29th October 2025: I've sold almost half of my LYL in my real money income portfolio and rotated most of that money into GNG, and the rest into my speccy portfolio. I've done this over the past week including today, however I have left my LYL position alone here on SM. Despite the sell-down Lycopodium (LYL) remains my largest position both in real life and here.

My thought process is that many good gold companies have been sold down heavily on the recent drop in the gold price, and just as they outperformed the gold price on the way up in recent months, they have fallen more - in percentage terms - than the gold price has, and I've taken this opportunity to do some top ups. LYL is still heading over $14 in the next year or two IMO, however right now they are holding up pretty well between $12 and $13 compared to a company like GNG which got down to an intraday low of $3.38 yesterday, some 26.8% below their $4.62 high in late August.

LYL has had some volatile days as well, however they've largely maintained their uptrend, so I've sold down my LYL position from a 24% weighting (which was very high I admit) to now a 12.5% weighting across all 4 of my real money portfolios (LYL is held in two of those). LYL is still my largest single company exposure.

My next highest real-money PF (portfolio) weighting is now to GNG (GR Engineering Services, a similar type of company to LYL), being 11%, based on yesterday's closing share prices - both LYL and GNG are up today.

The other 5 of my top 7 positions by weightings are RMS at #3 with a 7.3% weighting, then NST @ 6%, EVN @ 5.3%, CMM @ 5% and #7 is GMD @ 4.7%. Again, based on yesterday's closing share prices.

So, I'm not thinking this is the end of the gold bull run. Not at all. I'm seeing a healthy pullback currently in a longer term uptrend that is supported by a number of factors that include continuing central bank buying that in turn is based on the US Dollar (US treasuries, bonds, etc) being less popular because the US Dollar is increasingly being viewed as a depreciating and less valuable asset to be holding in central bank reserves globally.

Central bank buying of gold on a monthly and quarterly basis ebbs and flows, but the longer term trajectory is firmly up over time, not down. There is still plenty of demand for gold. Even if Trump and Xi sign a deal, hold hands and sing Kumbaya, and all the tariffs evaporate and we return to free trade, we'll still have demand for gold. The gold price will NOT always be north east in a straight line, but that will be the overall trending direction for some years yet IMO, so I'm not lightening my gold producer exposure, including my direct exposure to engineering companies that provide services to the gold industry, like LYL and GNG who both specialise in the design and construction of gold processing plants and associated facilities / infrastructure (gold mills mostly).

I'm just rebalancing from some companies that have NOT fallen as much into a few others who have fallen considerably more in the past couple of weeks. Not selling out of any of them at this point, just adjusting weightings.

Source: https://goldprice.org/ [3:50pm Adelaide time, 29th October 2025]