Friday, January 10, 2014

Gold and Jobs, Aqua Vortex Edition

I had a great post written. Blogger ate it. Rather than scream and shout, I'm going to chalk it up to a strange 24 hours that started with an Aqua Vortex last night. Eighteen inches of rain.

I'm not reproducing the whole post that was lost, but here's an abbreviate version ...


GOLD

Gold rallied hard today. Prices saw their highest settlement since Dec. 11 and gained 0.7% for the week.  Certainly the gold picks in Gold & Resource Trader are having a good day. For a change.

Traders are crediting the poor jobs data, or rising inflation expectations. While both have some influence, I think the biggest influence is China. 

I wrote a long issue about it today for by Gold & Resource Trader subscribers. Suffice to say that China’s demand for gold is enormous and growing. China has been buying everything the ETFs are selling and then some.


And what happens when the ETFs stop selling gold?

Meanwhile, Blackrock says that gold supplies could “start to decline quite rapidly.” We’ll see. Meanwhile, another analyst puts the “gold price pain point” at $1,050 per ounce. That’s the level at which, from an all-in cost perspective, half the industry loses money. The good news for miners is that this is actually lower than the second quarter pain point of $1,200. 

THE ECONOMY

Should we talk about the jobs numbers, or just numb ourselves with alcohol? Gosh, those were terrible numbers today. 

 The monthly U.S. jobs report added only 74,000 non-farm jobs in December. That key payrolls figure was expected to have shown a rise of around 200,000 jobs. Ouch!


Jobs were lost in government (-13,000), healthcare (-6,000), IT services (-12,000) and construction (-16,000 – owing to cold weather and at odds with ADP data) in December.

Here are three weird things about this jobs number.
And Bill McBride adds his excellent analysis. He says not to worry. Yet.

CYBERSECURITY
The Target data breach covers 1/3 of adult Americans nyti.ms/1amKgO0. Maybe it’s time to change your pin number, eh?

JUST FOR FUN

Have a good Friday.Fuck Blogger.

No comments:

Post a Comment