Member Info for TakingMyTime

Nice Samso find, TT. It's around the edges of the elephant in the room (Telfer / Hav) but a nice potential for down the road. Seems pretty good analysis to me.

LOL, crossposted with Martyin.

DM, 1500 tons went to Canada, along with billions in securities. A lot of it was used in the US to buy arms for the UK.

There's no evidence of which I'm aware that any went to Wales. I suspect that's urban legend.

Before it went to Canada, some of it was distributed to different banks around the UK for decentralized safe-keeping. When it started to look like there was a chance England could be taken, it was sent to Canada in advance so that Britain could stay in the war, if necessary from overseas.

Your post is partly right but some of the details are far astray. And you are right that he misread your post and his answer ended up being a non sequitur.

I personally don't expect those IPOs to have any real impact on gold.

Tons of money has been pouring into short term bond funds over the last few months. That's the move of investors who are looking for a temporary shelter from risk, not people who are looking to lock their money away for a long time. It's investors who have their eyes open for an opportunity. Some of them will see these IPOs as an opportunity and will jump.

A huge segment of the money for these will come from funds that are already invested somewhere else in the tech sector. People will close out some of their positions in other tech shares and buy these.

Those who are holding gold are people or institutions who are looking for safety and inflation protection. Those are not the kind of people who are looking to jump into an IPO in the tech sector.

Banks have been buying gold because it's in the top tier of liquidity assets under Basel III. They aren't going to liquidate that for a risky IPO, it would require other major rebalancing. Central banks have been buying gold to strengthen their balance sheets and for inflation and currency protection. They aren't buying tech IPOs.

There's been some gold-buying for speculative purposes, from people who thought it was the best get-rich-quick option out there. Those people might jump to an IPO but those are a small portion of the gold market.

The IPOs won't change the inflation / government debt outlook at all. If anything, they may fuel more market "irrational exuberance" which could drive even more people to get nervous about the markets and buy gold for safety. If IPOs bring any downward pressure on gold, it will be minor and temporary. Until the deficit-driven inflation is brought under control, gold's trajectory will remain upward, if may not always as rapidly as we've seen recently.

"I don't like share buy backs as not accretive when the SP is naturally increasing."

They make sense when all of these are present:

- Company has plenty of cash

- There's nothing particularly valuable to use the cash for (accretive acquisitions / investments)

- The BOD is convinced that the share price is quite a bit lower than the company's value

Would I look at the company and say, "The SP is way too low, if I had cash I would buy more shares"? If so, then if the company has cash, then I should be very happy to have them spend some of it to buy those shares. If it's a good investment for me to buy, it's probably a good investment for the company to buy.

@speedy, this is the kind of decision for which you hire a CEO / BOD. It's not core to who we are, what we do, but it's an opportunity that shouldn't be wasted.

I agree with you on what I think is best but none of us know what kind of deals are on offer, whether a joint venture is the best option or an outright sale, etc. People have their views of what it's worth but they don't know what is being offered by whom.

I am with you, I like the option of a JV to maximize long term return but sometimes short term cash in hand is better than maximized long term return. If that's what our team decides, it will have my full support -- no one ever has the full picture but they sure have a lot more of it than I do.

To me, the tungsten is just a bonus of the Newmont deal. That deal is already a huge win for us even without it. But I'm glad to have it!

It's possible there will end up being a merger with SD leading the merged company. We're in a position to negotiate a strong deal for GGP in such a merger. It's not my preferred outcome but I suspect he could make it a great success.

"Tungsten metallurgy is notoriously difficult. The massive Hemerdon Tungston west deposit’s previous owners went bankrupt due to problematic metallurgy."

This is why I suspect some of the estimates of the value of our tungsten are overblown. Anyone who takes on that and other risks is going to want to be compensated for the risk with a cheaper price.

I believe there's a lot of value in it, value which may increase over time. But probably not as much as some people think.

"The asteroid might contain more gold!!"

Planning for this may not be good investment strategy but I love the thought anyway, lol.

"Pension funds and insurance funds are customer driven."

And government-regulated, particularly defined benefit pensions and insurance. And the government basically forces them to buy government bonds.

Should have said, other than the point about pensions / insurance companies, I agree with everything else. But the regulators have built in a protection for US and other sovereign debt. These funds have to keep buying government debt, they can't shift to gold.

@speedy "Once the insurance cos and pension funds stop buying USA treasuries the game will be well and truly up."

That would take major changes in regulations.

Insurance companies and pension funds are legally obligated to have assets that are guaranteed and will pay on a schedule. They have to have that so they can pay out when their obligations come due. Gold doesn't pay on a schedule and is volatile in its price. If they rely on gold heavily, and POG drops just at the time things come due, they can't sell it at a sufficient price to pay their liabilities.

Defined contribution pension funds can invest in gold, for those pension recipients that choose that option. It will be paper gold, though, or miners. I'm not in the game anymore so I could be mistaken but I don't know of any pension provider that offers physical gold as an option.

Defined benefit pension funds (still a massive chunk of the market due especially to public sector pensions) won't be going into gold and probably won't be going into miners. It's all about cash flows and secure (low risk of default) liquid assets.

We don't have to borrow to keep banks sweet. If we deposit funds with them that they can loan to other people and they will like us. If we're doing this without borrowing, and an acquisition turns up that's too good to pass up, they will loan us money.

If the BOD thinks they should borrow some to keep some powder dry, that's fine. But borrowing some to keep banks sweet makes no sense. Banks will cut each other's throat to get clients that are producing cash like we are. They have plenty of people / companies to whom they can loan money. It's the ones who provide them loads of money to loan that are in short supply.

As E1 said, decision is already made. It was a long, long time ago.

Formal process will be followed, though. It's not an emergency, so emergency procedures are off the table. That means formal notice of a board meeting has to be given. What's that? 2 days? 3? I don't know. It will all be in the company documents. My guess is they will do in person if that's practical in the next couple weeks, otherwise they may fall back to zoom.

It's not an emergency, after all. If it takes a couple weeks, so what? The gold isn't going to disappear. It won't be eaten by worms. Smaug the dragon's great-great grandson isn't going to dig a hole down there to steal it. We're already taking tenders on the project, and that process doesn't wait on FID. We're going mining at Hav.

@JB, look up Epimenedes and the Epimenedes Paradox. Doozer is punning on Cretan / cretin. Shame on him, lol.

In other news, GGP is booming down under. Anyone who loaded up anywhere under seven quid is likely to be pretty happy.

LOL, I did get rolling. Such a tempting target, though, you have to admit.

Victor, Victor, what a funny boy.

"I agree trust no one as they abdolutley do not have you best interests at heart, any one who thinks differently will loose and be scammed why eould yhry? Dont be nieve"

Now, if we trust no one, then we can't trust you. Which means we can't trust you that we're supposed to trust no one. So maybe we actually should trust someone but certainly not you, because you've told us not to trust you. So either you are a liar (in which case it's right to not trust you) or you are truthful that you don't have our best interests at heart (in which case we shouldn't trust you that we aren't supposed to trust anyone). It's all so gloriously self-contradictory and therefore useless and self-defeating advice.

I'll give you this. Epimenedes would have been proud of you. Your statement is actually more iron-clad in its self-defeatism than his was.

For me, I'll trust but verify, and trust beyond what I can verify if someone has gained / won my trust.

Gold will not collapse. It might fall a little bit.

"I await their answer with some interest."

It appears there's more than the 10p that I'd be asking about. Ask them for a complete written accounting, step by step, of why it didn't fill until you called, why it was only 90% when you were able to do the rest yourself, why the price was what it was, etc. I'd be saying that when managing people's money, the only thing they can really sell is trust, and if they lose your trust, why should you stay? It looks like, through either malfeasance or mistake, you've lost some money here (not just your trading fee), and who knows what would have happened if you hadn't called?

You don't want this explanation verbally, you want it in writing. That makes them take it really seriously. Tell them if it's not satisfactory, if they can't convince you that they are going to handle this kind of transaction appropriately, that you'll need to look elsewhere.

Congratulations, though, on recognize a short-term selling opportunity and flipping a nice little profit. Even at the price it went through, this was a nice move for you.

I expected a bounce away from 8 the first time we got close. I wouldn't touch my core position but sold a quarter of my (much smaller) trading position as soon as we hit 7.90. Bought back in at 7.35 today. Kicking myself for not going with my instincts and doing at least half of my trading position. Oh, well, it's a nice little profit, even if "little" is the main word. Please be careful with your trading, though, if this is money you need for retirement. Good luck with it, though. You made a good move this time for sure!