Gold Fundamentals 2
Adam Hamilton
Archives
Dec 26, 2008
Gold belongs in every investor's
portfolio. It is totally unique among financial assets, a physical
metal commanding timeless and universal intrinsic value. It is
a rock of stability in a chaotic world, a stark contrast to the
complex web of mere promises to pay that is our modern faith-based
financial system. Without gold, true diversification and protection
from systemic risk is impossible.
Gold's fundamentals are dazzlingly
bullish. Like everything else on the planet that is freely bought
and sold, gold's price today and in the future is a direct function
of its supply and demand. As long as its global demand exceeds
its global supply on balance, gold's price will continue powering
higher in its secular bull. While it has already come far from
its humble beginnings in the $250s in April 2001, it has a long
way to run yet.
When I first started recommending
physical gold coins to our subscribers in May 2001 in the $260s,
gold was widely derided as an anachronistic relic. Not surprisingly
after nearly quadrupling in the years since, it has earned
vastly more respect today. Still, most mainstream investors have
yet to understand gold's bullish fundamentals so unfortunately
they are missing out on the vast opportunities to come.
It is for these gold neophytes
I am penning this essay. I will explore gold's key fundamental
drivers, both from the supply and demand sides. After you digest
this high-level overview of gold's fundamentals, you'll have
a much better idea of whether you should add some gold to your
own investment portfolio. In order to streamline the enormous
body of research underlying this effort, I've divided this essay
into sections.
Supply - Mined Supply. Ultimately all gold is painstakingly
chiseled from the bowels of the earth. But even with the best
modern mining technology, this rare metal is still exceedingly
hard to produce. Today's gold miners face nearly insurmountable
challenges
on a myriad of fronts. It is really a wonder that any gold is
produced at all when you consider just how difficult it is to
bring new supplies to market.
First explorers have to find
gold deposits. This isn't easy. Not only is gold very scarce
in the natural world, but prospectors have been scouring the
planet for millennia looking for it. Most of the low-hanging-fruit
gold deposits have probably already been found. It costs millions
to explore, with very high odds of failure. And if a promising
ore target is found, tens of millions more must be spent to drill
and sample it to determine if it is economically viable. This
risky exploration and proofing process takes years.
And once a deposit looks economically
viable, the real fun begins. Miners must spend years more developing
a mining plan and having it approved by various government authorities.
At any stage in this long arduous journey, the government can
torpedo the whole project resulting in a total loss. Unlike most
businesses, mines cannot be moved when problems arise. So gold
miners are totally at the mercy of corrupt bureaucrats. Extortion
is common and even outright nationalization is a very real threat
in many parts of the world. Radical fringe environmentalists
constantly try to derail mining projects too.
After the government permits
are obtained, construction must begin. This costs hundreds of
millions, sometimes well over a billion, in today's environment.
Since gold mining is so risky the banks are often unwilling to
loan money to miners, and if they do they demand onerous terms.
So the companies have to issue shares in the equity markets to
finance these projects. While financing was already difficult
to obtain before the credit crisis and stock panic, many miners
today are finding it impossible to come by now. Without financing,
mines cannot be built.
Even if a miner somehow overcomes
the long odds and brings its mine into production, often a decade
after the deposit was first found, more challenges await. Even
with extensive drilling before mining, the geology of the ore
can vary dramatically from plan. This results in lower production,
higher costs, and lower profits. Since gold is often only found
in hostile climates today, bad weather can interfere with production
in a variety of ways. Friendly governments can be usurped by
unfriendly ones, raising the risks of crushing taxes or even
confiscation.
For these reasons and many
more, global gold production is actually falling despite
the relatively high gold prices. Annual gold mined today, which
is 70% of the world's supply, is running over 4% lower
than when this bull began in 2001! Global reserves are also shrinking,
despite vast sums being spent on exploration. My business partner
Scott Wright recently wrote an excellent essay, with charts,
on worldwide gold
production and reserves if you want to dig deeper. Despite
this powerful gold bull, miners are falling farther behind.
With mined gold supply heavily
constrained despite the best efforts of the world's elite miners
and the strong gold-price incentives to produce, any demand
growth cannot be satiated with mined gold. And even if gold mining
somehow becomes easier (geopolitics are less hostile, for example),
it will still take the better part of a decade before
new supplies can be brought online. This is incredibly bullish
for gold!
Supply - Central Bank Sales. Over centuries, central banks have
accumulated vast hoards of gold bullion. Some of this was purchased
righteously, but much was obtained via plunder and confiscation.
Central banks as a group are the largest participants in the
gold market. Thus they have become something of a bogeyman in
the gold world. Many investors live in constant fear of future
central-bank gold sales.
Seven years ago when gold was
under $300 central banks made me anxious too. But they don't
any longer. Despite the mystical aura of dread surrounding them,
they are merely gold investors like me. While their collective
scale is very large, these behemoths are run by mere mortals
who cannot see the future either. Whether buying or selling gold,
central banks operate within the same market constraints as the
rest of us.
In the entire history of the
world, analysts estimate that about 162,500 metric tons of gold
have been mined. Incidentally gold is so dense that a metric
ton of it will fit in a solid cube less than 15 inches square.
Thus all the gold ever mined anywhere would fit in a cube less
than 67 feet per side! Of this global above-ground gold supply,
as of Q3 2008 the world's central banks held 29,784t. Thus the
CBs control just 18% of the world's total above-ground gold.
Investors control a far-greater 82%.
Since this gold bull began
in 2001, mined production has averaged about 2,500t per year.
So if the world's central banks decided to sell all their gold
today, it would be like 12 years of production hitting the markets
all at once. The gold price would utterly crash in such a scenario,
it would be apocalyptic. Thankfully it will never happen for
a wide array of reasons. First, 107 sovereign countries own this
gold and they are never all going to agree on anything, let alone
a coordinated gold dump.
Of this 29,784t of official
gold holdings, 8,134t (27%) belongs to the United States. Many
gold conspiracy theorists believe a big fraction of this gold
has already been stealthily sold into the marketplace.
This is very bullish if true since it reduces the threat of future
sales. Even if the US still holds this gold though, the US dollar
would probably collapse if an announcement was made that the
US was dumping its gold reserves. It is extremely unlikely. 10,911t
(37%) of this CB gold is held in the Eurozone, and this gold
is a very high percentage of these countries' total foreign-exchange
reserves (58% in aggregate).
So European CBs have
been selling gold aggressively to diversify since at least 1999.
That year they met and formed what was later called the Central
Bank Gold Agreement. They agreed to limit their collective gold
sales to 400t annually over 5 years. In March 2004 in CBGA 2,
this agreement was extended and expanded to a 500t-per-year maximum
for another 5 years. While these targets haven't always been
hit in a given CBGA year (ending September), they are a good
proxy for European CB sales as a whole.
Since 2000, European CBs alone
have sold between 400t to 500t of gold annually. These are indeed
big numbers, adding 16% to 20% to the global mined supply. Without
these sales, gold's price would have gone much higher. But even
with them, gold has still nearly quadrupled since early
2001! This means even heavy sustained CB selling is not big enough
to offset the growing investment demand for gold. So far in this
secular gold bull, despite the CBs' giant selling campaigns,
gold has still powered higher.
Central banks are not an apocalyptic
threat for gold. Every year European CBs sell gold, which makes
their "market share" of total above-ground gold dwindle.
And every year more gold is mined, farther reducing CBs' relative
footprint in the gold world. Thus with each passing year, with
every tonne of CB gold sold, central-bank impact and relevance
in the gold market gradually fades. They are nowhere near as
big of threat today as they were in 2001 and with each passing
year their positions continue to weaken.
And not all central banks are
sellers. 10,739t (36%) of CB gold is held outside of the US and
Europe. These Asian central banks will probably increasingly
buy physical gold bullion. While western CBs' gold holdings
generally represent 50% to 75% of each country's total forex
reserves, in Asia gold is just a few percent. Japan's 765t of
gold are just 2.1% of its forex reserves. China's 600t are merely
0.9%. Russia's 473t are only 2.1%. And India's 358t account for
a paltry 3.1%. These growing Asian giants need to diversify
into gold, not out of it like the Western CBs. They will
add to overall global investment demand.
The International Monetary
Fund holds 3,217t (11% of official gold). Potential IMF gold
sales are a perennial threat trotted out every few years to scare
gold investors. Even back in 2001 IMF sales were discussed often,
yet big IMF selling has still not come to pass in the 7 years
since. Even if the IMF can get permission from its 185 member
countries to sell gold, which is very unlikely for political
reasons, the IMF gold cannot stop this secular gold bull. Bring
it on, the Asian CBs would love to own the IMF gold.
At any rate, the key thing
to remember about central-bank gold sales is they have been large
and constant since gold was in the $250s. Yet even with this
supply headwind, gold still nearly quadrupled to just over $1000
by early 2008! Even the worst that central banks could throw
at gold wasn't enough to seriously retard its secular bull. And
with each tonne they sell, their relative share of above-ground
gold (along with their relevance) dwindles. CB gold is finite.
It is central banks that are the anachronism, not gold.
Demand - Investment Demand. With mined supply shrinking and central
bank hoards dwindling, gold supplies are very constrained. And
no matter how high the gold price goes, mining is not going to
get much easier and in fact will probably continue to get more
difficult. And central banks are not going to be able to conjure
up more gold out of thin air like they do with their fiat paper
currencies. With flat-to-shrinking supplies, demand is the wildcard
that will drive gold prices in the coming decade.
Unlike all other commodities
which are primarily used for industrial purposes, almost all
gold demand is investment-driven. Gold's intrinsic value has
persisted for millennia, outliving every government, currency,
and nation the world has ever seen. Gold is not a faith-based
promise to pay like every other financial asset. Its innate value
makes it easily negotiable, for anything anywhere, no matter
what happens. Physical gold bullion should be the foundation
of every investor's portfolio.
All the demand categories below
are subcategories of investment demand. For a broad array of
reasons today, all kinds of investors all over the world are
increasingly interested in gold investing. And in the financial
world, the higher the price of anything goes the more people
become interested in it. Performance and returns attract in capital,
which creates a virtuous circle driving even higher prices. So
a secular gold bull gradually becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy
until supply once again eclipses demand.
Demand - Monetary Inflation. Inflation is always and exclusively
purely monetary
in nature. When central banks create fiat money out of thin air,
it eventually filters into the real economy to compete for finite
goods and services. Relatively more money bidding on relatively
less goods and services means higher general prices. Inflation
is devastating for investors, an immoral stealth tax levied by
corrupt governments. Gold is the only financial asset that thrives
in inflationary times.
And boy are we seeing inflation
today! The socialistic financial-market bailouts, which now exceed
$8 trillion in the US alone according to Bloomberg, are
the biggest single inflationary event the world has ever witnessed.
During the Great
Stock Panic of 2008, within a matter of months Washington
and the Fed inflated, spent, or guaranteed the equivalent of
55% of the entire GDP (all goods and services produced annually)
in the whole United States of America!
This near-hyper inflation alone
is exceedingly bullish for gold. But unfortunately central banks
relentlessly inflating their money supplies is not an isolated
event reserved for crises. They are always doing it! Since
January 1980, the US Federal Reserve has grown MZM money by an
astounding 10.4x! There are an order of magnitude more
dollars floating around the world today than 3 decades ago. This
equates to an 8.7% compound annual growth rate over 28 years.
This wouldn't be a big deal
if the underlying economy grew by 8.7% a year as well. If the
pool of goods and services on which to spend money grows as fast
as the money supply, there is no inflation. But obviously this
is not the case. Since January 1980 US nominal GDP has only grown
by 5.3x, only about half as much as the money supply.
And the Fed is not alone here, all over the world broad money
supplies in first-world nations generally average growth rates
of around 7% annually.
At 7% annual growth rates globally,
there is 6.6x more paper money in circulation today than there
was in early 1980 at the top of the last secular gold bull. Yet
over centuries, new mining has only added 1% to 2% to the aboveground
gold supply annually. At 1.5% gold growth through mining each
year, today's gold supply is only 1.5x as big as 3 decades ago
compared to 6.6x for money. Divide this out and there are 4.4x
as many fiat-currency units (dollars, euros, everything) potentially
chasing each ounce of gold today than at the end of the last
gold bull!
If you multiply the famous
$850 nominal high of January 1980 by this 4.4x outpacing of gold
growth by monetary inflation, it yields a conservative end-of-bull
target approaching $4000 per ounce. If you adjust by the lowballed
Consumer Price Index instead, the real
gold high in January 1980 in today's dollars ran up around
$2400. Either way, today's gold bull has a long way to run before
it reflects today's inflation, let alone future inflation.
Central banks' only real ability is to inflate, inflate, inflate
into infinity.
So monetary inflation is not
going away. If anything it will only accelerate. In a fragile
debt-based highly-leveraged global financial system, inflate
or die is a literal truth. If central banks don't keep inflating
at ever-expanding rates, the whole worldwide system will implode.
This perpetual accelerating fiat-paper inflation is unbelievably
bullish for gold. As investors worldwide become more aware of
the incredible monetary inflation around them, their appetite
for gold investment will only grow.
Demand - Negative Real Interest
Rates. When central
banks are running their printing presses overtime and inflating
like mad, nominal interest rates (yields on bonds) can slide
below the rate of inflation. When this happens real inflation-adjusted
interest rates go negative. In other words, merely by owning
the best elite bonds like US Treasuries bond investors actually
lose real purchasing power year after year! Naturally
bond investors aren't in the game to lose money, so negative
real rates infuriate them.
Unfortunately just like the
old Soviet Politburo, today's central banks actively manipulate
short-term interest rates. As we've seen in recent months, central
banks can drive nominal interest rates down to zero if they desire.
This abominable power is unbelievably destructive to free markets.
It destroys the necessary natural balance between savers (investors)
and debtors. And when capital transactions are no longer mutually
beneficial to both parties, investors gradually start to walk
away.
Thus negative real rates slowly
strangle the life out of the bond markets. Bond investors, tired
of being punished by the central banks for their act of saving
and forced to subsidize debtors, gradually withdraw their capital.
It is foolish to invest in a realm where you are guaranteed to
lose real purchasing power for investing your scarce capital.
Some fraction of this bond flight capital seeks refuge in gold.
While gold doesn't pay a yield, over millennia it has never failed
to at very least keep pace with monetary inflation and preserve
purchasing power.
And in today's crazy environment
of near-zero nominal yields on even US Treasury debt, mainstream
bond investors' traditional argument against gold is rendered
moot. In normal times of positive real rates, the way the markets
would always work without central-bank interference, bond investors
object to gold because it pays no yield. Well, today bonds pay
virtually no nominal yields either! And after inflation their
real yields are terribly negative. This makes gold very attractive
to mainstream debt investors.
Thus negative real rates, inflation
exceeding nominal bond yields, is the most bullish possible monetary
environment for gold. A couple weeks ago I wrote an essay on
real rates
and gold that includes long-term charts if you want to dig
deeper into this crucial truth. Until the goofy Fed raises interest
rates radically, say to 6%+, real rates will remain too low or
negative and very bullish for gold. And as you know, there isn't
a snowball's chance in hell that the cowardly Fed will push rates
to 6%+ for many years to come, if ever.
Demand - Secular Dollar
Bear. The central banks'
artificially-low interest-rate policies to subsidize debtors
and punish savers wreak terrible collateral damage on currencies.
The global currency markets are often driven by yield. If one
first-world country's bonds are yielding 2% while another's are
yielding 4%, currency investors and speculators will naturally
gravitate to the higher yields. So today's ludicrously-low US
interest rates are ravaging the already-weak US dollar.
Once the world's reserve currency,
the mighty US dollar has been in a secular bear since mid-2001.
As measured by the flagship US Dollar Index (a basket of major
currencies), the dollar carved a series of new all-time
lows in spring 2008. The long-term
dollar charts show just how weak this currency has been,
down 41.0% at worst in its secular bear to date. And this was
all well before Ben Bernanke panicked and forced US interest
rates to all-time lows near zero!
Today's deeply negative real-rate
environment will only strengthen and prolong the secular dollar
bear. As the long-term
USDX charts clearly reveal, the US dollar is always weak
in a secular sense when real rates are too low or negative. A
weaker dollar drives all kinds of investment interest in gold,
from two major constituencies. Since gold is ultimately another
currency, the only hard one on the planet, futures traders buy
gold aggressively when the dollar sells off. A continuing dollar
bear will drive major futures buying in gold.
Even more importantly, large
foreign investors including central banks have far-too-much dollar
exposure relative to their overall portfolios. This great overallocation
was fine when the US dollar was in a secular bull in the 1990s.
But these investors have already lost a fortune in the 2000s
dollar bear and they will lose a lot more if this bear continues
and they don't diversify out of their overweight dollar holdings.
While they will buy a lot of euros with their dollar sales, some
major fraction will flow into gold.
The biggest buyers of gold
to protect themselves from the ongoing dollar bear will be the
Asian central banks. As mentioned above, they now have trivial
fractions of their total forex reserves deployed in gold. Yet
they have trillions of dollars worth of exposure in US dollars
and US Treasuries, from 50% to 80% of their total reserves in
falling US dollars! Asian CB diversification out of dollars into
gold is mind-blowingly bullish for this metal.
At $800 per ounce, the 2500t
of new gold mined each year is only worth $64b. If Asian central
banks gradually move $1t (not even half of their US dollar reserves
today) into gold in the coming decade, it would represent buying
equivalent to almost 16 years of total world gold production!
So the secular dollar bear, exacerbated by the Fed's asinine
1970s-style negative-real-rate policy, is highly likely to spawn
big CB gold buying out of Asia for diversification reasons. The
ongoing dollar bear is very bullish for gold investment demand
growth.
Demand - Secular Stock Bear. Bond investors, futures traders, and
Asian central banks are not the only giant pools of capital that
have huge incentives to invest heavily in gold today. So do stock
investors. As I started warning about back
in 2001, after the giant secular bull that peaked in early
2000 the US stock markets were due for a 17-year secular bear.
This means 17 years of grinding sideways on balance, never heading
too far above the 2000 highs over this entire multi-decade span.
These secular bears that occur
after secular bulls are part of a great valuation-driven cycle
in the stock markets that I call the Long Valuation Waves. The
LVWs are the single most important force for long-term stock
investors to understand, so please read
my essay on them if you are not familiar. Since 2001 this
analysis has proved dead right, even though most investors and
analysts scoffed at it. I even used LVWs to warn about the S&P
500 getting cut in half back in
January 2008 well before the recent stock panic.
Because we are indisputably
in the secular-bear stage of our current LVW, the stock markets
are likely to grind sideways for another 8 years or so. The last
time a 17-year secular-bear hit the US stock markets, between
1966 and 1982, stock investors were flat on paper but they absorbed
tremendous real
losses after inflation. Realize that big 100% cyclical
stock bulls are still possible and probable within these
secular bears, but when all is said and done stocks will have
merely ground sideways for nearly two decades.
As stock investors come to
grip with this ugly reality, they will get more and more discouraged
about general stocks. Kind of like negative real rates' impact
on bond-investor psychology, stock investors are going to increasingly
realize how silly it is to stay heavily deployed in flat-trending
stocks and suffer heavy real losses. Some fraction of these beleaguered
stock investors will turn to gold for deliverance.
Between March 2000 and November
2008, the flagship S&P 500 US stock index lost a sickening
50.7%. Yet over this same span to the very day, gold soared 161.0%
higher! Wouldn't you have much rather been in gold since then,
like we contrarians have? And if you instead optimize this span
for the secular gold bull rather than the secular stock bear,
it looks even better. From April 2001 to March 2008, gold soared
291.7% higher. Over this identical 7-year span the SPX was merely
up 11.4%.
As mainstream stock investors
start to better understand gold's fundamentals, more and more
of their massive pool of capital is going to flood into gold.
Indeed this is already happening through the new gold ETFs. These
exchange-traded funds act as a conduit between stock-market capital
and the physical gold market. In fact, the GLD
gold ETF in the US (the world's largest by far) has grown
its holdings from nothing to 775t held in trust on behalf of
US stock investors in just 4 years! This single ETF now
holds more gold than all but 6 of the world's biggest central
banks!
Demand - Secular Commodities
Bull. During the secular
stock bull from 1982 to 2000, capital was increasingly seduced
into the stock markets to chase the phenomenal returns. This
led other sectors to be starved for investment, particularly
commodities. Thus global commodities-producing infrastructure
was largely left rusting for the better part of two decades even
while worldwide economic activity ramped up dramatically. This
chronic underinvestment in supply and delivery infrastructure
led to this decade's great
commodities bull.
Despite the brutally fast and
large correction in commodities since July that was greatly exacerbated
by the stock panic, these secular commodities bulls aren't over.
They tend to run 17 years on balance in history, with inverse
phases to the stock LVWs. When stock markets are in secular bulls,
commodities are in secular bears. And when stocks are in secular
bears like today, commodities are in secular bulls.
Secular bull markets can't
end until global supply growth exceeds global demand growth.
This has yet to happen in nearly all major commodities. No matter
how high prices go, as gold mined production illustrates, commodities
producers just can't adjust fast enough to meet demand trends.
It takes years to over a decade to find new supplies of raw materials
and bring them to market. This inherent inelasticity of commodities
supplies is what makes commodities bull markets so exciting and
exceedingly profitable.
On top of today's demand, half
the world (primarily Asia and Africa) is now industrializing.
Billions of people are working incredibly hard to increase the
standards of living for their families. And as standards of living
rise, absolute commodities consumption will skyrocket. Sure,
the average Chinese or Indian is never likely to consume as much
per-capita as we Americans are blessed to do today. But since
they are starting from such low levels, and since there are billions
of Asians, even if they ultimately get to 1/5th the per-capita
levels of US consumption of major commodities then aggregate
global demand will explode.
As this commodities bull powers
higher worldwide, gold will get increasing attention from investors.
While gold is not the king of commodities like oil, gold is the
easiest and most logical way to invest in commodities. It is
easily bought and sold, extremely valuable for its volume and
weight, completely portable, and very easy to store. So as the
global commodities bull reemerges from this
severe correction and powers higher, untold hundreds of millions
of investors worldwide will start adding gold to their portfolios.
Demand - Rise of the Asian
Consumer. We've already
discussed Asian central banks needing to diversify their dollar-dominated
forex reserves into gold. But another huge source of future investment
demand is going to be from average Asian consumers. Unlike Americans
and increasingly Europeans, Asians have a deep cultural affinity
for gold. They have always respected it and want to own it even
when it is not performing well. They understand from painful
historical experience how physical gold protects them from corrupt
governments, paper currencies, and unforeseen financial disruptions.
As the industrialization of
Asia (and Africa) makes consumers more affluent, they will demand
much more gold investment. Asians tend to be big savers (investors)
even in lean times, and as their incomes grow they will have
larger surpluses available to invest after living expenses. There
is no doubt a big fraction of these surpluses will buy gold.
While each Asian won't be able to afford much by Western investors'
standards, with billions of them the aggregate increase in gold
demand will still be stunning.
And Asian stock markets weren't
immune to the recent stock panic. In fact, they fell more violently
than the US markets in many cases. Gold denominated in other
currencies did far better in the global stock panic than it did
denominated in US dollars, approaching all-time highs in some
cases. So the new Asian investing class, terribly shaken by the
stock-market carnage, is now more likely than ever to diversify
some of its capital into gold.
Over the coming decade, the
rise of the Asian consumer/investor could be more bullish for
gold investment demand than all the other demand factors combined.
Asian investment demand barely existed during the 1970s gold
bull, yet that bull was still huge. Imagine how big today's will
ultimately prove with Asia finally on board.
Suppy and Demand - Technical
Proof. There are many
other secondary factors likely to increase global gold investment
demand. The Information Age is an example. During the 1970s gold
bull, Wall Street hated gold just like it does today. So back
then many investors couldn't learn about gold because the mainstream
media monopolized information flow. Lack of widely-available
good analysis on gold retarded that famous gold bull, which was
still very large (+2,332%!).
But thanks to the Internet,
the mainstream media's stranglehold on information has been shattered.
Today anyone anywhere can easily learn about gold fundamentals.
This is very bullish for gold. Thanks to the Internet, today
any investor can order physical gold coins in a matter of minutes
that will be delivered to his doorstep a few days later. Thanks
to computers, today stock investors who wouldn't bother with
gold coins in a million years can buy a gold ETF in seconds to
add gold exposure to their portfolios. We live in a wondrous
era!
Ultimately though, the proof
of this gold bull is in its secular chart. The path gold has
carved here is the aggregate result of every ounce of gold bought
or sold on this planet since 2001. Every central bank sale is
reflected here. Every gold investment made by individuals and
institutions is reflected here. Every sale of gold, whether to
fund a kid's college education, buy a house, or whatever, is
reflected here. This chart is the distillation of all
global supply and demand for gold. And its message is crystal
clear.
Since early 2001, gold has
nearly quadrupled at best. It has relentlessly carved higher
highs and higher lows on a secular basis. Its dollar price has
increased every single year (the green numbers on the bottom
show the amounts). The only way such results are possible is
if global demand growth has indeed exceeded supply growth since
2001. I challenge you to find another investment that can even
approach such performance in the incredibly chaotic markets we've
witnessed over the last 7 years. Gold is already in an elite
class of its own.
At Zeal we've been long physical
gold since it traded in the $260s in May 2001. Our subscribers
have already made fortunes in the 7 years since heeding our analysis
and recommendations. So we are certainly not new to this gold
party, we were buying gold and gold stocks back in the early
2000s when it was considered lunacy to do so. We are true contrarians
who have been battle-tested, and prevailed, in this challenging
financial decade.
We have just finished a deep
new 36-page fundamental
report on our 12 favorite gold stocks, the result of hundreds
of hours of research looking at all the world's publicly-traded
primary gold producers. As gold powers higher, gold stocks should
continue to leverage its gains. Buy
our new report now while these stocks remain at bargain panic-driven
prices!
The bottom line is gold's fundamentals
are more bullish today than ever. Despite relatively high prices,
mined supply is shrinking. Central banks' relative power in this
market is waning dramatically. And thanks to both natural market
forces and artificial manipulation contrivances, global investment
demand for gold is likely to grow tremendously from today's levels.
This secular gold bull is far from over friends!
Adam Hamilton, CPA
Dec 26, 2008
Thoughts, comments, or flames? Fire away at zelotes@zealllc.com. Due to my staggering and perpetually increasing e-mail load, I regret that I am not able to respond to comments personally. I will read all messages though and really appreciate your feedback!
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