-were-slippery-and-hidden
Be interesting to see how the DOJ goes, and how real their concerns are...my bet? toothless tiger, a few slaps and a couple of bucks fine.
Bit like the endless rubbish about democracy you see printed all over the place by the US. It does not exist, or if it does, lets have a look at the defintion again.
the gnome
A Gold Bull Economist ?
2022 Keynote Dr. Dambisa Moyo
at the DIGGERS AND DEALERS CONFERENCE IN KALGOORLIE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7ufy70KvSg
For those who want to listen to the updates from numerous gold companies
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCeSnbgsRrmmHjFxtw-BtDpQ/videos
best
the Gnome
Thanks Mr T
To be clear, I am not suggesting there is any innocent party in this stupid affair inthe Ukraine, except for the people who just want to live a normal life, have a secure job, good friends, safe community (other dreams) I suggested that the innocent people of the Ukraine have been subjected to numerous stupidities, projected by ideologues, who are supposedly more intelligent and one would hope know better, but the evidence suggests they know less.
Go gold, and lets hope the peoples of the Ukraine, however they (the ideologues) draw their silly borders, can live a normal and productive life.
the gnome
Australia’s post-lockdown economic rebound has arguably been very strong, with a significant employment surge despite the continued prevalence of COVID in the community. However, CFOs face a number of new challenges as they enter the second half of 2022. CPI data last week saw annual inflation rise further to 6.1% (the highest level since the introduction of GST), while the RBA today has announced another increase in the official cash rate to 1.85% – the fourth consecutive monthly rise. Against this backdrop, the good news is that three-quarters of CFOs surveyed for Deloitte’s latest CFO Sentiment report are still optimistic about the prospects of their own business – although these new risks have made them more cautious about the state of the broader economic environment.
Persistent inflation and rapid interest rate increases are challenges CFOs have not faced in decades. As a result, net optimism about financial prospects relative to half a year ago has dropped from 37% in the last survey to -8% now. This is a significant fall in net optimism, especially when compared to much smaller falls in the last three surveys, where CFOs were grappling with more disruptive (but now familiar) COVID outbreaks and related challenges.
Such risks are also contributing to uncertainty levels, with 88% of CFOs presently considering uncertainty to be higher than normal – and contributing to a decline in risk appetite. Interestingly, the cautiousness and uncertainty CFOs are experiencing is different to that experienced in the past. Previously, even though uncertainty levels were high over the last 18 months, CFOs still felt ready to take on risk. Today, however, only 25% believe they should take on more risk now, compared to 58% at the end of last year.
RISK ADVERSE INVESTORS/PUNTERS....So RAISING MONEY FOR GOLD EXPLORATION HAS BECOME A VERY TOUGH GIG, ESPECIALLY IF THATS ALL YOU DO. THIS WILL PLAY OUT INTO THE FUTURE AS LESS AVAILABLE GOLD BEING FOUND, AND ... LESS TO BE MINED, AND THATS ONT HE BACK OF A PATHETIC GOLD DISCOVERY RATE OF THE LAST 10 YEARS ....GO GOLD !
The Gnome
And where one asks is the glorious LBMA whilst the rats are in the belfry? and how does the proper workings of a highly regulated and supposedly efficient market result in such market distortion, which now does not even pass as a joke?
They are organising love ins concerning small scale gold miners, with the actions from the love in merely making more illicit gold flows through the gold markets in Dubai? and they get paid for this sort of management?
https://www.oecd.org/daf/inv/mne/Presentation_300713.pdf
For those who want to try to understand the opaque management of the gold market...
https://www.lbma.org.uk/market-standards/clearing
and of the course the prosaic guide
https://cdn.lbma.org.uk/downloads/Publications/LBMA-The-Guide-2017-v1.pdf
reads very well, and looks nice, but the actions that emanate from it appear odourous
One would think we could do a lot better, I will give them my calling card!?
best
the Gold Gnome
One of the (many) injustices dealt out by the legal profession is the inequality of the sentences they hand out between those who illegally make money with a suit on, versus those that dont wear a suit.
JPMorgan is the biggest player among a small group of “bullion banks” that dominate the precious metals markets,
Recap the propoganda about bullion banks: Bullion banks are and continue to be a key pillar of the market - they build greater trust across the gold value chain, drive efficiency, provide liquidity, promote transparency and support price discovery.
"Support price discovery" What a joke!
JP Morgan Bullion Banks price discovery team summary: the business is a consistent moneymaker for JPMorgan, notching up annual profits of between $US109 million ($156 million) and $US234 million a year between 2008 and 2018. The lion’s share of that comes from trading in financial markets, but the bank does plenty of physical business as well. Trading and transporting physical precious metals make the bank about $US30 million a year on average.
Still, the profits disclosed in the trial have been overshadowed more recently: in 2020, JPMorgan made $US1 billion in precious metals as the pandemic created unprecedented arbitrage opportunities,.
JPMorgan holds tens of billions of dollars in gold in vaults in London, New York and Singapore. It is one of four clearing members of the London market, where global gold prices are set by buying and selling metal held in a few London vaults -- including JPMorgan’s and the Bank of England’s. SMELL A RAT?
In 2010, for example, 40 per cent of all transactions in the gold market were cleared by JPMorgan.
How do the employees of JP go at the trading desk?Mr Ruffo, the bank’s hedge fund salesman, was paid $US10.5 million from 2008 to 2016. Mr Smith, the top gold trader, got $US9.9 million. Mr Nowak, their boss, made the most of all: $US23.7 million over the same period.
Their pay was linked to the profits they made for the bank. FBI agent Marc Troiano, citing internal JPMorgan data, told the court that the total profit allocated to Mr Ruffo from 2008 to 2016 was $US70.3 million. Mr Smith generated about $US117 million over the same period, while Mr Nowak made the bank $US186 million, including $US44 million in 2016
Soros is a client. Another set of important clients were central banks, which trade gold for their reserves and are among the biggest players in the bullion market. At least ten central banks held their metal in vaults run by JPMorgan in 2010, according to documents disclosed in court.
SMELL A RAT.?
Q: Why do we need Bullion Banks with special privileges. What makes a cartel. What behaviours are cartels well known for.
WHAT A JOKE
Very large fines (100% of ill gotten gains), and very large jail terms please
CUI BONO is a Latin phrase that means “who benefits?”, and is used to suggest that there's a high probability that those responsible for a certain event are the ones who stand to gain
It seems to me no one knows what they are talking about when it comes to the Ukraine [and probably history more broadly]
I recall being taught the History of the British Empire, by a delightful History teacher when I was young, at High School. I actually got a high distinction I was so enthralled. It is now apparent, that what he taught was marginally short of utter rubbish, but he, and we, did not know that back then. Such was the state of knowledge, .... and other things
I once worked for a most famous Mining Company, for 15 years, and was lucky to rise through the ranks to the top, technically speaking. It got taken over, as happens. Some years later, one of the former CEO's decided that the ~70 year history of this most famous company was lost or in the process of being lost, and so he commissoned a history of the company to be written, and duly appointed himself as Editor in Chief [ with the best of intentions] The book was written and edited, and I am sure edited gain, and came out as a hard cover book which looked great and will last 100-200 years. The trouble began when one read it, with the knowledge of one had lived through some of the history, and the history written was not a lot like the history experienced? HIstory is written by the winners (as we know) but in this case it was edited by one of the losers, who did not want to own up to what he had lost. So best edit the losses out. and so on and so forth.
A little later, I started another Exploration Company, which became a Unicorn (Market Cap $1b) in about 4 years! A few more years after a lot (including myself) had moved on, the new Managing Director decided that most people did not really know the history of the company, so he commisssioned a hisotry book to be written Who should write , and who should edit etc? Well it got wrote [by an Independent Journalist], and once again I got my copy, and opened the pages. Again the history written was not that similar to the history lived. Only ~20 years had transpired, and yet the history was in tatters, and despair set in.
I realised that History is such a subjective matter, and people can argue to they are blue in the face, about the "true facts"
and who really did this, and said that...
I realised that if one has so much trouble trying to catch the history of a company of 70 years old, or 20 years, what hope does one have of trying to understand what really happened to a country, in a 500 year history, with may winners and losers through those years.
I think not a lot...
Great to read the history, but believing it is another country. Not my country any more. There are more important things to do with ones few more days on the planet, than to read and argue the delusions and lies of others.
Go gold
best
the Gold Gnome.
Just when we thought our country was gaining sensibilities...we get this from the newly elected government LOL..changes to our constitution to give a minority more rights than a majority in our democracy, yet we have no agreement on how to define the minority (who exactly is indigenous and who not, and what criteria to use and what not..and of course we will need another royal commission and gatherings of legal minds to contemplate this, just after they have given up on how to define who is male and who is female and how one decides on whether one is NOT in fact one of the other 52 legal gender definitions they have let loose on...and they have decided that the English Dictionary built over the last 1000 years needs to delete all gender imbalanced pronouns by the end of this year, and so on and so forth - just gimme some truth as John L used to sing about LOL)
"Former High Court chief justice Robert French has backed the draft changes to the Constitution that establish the Indigenous Voice to parliament, calling it a “sensible and straightforward proposal”."...just sensibilties seem to have gone missing.
In fact the extremely odd thing is the indigenous voice, is in fact it is not a voice, but rather a suite of voices which comes from rural, remote and mostly educated persons living in cities. It seems to not recognise there was never a voice, and never an indigenous nation, and so on and so forth.
I did contemplate after my second double malt, that the Lunatics has won once again in taking over the asylum.
And then I reached for my thrid.
best of luck to all non indigenous persons. You probably do have a origin, that qualifies you for indiginous rights somewhere, and sometime. Don't ask me, as I dont even know who my grandfather was on my fathers side. But I do know he was born when by grandmother was 14 years old, in Broken Hill NSW.
tough world eh?
best
the Gold Gnome