The GOLD scream room

[Ugly_Bird]

Thanks! I do check in now and then but I haven't posted in a while....

Anyway, no rebalancing yet. Sitting tight. Wondering what everyone else is doing?

Au is at 29% of my HB PP... Sitting.

[pmbug]

COMEX delisted four gold futures contracts. It looks like they don't want the physical gold flowing out to China/SGE and/or back to London/LBMA. The competition for physical gold is tightening up.

[Jack Jones]

I’m kind of skeptical that I’ll ever rebalance gold. l’m starting to think of it as part of its own portfolio. It’s not part of my retirement savings. It’s not to be touched except as a last resort. Added to when excess cash is on hand. Passed down to my children with these same instructions, along with a family history story that illuminates why it’s important to own some gold.

Apparently the duration of gold is so long that it’s inappropriate except for family office / dynasty situations of hundreds of years.

[dualstow]

I’m kind of skeptical that I’ll ever rebalance gold. l’m starting to think of it as part of its own portfolio. It’s not part of my retirement savings. It’s not to be touched except as a last resort. Added to when excess cash is on hand. Passed down to my children with these same instructions, along with a family history story that illuminates why it’s important to own some gold.

That’s how I’ve always felt about physical.
ETFs and funds ae for rebalancing (I don’t have any left). Physical gold is not something I’m interested in mailing back to the vendor for cash.

[dualstow]

P.S. I was going to bring up the fact that Palantir bought $50MM worth of gold, but they dumped it!

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/05/10/palanti ... -bars.html

[I Shrugged]

I’m kind of skeptical that I’ll ever rebalance gold. l’m starting to think of it as part of its own portfolio. It’s not part of my retirement savings. It’s not to be touched except as a last resort. Added to when excess cash is on hand. Passed down to my children with these same instructions, along with a family history story that illuminates why it’s important to own some gold.

Apparently the duration of gold is so long that it’s inappropriate except for family office / dynasty situations of hundreds of years.

Agree completely. Once you have a critical mass of Au, just keep it as the family jewels.

[Hal]

FWIW...

Found this link to many gold/silver charts => https://www.monetary-metals.com/data-science-charts/
Does anyone actually successfully use any of these?

[yankees60]

(no writing by Vinny!)

https://www.etf.com/sections/features/g ... ead%20More

Gold Tops $3K: GLD, IAU Surge as Investors Seek Safe Haven

Gold topped the $3,000 per ounce level for the first time ever, propelling gold ETFs like GLD and IAU even higher.


Sumit Roy
|
Senior ETF Analyst
|
Mar 14, 2025

[barrett]

I’m kind of skeptical that I’ll ever rebalance gold. l’m starting to think of it as part of its own portfolio. It’s not part of my retirement savings. It’s not to be touched except as a last resort. Added to when excess cash is on hand. Passed down to my children with these same instructions, along with a family history story that illuminates why it’s important to own some gold.

That’s how I’ve always felt about physical.
ETFs and funds ae for rebalancing (I don’t have any left). Physical gold is not something I’m interested in mailing back to the vendor for cash.

I redeemed a total of 20 Eagles/Krugs & Leafs with JM Bullion last June with no issues. But, yes, it does feel a bit uncomfortable sending them via FedEx. In my case I needed some more funds in my taxable account for living expenses and paying taxes on Roth conversions. I was also above my gold allocation as stated in my IPS.

Ultimately gold is just a currency. Currencies are meant to buy stuff, live off of and save for the future. But there's no one answer that is right for everyone.

[dualstow]

One difference, although perhaps not terribly important: currency stashed away eventually becomes something you need to trade in for more up to date currency. Your mileage may very depending on country of residence. (Or, as noted in Breaking Bad, it may be vulnerable to silverfish).

Gold can just sit in its hiding place forever. This doesn’t detract from your point that it’s ulimately just currency, but it is special.

[Ugly_Bird]

Sitting tight.

Just was thinking.
The Gold portion of my 4x25 HBPP is close to 30%.
In order to reach 35% bracket it should get to $3500.
Is it even realistic?

[I Shrugged]

Sitting tight.

Just was thinking.
The Gold portion of my 4x25 HBPP is close to 30%.
In order to reach 35% bracket it should get to $3500.
Is it even realistic?

Every once in a while, gold goes straight up. So yes, I think it's realistic.

[yankees60]

Starting this book and the following are on the next two pages.

1.JPG (79.94 KiB) Viewed 9258 times

2.JPG (33.58 KiB) Viewed 9258 times

3.JPG (28.26 KiB) Viewed 9258 times

[Ugly_Bird]

Starting this book and the following are on the next two pages.

"Past performance does not guarantee future results"

[yankees60]

One difference, although perhaps not terribly important: currency stashed away eventually becomes something you need to trade in for more up to date currency. Your mileage may very depending on country of residence. (Or, as noted in Breaking Bad, it may be vulnerable to silverfish).

Gold can just sit in its hiding place forever. This doesn’t detract from your point that it’s ulimately just currency, but it is special.

Just read the following in this great Lincoln Civil War book on its financing.

"Nonetheless, bank balances continued to erode. The New York sub-Treasury’s gold stock was shrinking as well. Incredibly, in the midst of the crisis, Chase demanded the next installment on his loan. Some of the banks refused. Cisco sent his boss an alarmed note: “Our total payments today over receipts have been about Two Million Dollars . . . it will be necessary to replenish it immediately.” In truth, the currency crisis had little to do with any possible war with Britain. No sane person will deposit gold if they fear that the bank is imperiled. Rather than deposit gold and silver coins, people were hoarding them—a pattern reputedly observed by the sixteenth-century merchant Sir Thomas Gresham.[*] Coins disappeared from circulation at lightning speed. According to Lucius Chittenden, a Treasury official, “They seemed to vanish in a day.”"

[yankees60]

This whole section was astounding:

"One week after Lincoln’s message, Chase submitted his annual report to Congress. This document was eagerly awaited, for it provided the public with its first glimpse of the country’s finances during the war. Fearing that the public was losing patience with the war’s mounting expense, Chase made a rather transparent attempt to sugarcoat the numbers. His tone was reassuring, but his figures were alarming. In the apt description of the financial historian Bray Hammond, he cloaked gloomy facts in “a fog of calm and confidence.” Due to the rising number of troops, as well as increased soldier pay, Chase had raised his spending forecast a whopping 70 percent from his meticulous forecast the previous July. He now forecast an annual budget of $540 million, approximately ten times the government’s annual revenues. Such a gap was not, or seemed to be not, sustainable. But he had equally bad news on the revenue side. Rather than the $57 million he had hoped to raise from the tariff, the Treasury secretary forecast only $32 million.

By now, Chase might have realized that his forecasts were little more than guesses, and that he should seek all the revenue he could. Yet the cautious Chase still feared to increase taxes, except very modestly.[*] He was constrained by the knowledge that Americans, as citizens in a democracy, were uniquely able to reject taxes at the ballot box. (McPherson observes that Americans were among the most lightly taxed peoples on Earth.) Chase, more drily, said, “It will be seen at a glance that the amount to be derived from taxation forms but a small portion of the sums required for the expenses of the war.” In a report that soldiered on for a ponderous twenty-nine pages, this single sentence horrified Wall Street. Bankers realized that what Chase proposed in lieu of taxes was to close the gap by borrowing. The amounts were stupendous. By June 30, 1863, assuming the war was then still on, Chase would need to borrow an additional $650 million. As recently as June 1861, the total government debt had been $90 million. Although Chase did not say so explicitly, he was planning to rely on taxes for not quite a sixth of the budget, with loans to cover everything else. That was considerably more than in the Confederacy, which had relied on taxes for less than 2 percent of its first-year expenses (and on the printing press for 75 percent!), but it was not sufficient for Wall Street. As with an overmortgaged family, the government was at serious risk of seeing the credit window shut.

The Treasury secretary had been stewing over this, and his report divulged a plan. It was nothing if not complex, for that was how his mind operated, with a lawyer’s love of detail. He would not finance the war through Treasury notes, the path to dreaded inflation. Nor did he want to rely on the banks, and see the gains go to private financiers. Rather, Chase proposed to organize a new system of banks, privately owned but chartered by the federal government. These banks would be required to invest in government bonds—bolstering the government’s credit. The notes of these new banks would become the country’s money—uniform, stable, secure.

Chase had a larger purpose in mind. Issuing currency, he insisted, was the job of the federal government. He questioned whether bank notes were not illegal. Actually, the Constitution forbade the states from coining money or issuing paper bills. It said nothing about whether banks could do so. But the Constitution had been written in a simpler time, when only a handful of banks existed. Chase was trying to adapt it to the industrial age. In a stroke worthy of Hamilton, he was trying to reclaim exclusive monetary authority for the national government.

Chase’s solution was elegant, and as an abstract blueprint it was masterly. But his plan entirely ignored the present emergency. The government needed loans immediately. It could not wait to restructure the banking system, much less engage in constitutional disquisitions. Bankers completely shunned his plan—hardly a surprise, since the Treasury secretary made clear that his intent was to drive existing bank notes out of circulation. Congress also was hostile. It had not occurred to Chase to cultivate legislative allies, and with the exception of John Sherman, he had none.

Chase had prepared his plan under mounting personal stress. He was overworked and complained that he was underappreciated. The Treasury secretary was a strange mix, at once imperious and emotionally needy. He griped to his elder daughter, Katherine (always “Kate”), a beguiling woman serving as mistress of his household, that due to his miserly salary and mounting personal expenses, he might be forced to resign. His duties as a father, including supporting Kate’s taste for luxuries, merely added to his stress."

[yankees60]

"On the final weekend of 1861, the Associated Banks reported another drop in gold. The forty institutions in New York had lost nearly 30 percent of their specie in less than a month. They still had gold reserves of $29 million, but it was plain that if the spigot remained open, their vaults would empty. On Saturday, December 28, they voted to suspend—to cease redeeming notes for gold. Depositors who wanted coin would have to go outside the metropolitan area—a logic that forced suspension to spread to every other city.

Not only the gold standard fell, but also the illusion that the banks could finance a major war. In truth, the banking system was outmoded. The banks were entrepreneurial private lenders. The America of iron and railroads had outgrown them. The government as well as industrial corporations needed bigger institutions that could sell vast sums of securities and pool larger reserves of capital.

Lincoln’s Treasury secretary immediately recognized that the government, too, would be forced to go off gold. A despondent Chase alerted Cisco, “I deplore exceedingly the suspension . . . it is certain that the Govt cannot pay coin unless the Banks do.” Chase had fought harder than anyone to stay on specie. Now, he would have to fight the war with paper."

[seajay]

Thanks! I do check in now and then but I haven't posted in a while....

Anyway, no rebalancing yet. Sitting tight. Wondering what everyone else is doing?

Monthly directed withdrawals has been enough (partial) rebalancing it itself for me (reducing the most-above target weighting at the time). As might directed additions for those in accumulation years (adding to the most-below target weighting).

[ochotona]

I think $3500 is realistic.

[Ugly_Bird]

I think $3500 is realistic.

Maybe... there is another factor. Despite crypto is no longer "digital gold" (it sorta was when many thought that it was pulling money out of investment in gold in the previous halving cycle ), there is a good chance BTC will jump to 160-180-200 $k sometime before the end of the year. That might affect gold price. Though, BTC should crash sometime next year and this is when gold may prices go up. Will see...

[dualstow]

I’m sure there’s some internet law that as soon as a significant number is hit, pundits have to start talking about the next milestone. But couldn’t the next stop be 2500?

[Ugly_Bird]

I’m sure there’s some internet law that as soon as a significant number is hit, pundits have to start talking about the next milestone. But couldn’t the next stop be 2500?

We know that markets are unpredictable... This is why we do not time them. Right?

[I Shrugged]

Here is a good article on the US government gold, and the various actions and reactions since FDR confiscated gold.

And if you don’t laugh at the name of one of the men mentioned in the article, you’re probably not immature like me.

https://www.theflyingfrisby.com/p/the-m ... ricas-gold

[dualstow]

I’m sure there’s some internet law that as soon as a significant number is hit, pundits have to start talking about the next milestone. But couldn’t the next stop be 2500?

We now that markets are unpredictable... This is why we do not time them. Right?

Right!

[Jack Jones]

Lincoln’s Treasury secretary immediately recognized that the government, too, would be forced to go off gold. A despondent Chase alerted Cisco, “I deplore exceedingly the suspension . . . it is certain that the Govt cannot pay coin unless the Banks do.” Chase had fought harder than anyone to stay on specie. Now, he would have to fight the war with paper."

Was this the paper that was ultimately called greenbacks?