Thursday, September 18, 2008

Is shorting GLD a good idea?

Many years ago, gold was used as the default commodity for valuing currencies. As time goes by, governments need more money, so they need to print more. But there was a problem, gold was getting too expensive due to its limited supplies and rising demand. This became unsustainable because more money needs to be printed in the years to come.

So in 1961, a pool of US and European banks agreed to manipulate the market to prevent further currency devaluation against increased gold demand. Hence, this slowed down the rate of increase of gold price.

Since then, the valuation of currencies are based on a basket of currencies instead of gold.
Therefore, it doesn't matter how much money federal reserves around the world prints....as long as they can agree on how much money they print. So when you hear federal reserves pumping liquidity into the financial system, this means that they are printing more money.
Of course, when they do that....the US FED has to collaborate with the Central Banks (FED from other countries) to ensure that the dollar does not devalue by much.

Here comes to the interesting question....how about gold? Well, right now gold prices are pretty high because US FED has been printing more money than other Central Banks. But, Central Banks will eventually print more money to even out their currency valuations with the US Dollar.....when that happens....currency valuations reaches a point of equilibrium. So when that happens, gold prices will eventually drop.

As for now, valuations of gold are skyroketting due to a mixture of the FED's move and irrational buying from investors/traders due to the perception of gold as a safe haven. When this irrational buying stops and the dollar stregthens, gold is expected to enter a bear market. I don't expect the dollar to strengthen so soon, we still have company earnings coming out from mid to end of October. Asking for gold to dip to 850 is a lot to ask for right now.

If you look at my portfolio, I actually shorted gold much too early...hence I am taking a beating. I need to cut losses at some point.

Well, I hope to receive some comments on what you think is the best course of action now? lol

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