Peak gold believers will be pleased to learn that South Africa’s gold reserves are dwindling.

About 95% of the reserves have been unearthed and discovered already in Witwatersrand, the biggest gold field in the world, meaning gold is probably going to head higher as investors freak out over limited supply:

Mineweb: Gold production from the Witwatersrand, the biggest known gold field in the world, peaked at around 1,000 tonnes in 1970 and has declined ever since. Hartnady says that while initially (1970-1975) the decline was “quite precipitous”, it has been interrupted by only short periods of slight trend reversal (1982-1984 and 1992-1993).

Leon Esterhuizen, a London-based specialist analyst at RBC Capital Markets, has reacted to the research by saying that “South African gold is dying — this is not new news”, but adds “that it may be dying faster than we currently believe is novel”. On the levels of reserves, Hartnady finds that the South African “residual gold reserve” after production through 2007 is only 2 948 tonnes, a little less than three times the 1970 production figure, and much less than 10% of the officially cited reserve.

Read the whole thing >

Infamous wave theorist Martin Armstrong (see this New Yorker profile for background) sees gold going to $5,000 plus.

His first line is a doozy, and it sets his tone: Gold has been among the most hated subjects by the socialists, because with each dollar that it advances, it reveals the delusion that they seek to live within.

Armstrong, of course, sees the number π, in everything, which is why you get parts like this (in which he discusses the history of gold speculation). Notice the duration of the scam in the last line.

GOLD $5000+ 11/11/09

From the Peter Schiff Blog: H/T Trading Wall Street Investments

“Well, the gold standard works. What we have now does not. Our founding fathers put us on a gold standard for a good reason, because paper currency existed around that time. It had existed in the past. And they were familiar with how miserably it had failed. So they wanted to set us on a gold standard. And we became the world’s wealthiest nation while on the gold standard.

“We were on the gold standard for all of the 19th century, which was our fastest-growing century (more so than the 20th century). We had the Industrial Revolution; we built up our arsenals and our democracy—we won World War II on the gold standard. We were actually on the gold standard up until Richard Nixon ended it in 1971. So to say that the gold standard is somehow arcane, or that you can’t have economic growth on the gold standard—that’s all nonsense.

“It’s the politicians who don’t like gold, because gold imposes discipline on politicians. It keeps them honest, and politicians don’t want to be honest. They want to get elected.”

After hitting our first upside target of $1,110 two days ago, gold prices backed off but still managed to close at their best levels today for a new record high close in New York basis the spot gold.

The question now is, what’s going to happen to gold after it hit our first target level?

Click Chart to view the video

By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, International Business Editor

Aaron Regent, president of the Canadian gold giant, said that global output has been falling by roughly 1m ounces a year since the start of the decade. Total mine supply has dropped by 10pc as ore quality erodes, implying that the roaring bull market of the last eight years may have further to run.

“There is a strong case to be made that we are already at ‘peak gold’,” he told The Daily Telegraph at the RBC’s annual gold conference in London.

“Production peaked around 2000 and it has been in decline ever since, and we forecast that decline to continue. It is increasingly difficult to find ore,” he said.

Ore grades have fallen from around 12 grams per tonne in 1950 to nearer 3 grams in the US, Canada, and Australia. South Africa’s output has halved since peaking in 1970.

The supply crunch has helped push gold to an all-time high, reaching $1,118 an ounce at one stage yesterday. The key driver over recent days has been the move by India’s central bank to soak up half of the gold being sold by the International Monetary Fund. It is the latest sign that the rising powers of Asia and the commodity bloc are growing wary of Western paper money and debt.

Continue Reading

by Jeff Clark, Senior Editor, Casey’s Gold & Resource Report

“There’s no doubt in my mind that we’ll have a mania in gold. And because the gold and especially silver markets are so tiny, the rush into them will be like trying to push the contents of Hoover Dam through a garden hose. Our positions will go absolutely ballistic.” –Doug Casey, September 2009

Dear Readers,

Elmer Sutton’s eyebrows shot up when he saw the ad proclaiming gold stocks might make you wealthy.

It sounded like the perfect solution for his stock portfolio, loaded with investments going nowhere. He vaguely recalled hearing a little about gold, but if what the ad said was true, he thought he could make a killing.

So he called the broker and made an appointment for the next day. The broker seemed very knowledgeable and took the time to explain why he felt gold stocks were one of the best investments right now. He said this was not a get-rich-quick scheme, but that if you stuck with it, you could see potentially enormous profits. It sounded good. Elmer wrote a check for $2,500, and the broker bought three gold stocks for him.

The very next day, gold took a big drop and his spankin’ new gold stocks sold off hard. Not only that, there were riots in South Africa, where one of the companies was located. Elmer was instantly disgusted. He was losing money yet again. This time, however, he’d play it smart and get out before he lost it all – something his wife made sure he understood – so he hastily called the broker and told him he wanted his money back.

“Elmer, you can’t do that,” the broker told him. “This isn’t Woolworth’s.”

“I’m not buying them!” he yelled to the broker and slammed the phone down. Elmer wanted out, and that was that. He wasn’t about to lose any more money in the stock market.

Three years later, long after he’d forgotten about that broker, newspaper headlines were screaming about gold. Everyone at the party Elmer attended the night before was talking about how well their gold stocks were doing. His co-workers bragged about the good deals they were getting buying gold and silver coins. Everyone was talking about precious metals.

Elmer panicked; he didn’t want to be left behind. He scrounged around the house until he found the original confirmations of the trade he’d broken with “that broker”: 1,500 shares of Grootvlei at 35¢, 500 Anglo American at $2.50, and 1,000 Leslie at 50¢. He grabbed his newspaper and saw that Anglo was up 500% since then, and the others were paying dividends – this year alone – totaling more than he would have paid for his shares in 1976.

As the newspaper went limp in his hands, he had a vague recollection of the broker he met with and quickly tracked down the phone number. “I want to buy some gold stocks,” he breathlessly panted to the secretary answering the phone. She said the broker wasn’t in, and that while they would be happy to buy a stock for him, they were actually recommending investors sell their gold stocks.

Elmer couldn’t believe it. How ludicrous! Everyone he knew was buying, and he was personally acquainted with many people who were getting rich. He pushed on. “Look, everyone’s into gold right now. It’s on the front page of the paper, for crying out loud. So I want to buy some gold stocks right away.”

“That’s fine, sir, but I think you should talk to the broker first,” the secretary replied. “We really don’t recommend you do that.”

“I don’t care!” Elmer screamed, which he didn’t mean to do, but panic was setting in. “What’s this clown’s name anyway?”

“Doug Casey,” she replied.

Please Don’t Crowd the Emergency Exit

This true story explains how Doug Casey bought gold stocks at the very bottom of the market, as he took on those abandoned shares from Elmer. But today’s lesson underscores what Doug Casey saw back in the late 1970s: there’s certain to be a rush into gold and silver, and buying before Main Street catches gold fever is the only way to play this trend.

Because when Midas fever hits, prices will explode to the upside, for both the metals and the stocks. How do we know that?

First, let’s look at gold. If we added up all the gold ever mined on the planet, its total value would equal no more than $5 trillion at today’s prices. Yet, look at how this compares to the debt and bailouts and other monetary mischief of current governments…

*MZM (Money of Zero Maturity) is a measure of the liquid money supply in the economy. It consists of coins and currency, checking accounts, savings deposits, and money market funds.
**Year to date figures.

Let’s make this chart very clear. Of the $5 trillion in gold ever mined…

• The U.S. government has thrown over twice as much at the economy in the past 12 months.
• The U.S. debt is more than double this amount so far this year.
• Total global government bailouts are almost four times larger (and this is a conservative figure; one estimate puts it at $24 trillion).

I intended to include annual gold production as one of the comparisons, but the chart isn’t big enough and neither is your monitor: 2008’s global gold production equaled about $73 billion, and to make that figure discernable on the chart would require the Global Bailouts bar to hit the ceiling above your head. That’s how small the gold market is.

The implications are undeniable: when the greater public rushes into gold – whether in response to inflation, dollar woes, war, whatever – the price will be forced up by an order of magnitude.

[For an elegant and profitable way to own bullion gold, check out this website.]

A Picture Is Worth a Thousand Dollars

While physical gold will protect our wealth, it’s the gold stocks that can potentially make us wealthy.

Once again, to get a sense of the Lilliputian size of the gold industry, I compared it to several other leading industries and stocks.

The value, as measured by market capitalization, of all gold producers around the world is less than Walmart’s. Every gold stock would need to nearly double just for the industry to match ExxonMobil. The oil and gas industry is about 12 times bigger.

When your neighbors and relatives and co-workers and friends all start clamoring to buy gold stocks, the pressure on prices will be enormous, rocketing our positions upwards.

Meanwhile – and admitting we’re first and foremost gold bugs – the picture for silver is even more dramatic. The potential for silver stocks is jaw-dropping.

If the gold industry is tiny, then silver’s $9 billion market cap makes it a nano industry. The entire silver industry is over 21 times smaller than gold’s! If gold explodes, silver will go supernova.

Consider these macro-facts about a micro-market and what they reveal about silver’s enormous potential:

• There are over 200 companies in the S&P 500 with a market cap larger than the entire market of silver producers
• There are five times more gold stocks than silver.
• Total silver production in 2008 was valued around $10.3 billion (at today’s prices). That represents just 1.5% of the $700 billion bailout last year, and 0.006% of the current U.S. monetary base.
• Of the 20 largest silver producers, only five actually call themselves a “silver” company, due to the fact that about 73% of all silver mined is a byproduct of other metals mining.

Any flood into the silver market would overwhelm it. In other words, the rise will be stunning. While it’s not going to happen tomorrow, I strongly suggest you get on board before that rocket ship takes off.

Just putting these charts together stirred my feelings of restlessness, making me anxious for the mania in precious metals to arrive. But the timing is not up to us. Be patient, because if you’re invested in gold and silver and the respective, high-quality stocks, you’re on the right side of this trend.

Had you bought gold, say, four years ago, when it was around $450/oz, you’d be sitting on a nearly 130% gain. But you could have made up to three times as much with even the most conservative precious metals investments – large- and medium-cap gold and silver producers. It’s not too late to jump on the bandwagon. Click here to find out more.

Courtesy of Jesse’s Café Américain

Michael Patterson

(Bloomberg) — Stocks rose, sending the benchmark index for emerging markets to its biggest six-day rally since July, and commodities gained after China’s industrial production and Japan’s machinery orders climbed. Gold advanced to a record.

The MSCI Emerging Markets Index added 1.2 percent at 8:42 a.m. in New York, boosting its six-day increase to 7.9 percent. Futures on the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index were 0.6 percent higher. Gold rallied to as high as $1,118.60 an ounce as the Dollar Index dropped to a 15-month low.

China’s industrial production soared 16 percent from a year ago and orders for Japanese machinery surged 10 percent from the previous month, signaling the recovery is accelerating in the world’s second- and third-biggest economies. Earnings from Paris-based bank Credit Agricole SA and Swiss cement-maker Holcim Ltd. beat analysts’ estimates. A record 80 percent of S&P 500 companies have topped third-quarter projections, according to Bloomberg data going back to 1993.

“Money that has been sitting on the sidelines is coming into emerging markets and driving stock markets up,” said Dmitry Gourov, an emerging-markets economist at UniCredit SpA in Vienna. “There is a very robust recovery story.”

The MSCI China Index of Hong Kong-traded shares jumped 1.1 percent to the highest level since June 2008, while South Korea’s Kospi Index added 0.8 percent after the nation’s unemployment rate fell to a nine-month low. China’s Shanghai Composite Index of mainland-traded shares slipped 0.1 percent as a slowdown in lending growth sent developers and banks lower.

Gold, Dollar

Gold rose as the dollar fell for a third day, spurring demand for the metal. Copper for December delivery jumped 1.6 percent in New York. Crude oil added 0.4 percent to $79.36 a barrel in New York. Nickel, zinc and lead also gained.

Raw-material producers led the advance in the MSCI World Index of 23 developed nations, which added 0.5 percent. BHP Billiton Ltd., the world’s largest mining company, climbed 3.8 percent in London. Europe’s Dow Jones Stoxx 600 Index increased for the fifth time in six days, rising 0.7 percent.

Credit Agricole surged 5.8 percent in Paris after posting third-quarter profit of 289 million euros ($435 million), beating the 128 million-euro median estimate of seven analysts surveyed by Bloomberg. France’s third-largest bank by market value said Chief Executive Officer Georges Pauget will step down.

Holcim, the world’s second-biggest cement maker, added 5.4 percent after saying it will exceed a 600 million Swiss-franc ($595 million) savings target for this year. ING rallied 7.2 percent in Amsterdam. The Dutch financial-services company that plans to sell its insurance business reported a third-quarter profit as improved markets limited writedowns.

As Rosie dedicates more and more attention to gold, his latest piece demonstrates why the melt up in gold will make the surreal “lift each and every offer” move in stocks seem like child’s play.

Another reason to be bullish on gold is the recurring trade spats. Indeed, this is good news for the commodity complex as security of supply resurfaces — see China Attacks U.S. in Fresh Trade Spat” on page 2 of the weekend FT. If it’s not Chinese-made tires fingered by an increasingly protectionist U.S.A. one day, it’s steel pipe the next. This latest anti-dumping measure by the United States is facing a severe rebuke, as per the press reports, in China.
In addition to these trade protectionist actions, there is also the matter of more stimulus measures being undertaken in a mid-term election year at a time when the Treasury is expanding its debt issuance to new records right across the maturity spectrum. All anyone needs to do is have a look at the article Congress’s Blank Check For Housing in the weekend WSJ — to see this happening at a time of 10% budget deficit-to-GDP ratios, had indeed become a bottom-less fiscal pit.
Since the USA will not default, not raise taxes nor cut spending, the only logical recourse will be to print vast sums of U.S. dollars to fund this surreal foray into deficit finance. In other words, reflate. As we keep on saying, under Dr. Bernanke’s tenure, the monetary base has risen twice as much as nominal GDP has and the two lines continue to diverge. At the same time, gold production peaked a decade ago. It’s all about scarcity of supply, and as Sri Lanka’s central bank just reminded us, and India before that, there are buyers with deep pockets lining up to diversify into bullion. Here are the ‘what if’ realities stack up:

• If India were to lift is gold share of FX reserves from 6% to 20%, where it was during the strong U.S. dollar policy days of 15 years ago, we estimate that gold would go to $1300/ounce.
  
• If China were merely to copy what India just did and raise its share to 6%, then gold would go to $1,400/ounce, based on our in-house analysis.
• If the USA were to go back to a 40% ratio of gold reserves to money supply (using the monetary base), where it was a century ago when the Fed was first created, from 17% currently, that would equate to three years’ supply of bullion, and alone take the gold price up to $2,750/ounce, based again on our research on price sensitivities to central bank buying activity.

Now gold is in a secular bull market and by no means are we suggesting that everyone line up at the vaults right this second — for the time being, it is too much front page news and a crowded trade, so it won’t hurt to wait for a pullback and get in at better prices (as an example, see Inside the Global Gold Frenzy on the front page of the Sunday NYT business section).
You see, when Bob Farrell wrote “The 10 Market Rules to Remember” he made sure that they were interesting reading and in doing so, some people get a laugh out of Rule Number 9 (“When all the experts and forecasts agree, something else is going to happen”) and Rule Number 10 “Bull markets are more fun than bear markets”). Nevertheless, they are just as important as the other eight rules. The obvious reason why Rule 5 is important (“The public buys most at the top and least at the bottom”) is that it also captures the inverse relationship between sentiment and the position of the market (ie, bullish sentiment peaks when the market tops and turns down and bearish sentiment peaks when the market bottoms and turns up). All that “agreement” adds enormous credibility to conventional opinion, just when it is most important to envision and prepare for the contrary. Lately, (you) have been experiencing shock at the policy responses by the U.S. government relative to the credit crisis and economic slowdown. Policies that encourage increased indebtedness by households and businesses are combined with massive deficit spending and Federal Reserve balance sheet expansion and the latter particularly, has enormous inflationary implications while exerting downward pressure on the value of the U.S. dollar. The problem with this understanding is that most everyone agrees.
To wit: According to Consensus Inc., bulls on the U.S. dollar are currently at 28%. Bulls on Treasury bonds are currently at 59% after hitting a low of 21% in early June when rates peaked in this cycle. Bulls on gold are at 78%. Bulls on the stock market are at 74% and they haven’t been that high since October 2007. It has become a crowded trade, and something very contrary to the expected outcome is likely to occur, at least over the near term.
Walter Murphy, our favourite technical analyst, expects a substantial rally in the U.S. dollar and a decline in gold over the medium term, even if those moves are counter-trend. He thinks that the war is on inflation, but the battle is deflation and this is a bear market rally in stocks. We have said repeatedly that it seems too early to call for an economic expansion with so much unfinished business in the process of household balance sheet repair. And, keep in mind that the deflationary forces emanating from the household are much greater than the inflationary forces associated with government stimulus, at least so far.

Zero Hedge

The melt up in stocks on no volume was fully expected after the worst possible employment news to come in over 20 years: the market-economy disconnect is now complete, and all stocks are freeriding purely on Bernanke’s printing press. At least gold vigilantes are beginning to whisper in Bernanke’s ear he can go fornicate himself and his dollar destruction deathwish: let’s see what happens when gold melts up ala the S&P to 1,200, 1,300 and maybe 1,500 in a few short weeks: can you spell panic at the Fed? Also next up: failed auctions, the only question is when and by whom…Oh wait, those never happen right… yeah, until they do.