I really missed a trick with Gold's multi decade bull run.
I very much subscribed to Buffets view of it being non productive. I missed the monetary and macro angle to it completely.
Well played to the gold bugs.
All bets are off if that happens @BkrDzn !!
What you highlight is a much bigger story than many realise, in my opinion.
Did you also see that the London gold market is currently experiencing delays in fulfilling physical gold redemptions, with withdrawal times from the Bank of England vaults extending to 4-8 weeks? There are also some concerns they don't have enough to meet redemptions because they have fractionally reserved their stockpiles.. (would be huge if true)
There's also been a pretty big surge in gold shipments to the U.S., where COMEX-approved warehouses have seen a 70% increase in stock over the past two months.
I think there's some signal in all of that.
Some interesting charts:
Chinese gold reserves:
This is China's US Treasury holdings:
Some gold bugs clearly also like Bitcoin. I'm not one of them however. They are very different, with only minor similarities. Even if Bitcoin was embraced worldwide as much as gold is - and that's a long way off - if it ever happens - I don't think gold is ever likely to display the sort of price volatility we've seen with Bitcoin over recent years. Yes, Gold goes up and down, but it tends to trend, usually for months, or years, and as the 10 and 20 year graphs show, when it's in a downtrend, those don't last long, and the gold price is soon making new all time highs again.
You could glance at the following chart and say, well Bitcoin also keeps rising too, but look at these drawdowns:
Even if you ignore 2014, when it almost went to nothing, there's a -50% price decline around 2019 from the 2018 high, then a -74% decline a couple of years ago. Gold doesn't do that. Gold passes the sleep-easy test for me. Bitcoin doesn't come close.
the volatility depends on your long term view. If you think BTC will be as valuable as gold...and it will take about 10 years to get there....the volatility does not look too bad.
look at this extremely rough graphic i pulled together:
So if anything...the ups and downs are within the normal growth bounds?
And look...i know that it can be argued both ways....but it does put things into perspective.
I'm slowly becoming a BTC fanboy....very slowly.
Sorry i should add...if BTC is to have the same market cap of gold...that equates to a BTC price of about $700,000.
Thursday 6th Feb 2025: 
Will Gold Reach A$5,000/oz? Ft. Jeremy McGovern
CHAPTERS
0:00:00 G'day, Gov
0:02:20 Blackstone picks up Mankayan
0:08:09 Footy vs Mining for Jeremy McGovern
0:17:44 Trade war updates
0:27:40 Gold price action
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DISCLAIMER: All information in this podcast is for education and entertainment purposes only and is of general nature only.
The hosts of Money of Mine (MoM) are not financial professionals. MoM and our Contributors are not aware of your personal financial circumstances. Before making any investment decision, you should consult a licensed financial, legal or tax professional.
MoM doesn’t operate under an Australian financial services licence and relies on the exemption available under the Corporations Act 2001 (Cth) in respect of any information or advice given. MoM strive to ensure the accuracy of the information contained in this podcast but we don’t make any representation or warranty that it’s accurate or up to date. Any views expressed by the hosts of MoM are their opinion only and may contain forward looking statements that may not eventuate.
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It's been a decent decade.
Trav & JD are still in Africa - hopefully staying away from Mali.
Wednesday 5th Feb, 2025: At least 12 Goldies made new year-highs today (and a physical gold ETF):
And here's one I'd never heard of that's had a +262% share price increase, just in the past fortnight (was $0.029 on Jan 23rd, now $0.105):
It's a good time to be finding gold:
03 Feb 2025: New High-Grade Gold Discovery at Mulgabbie North GoldProject
05 Feb 2025: Update on New Discovery at Mulgabbie North Gold Project
Below is the first page of today's announcement followed by some of the images and diagrams in the announcement:
Source: Update on New Discovery at Mulgabbie North Gold Project [Today: 05-Feb-2025]
OZM Website: https://ozaurumresources.com/
It doesn't do them any harm that the Australian gold price keeps hitting new all time highs most days lately:
And the US$ gold price (on the right side, above) has joined the party this week also, making new all time highs as well.
Disclosure: I do not hold OZM, as I'd not heard of them before today. My current direct exposures to Australian listed gold producers, explorers and developers are:
Here (SM): Holding RMS, GMD, NST, MEK, EMR, CMM, PNR.
Real Life: Holding RMS, GMD, NST, DEG, EVN, EMR, VAU.
It's a good time to be in gold.
03-Feb-2025: I was holding Westgold (WGX) in my super, however I sold all of them this morning on the back of this BIG guidance downgrade today: WGX-FY25-Guidance-Update.PDF
As I was very overweight gold producers in my Super portfolio, I have rotated that money plus a bit more into a new ARB Corporation (ARB) position. ARB have always been a company I've been happy to hold, however I exited above $40/share last year; they spiked up to over $45 in late September/early October, and are now back down at $38/share (what I paid for them today) - I get the feeling they are likely to report well this month for their first half of FY2025. ARB are now a tier 1 supplier to Toyota Motors North America (meaning more OEM sales) and their outlook statement was reasonably bullish - remembering that they have very conservative management who tend to underpromise and overdeliver.
One headwind they have is a welding labour shortage at Kylsyth, which they say continues to be a constraint, however to help mitigate that skilled labour shortage here in Australia, they have expatriated 14 factory employees from ARB Thailand to Kilsyth. So, in that light, the labour shortage here in Australia doesn't appear to be a major headwind, in my view.
My other concern had been about declining ROE, however I think that is likely to stabilise soonish.
Note their share count has been quite stable for a decade, because they tend to not use their shares to pay for acquisitions, they instead use cash and debt and then pay off the debt quickly; they never have much debt and are often in a net cash position. Their book value has also increased every single year, which is another sign of a well managed company.
That info directly above is from Commsec, the rest of the slides in this post are from ARB's 17th Oct 2024 AGM Presentation.
Anyway, enough about ARB here in my gold thread - seeing as they are not a gold company - but that's where I've moved the investable cash from my previous investment in Westgold (WGX) this morning. I was reminded why I usually do NOT hold Westgold - because I don't rate their management highly and are critical of many of their captial allocation decisions, particularly around M&A, however I had thought they were good for a shorter term trade, because they had lagged the other mid-sized Australian goldies and I thought there might be some catch up when they reported this month. Yeah, nah! Burned just over $8K on that "trade", but happy to cut my losses immediately on that one and move on. Luckily I made more than that on MEK recently and I'm up by more than that on recent purchases of GMD and RMS, but that's not what matters; what matters is that I didn't get anchored to my purchase price with WGX (my average buy price), I didn't try to get back to breakeven - which is usually a recipe for further losses, and I sold out immediately when this new information told me my investment thesis was busted. Cut your losers early, and let your winners run. You can afford to make some bad calls when you follow that simple rule.