This post provides links to a number of interesting articles I have read over the past few days that you may also enjoy.

• Jennifer Hughes (Financial Times): Visibility improved but storms may lie ahead, November 13, 2008. The fog is beginning to lift. All year executives, analysts and investors have talked of a “lack of visibility” on the outlook for the economy, earnings and financial markets. By “visibility” they are in essence complaining about the uncertainty that clouds all forecasts all the time, but which we had increasingly managed to ignore during such a steady run of good times. Investors are becoming more confident that the fog is lifting, but that does not necessarily mean there is sunshine waiting just behind it.

• Doug Kass (TheStreet.com): Market ignorance is bliss, November 12, 2009. I do believe with some certainty that the market’s vulnerability

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If we’re right about where the price of gold is headed, the general public will someday clamor to buy all things gold. While gold stocks will be where the real leverage is, the rush will start with gold itself. As a gold editor, I have a very natural question: is there enough to go around?

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, there are 6.783 billion earthlings. Meanwhile, CPM Group, a highly respected industry organization, estimates there are 4.8 billion ounces of above-ground gold in the world. And this includes jewelry, electronics, and dental. So, even if everyone around the world volunteered to have their chain, cross, or tooth melted into a coin, we’re already short. Those towards the end of the line are out of luck.

However, it’s worse than that. Of all the physical metal ever mined…

2.1 billion ounces, or 43%, is found in jewelry, decorative, and religious items. Private stock – ...

Gold started the summer doldrums looking strong and has retreated since, but what are its prospects for the rest of the year and beyond? That will largely be determined by the interplay between supply and demand; let’s take a look at the supply side.

Reports of dwindling supply are accurate in some areas; however, the story is not that simple. Unlike most metals that are consumed in industrial use, most of the gold ever mined is still around. Gold is forever. Thus newly mined, refined, and fabricated gold is not all that’s entering the marketplace; there are multiple ways of meeting demand. Here’s a look at each.

Breaking Rocks

Imagine that you could turn back the calendar to late 1848, as word was beginning to spread about the gold discovery at John Sutter’s sawmill on the South Fork of the American River in Coloma, California. Would you have loved gold enough to be

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The silver market is showing signs of bullish strain and an incredible opportunity is being presented to you. I’m a staunch silver advocate and it’s time for an update right now. Silver stands to outperform gold as the long term precious metal bull market continues to unfold.The price of silver, along with gold, is kept under wraps by officials of the New York COMEX market, aka CRIMEX. The old boy network which runs CRIMEX have whipsawed the market in their desired direction for decades and profited accordingly. These actions are government sanctioned because precious metals are competition to un-backed fiat money. State mandated fiat is so weak and poorly designed that it cannot stand competitors.

I wrote a silver article 4½ years ago entitled Silver: Anatomy of A CRIME(X). In that article I compared activities at the COMEX market to prior incidents at Long Term Capital Management, Enron and Arthur

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Once again, gold and silver mirrored each other’s price moves all through Thursday trading around the world. The high in the Far East in both metals was about 3:30 p.m. in Hong Kong…and from there, the trend was down. This trend picked up some steam about 10:00 a.m. in London and continued to accelerate to the down-side right through the Comex open. But around 8:45 a.m. in New York, gold and silver found a savior, as both metals turned on a dime…with gold picking up a hair over $20…and silver up 66 cents…from bottom-to-top during Comex trading.

It was all too good to last of course, as once the Comex floor traders went their merry ways, electronic trading took some of those gains back. However, both metals finished in the plus column yesterday…but gold just barely made it…up a whopping 40 cents!

I’ve commented before [several times over the last couple of

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One aspect of my work that I love is interviewing interesting people. On June 4th, 2009 I had the pleasure of speaking with David J. Christensen, the CEO of ASA Limited [ASA: 65.44, -1.94 (-2.88%)], a closed-end, non-diversified investment company registered with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission. The Company was organized in Bermuda and is the successor to a closed-end investment company of the same name organized in the Republic of South Africa in 1958.

The Company provides investors a vehicle to invest in a portfolio consisting primarily of the stocks of companies engaged in the exploration, mining or processing of gold, silver, platinum, diamonds or other precious minerals. It may also invest in gold, silver and platinum bullion or securities that seek to replicate the price movement of gold, silver or platinum bullion.

To coax you to read this article carefully, I’m going to reward

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Silver is a great investment right now and prices could easily shoot above $20 per ounce by the end of this year.  I predict that with the right call options on silver you can make over 100% before the end of the year. In just a moment I’ll give you all the information you need to take action on an options pick on silver with explosive profit potential.  But first, I want to explain why silver will blast higher.

Silver is a precious metal therefore it does great when people get worried about the stock market, inflation and geopolitical risk.

Silver is a hard asset that holds its value in inflationary times and maintains its purchasing power.  We could see a steep rise in inflation due to all this out-of-control government money printing that’s going on these days.  The deficit this year is on track to be $1.8 trillion and the national

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Inflation Hedging: Four Ways To Protect Your Investment Portfolio

by David Fessler, Advisory Panelist

Right now, the markets are caring about one thing: inflation. And they’re starting to get a little edgy. They need inflation hedging…

Why? The U.S. Treasury is printing money and dumping it into the financial system at historically unprecedented rates, in an effort to stimulate the economy.

Chances are good that the Fed won’t know when to stop the printing presses. Continuing to print money only exacerbates the inflation problem and deepens the hole.

And it’s quite a hole.

Jessica Hoversen - Fixed Income Analyst at MF Global - had this to say yesterday on CNBC: “The ratio of U.S. budget deficit to [gross domestic product] GDP is at the highest level since World War II.”

The government thought process goes something like, “If some stimulation is good, more will be even better.” And most politicians, who are

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Gold had a boring, if mildly positive, day on Friday, as many traders left their desks to get a jump on the Memorial Day weekend, locking the metal up in a tight range between $950 and $960, leading to a finish at $956.50/oz., up $2.60. For the week, gold added 2.8%.

Platinum fell off in the far East, rebounded to the New York open, then traded choppily through the rest of the day, to little ultimate effect as it ended at $1153, up $4. For the week, platinum was up 4.7%.

Silver was also off in Hong Kong, but rose sharply in Europe, peaking at $14.81, then traded inside a 20-cent range for the rest of the day, closing in the middle at $14.69, up 14 cents. For the week, silver gained a robust 5.3%. (Click here for charts)

The precious metals did well, holding onto their gains for the

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By now it can be argued that the most positive defining instrument of the global appetite for risk and reward is represented by gold bullion, as also seen in gold bullion exchange traded funds (ETFs), of which the biggest by far remains the SPDR Gold Shares ETF, which currently holds physical gold bullion of just less than 36m ounces, worth USD 34.5bn.

SPDR Gold Shares, which represent a proxy holding in physical gold bullion, is trading, like gold bullion itself, just 5% below dollar price highs, seen during March 2008. By the same token, silver bullion and silver ETFs are trading roughly 25% below the price high seen for the physical precious metal, also recorded just over a year ago.

The performance of gold bullion and gold ETFs has not only outclassed any other kind of publicly available and widely traded investment

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