The past 2 days most of the selling came from National Bank and my guess it was someone that participated in the 13-cent PP in March. He could sell the shares for a 50% profit and re-load at 20 cents and pick up a half warrant. It's like "found money". National Bank sold over a million shares the past 2 days which is unusual volume for them. Canaccord always chips in on the sell side. These are the house positions for the past month:
http://tinyurl.com/ybrnlpg
6 comments:
It sounds like India is currently in negotiations to buy the remaining IMF gold that is up for sale. This is part of the article:
India plans to buy more gold from IMF
By Mandakini Raina Nov 24 2009 , New Delhi
India is open to buying more gold from the International Monetary Fund (IMF). It bought 200 tonnes for $6.7 billion on November 3. The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) may well buy IMF’s remaining hoard of 201.3 tonnes on acceptable terms, which are now under negotiation.
A government official said that the additional purchase would depend on the “successful pitching by RBI”. “RBI is an independent body, and the government does not interfere in its affairs. It will get the gold if its bid is successful and at the price it has offered,” said the official.
RBI did not respond to Financial Chronicle questions if it was bidding for the remaining IMF gold. The purchase of the first lot of 200 tonnes, RBI had said at the time, was a part of its foreign exchange reserves management operations.
Responding to query from FC, an IMF spokesperson said the gold sale process was still under way and “there is no fixed timetable for completing the sale”. Its spokesperson further said that “the fund does not wish to comment on discussions with individual members.”
RBI has good reasons to further enrich its gold reserves. In just three weeks it has been able to benefit by as much as $800 million on the investment of $6.7 billion it made in buying 200 tonnes from IMF.
Miners: We're running out of gold
November 25, 2009 - 12:49PM
AFP
Gold production will continue to fall, despite a brief boost in 2009 and soaring prices, as deposits are exhausted and new discoveries remain elusive, say miners.
In terms of production, "2009 is the outlier as far as the trend," Omar Jabara, spokesman for US-based Newmont Mining, the second-largest gold producer in the world, told AFP.
Overall, "it's a fact that gold production from mines has been in decline since 2001 and has gone roughly from 85 million ounces to about 75 million ounces a year," said Vincent Borg, spokesman for number one producer Barrick Gold.
"It sort of goes down about one million ounces every year and our forecast is that it will continue to decline despite the higher price" for gold nowadays, he said.
Almost everywhere, mineral deposits are being exhausted and new deposits are not being found fast enough to replace them, these experts explain.
South Africa, which was once at the vanguard of world production, saw a 9.3-percent drop in production year-over-year in the second quarter, according to its Chamber of Mines.
Globally, "it's just that the assets are not there anymore," Tonya Todd, a spokeswoman for Goldcorp, Canada's second biggest gold mining firm.
"Just because gold reached a new high today doesn't mean we can send a message to our 26 mines saying produce as much gold as you can today because they are already," said Borg.
"It's not like a water tap you can turn on and it comes right away."
Barrick and Newmont expect nevertheless to continue increasing production next year by seven percent and five to 10 percent, respectively. But long-term, it's downhill.
Omar Jabara explained that it takes from seven to 10 years to start production of a mine after finding an economically viable gold deposit.
And "no significant new discoveries have been found in recent years, despite the higher gold prices and despite higher exploration budgets," said Borg.
What is already happening and is likely to continue is that the grade or quality of deposits industry-wide will be "on average lower than deposits discovered in the past," opined Jabara.
The global gold mine production is forecast to rise by 3.7 percent in 2009 to about 2,500 tonnes, but will satisfy only two-thirds of demand, which soared this year amid the global financial crisis to 3,800 tonnes, according to the World Gold Council.
Historically, gold recycling or the sale of central bank stockpiles made up for supply shortages.
But during the latest financial crisis, banks have been buying up gold in large quantities to protect monetary reserves against weakness in the US dollar.
Since the start of November, for example, India's central bank has scooped up 200 tonnes of gold from the International Monetary Fund, at market value for about 6.7 billion dollars.
Amid uncertainty in the stock market, small investors and hedge funds are also coveting gold, driving up demand for the precious metal.
With mine production sloping downwards, an increasing supply of gold must come from existing supplies -- such as coins, bullion or jewelry -- but it will be very limited.
"All the gold ever produced through history amounts to about 165,000 tonnes, which would barely fill two Olympic-size swimming pools," said Jabara.
The price of gold, after reaching new highs over the past year, on Monday hit 1.174 dollars per ounce.
Bank of England staff pension fund shuns Gilts
The Bank of England's staff pension fund sharply reduced its portfolio of fixed-rate gilts and switched to inflation-protected bonds in the year to February.
By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard
Published: 9:42PM GMT 24 Nov 2009
The period roughly coincides with the Bank's emergency interest rate cuts and recourse to quantitative easing.
The fund's latest report shows that 88.2pc of its £2.1bn holdings were in index-linked Gilts or securities with a state guarantee as of February 28 this year. The share of fixed Gilts was cut back from 22.3pc to 10.9pc over the preceding 12 months.
There is no suggestion that the Bank's staff has lost faith in the ability of the Monetary Policy Committee to control inflation. The fund is managed by a team at Legal & General, which is focused on matching liabilities.
However, Stephen Lewis from Monument Securities said the portfolio shift highlights broader markets fears about Gilts at a time of ballooning public debt and unprecedented levels of stimulus.
"There is a sense of discomfort. You can't get a cast-iron guarantee of returns on fixed Gilts and nobody knows what is going to happen when quantitative easing ends. Each time there has been a suspicion that the Bank may end QE, yields spike up 20 or 30 basis points," he said.
The Bank's pension report was obtained by Adrian Ash from the BullionVault.com, the gold specialists, under freedom of information rules. The fund shrank by £169m last year, due to "extremely turbulent market conditions" and payments to 7,500 former staff.
The fund would have performed better if it had put a chunk of its money in the barbarous relic of gold long ago. The perfect opportunity was to start accumulating at the turn of the century when Gordon Brown order the Bank of England to sell half the country's gold reserves at the bottom of the market. The price has since risen explosively from $252 an ounce to a fresh record of $1,170 yesterday.
Holdings in UK equities were cut from 5.3pc to 0.3pc over the year, or just £549,000. The return on shares was minus 47pc, so the fund must have sold after the crash.
Vietnam banks face shortage of funds on gold, dollar
Last Updated: Wednesday, November 25, 2009 11:11:51 Vietnam (GMT+07)
Vietnamese lenders are facing a shortage of funds to meet rising demand for loans because gains in gold and the dollar are deterring people from putting money in the bank, according to a government statement.
Commercial banks have had to raise deposit interest rates to as high as 9.99 percent over the past week and offered gifts and bonuses to depositors to lure them back, the statement on the government’s website said.
The dong fell to a record low when it traded at 17,882 at banks Tuesday and slumped in the so-called black market to as low as 19,890 from 19,800 in Ho Chi Minh City, according to the state-run telephone information service, known as 1080. Gold rose to VND28.57 million per tael Tuesday, from 28.55 million dong the previous day.
Vietnam ups gold import quota to 10 tonnes
6.8 TONNES ALREADY IMPORTED
Yet another Eastern country is reacting positively on gold with Vietnam lifting its import ban with a 10 tonne import quota this month
Posted: Wednesday , 25 Nov 2009
HANOI (Reuters) -
Vietnam's central bank has granted quotas for the import of 10 tonnes of gold since lifting an import ban earlier this month and 6.8 tonnes had already come in, state broadcaster VTV said on Wednesday.
"The imports will have an impact on the local gold market," VTV quoted State Bank of Vietnam Governor Nguyen Van Giau as saying.
He said the quotas had been granted to eight banks and three gold traders, it reported, without specifying names.
At around 0700 GMT, gold was trading at 28.6-28.7 million dong per tael, or $1,470.40-$1,475.60 at the black market exchange rate of 19,450 dong per dollar in Hanoi.
A tael equals 1.21 ounces, which puts the price of gold in Vietnam $36-$40 above world prices XAU= per ounce.
Earlier this month, gold reached more than 29 million dong per tael, which put pressure on Vietnam's currency, the dong, to slide in value.
That prompted the central bank to lift a ban on gold imports that had been in place since mid-2008.
The immediate effect was to bring the price of gold down and the value of the dong up, but that wore off and both had been drifting back. The central bank announced a devaluation of the dong on Wednesday. ($1 = 17,876 dong) (Reporting by Nguyen Nhat Lam and John Ruwitch; Editing by Alan Raybould)
© Thomson Reuters 2009 All rights reserved
P5
since we are talking calculations what "in the ground" value do you put on the Reserves and Resources for CMM (Lamaque + San Juan).
As of March 2009
Reserves = 1.321 M oz
Resources
M&I=1.069 M oz
Inferred= 3.3 M oz
Thanks! Rhump
Post a Comment