STALE BULLS
Global gold stocks crushed and in tatters
Listed gold stocks have now lost nearly 60%, or a combined USD 256bn, of peak values, leaving a global resources sub-sector at sixes and sevens.
Author: Barry Sergeant
Posted: Wednesday , 10 Sep 2008
JOHANNESBURG -
Globally listed gold mining stocks have now lost nearly 60% of their value, on a weighted average basis, equal to a loss of about USD 256bn in market value, or capitalisation. Each of the 13 stocks that may be considered members of the global senior and elite Tier I gold digger grouping traded at 12-month lows, and some worse, overnight Tuesday. Global highflyer Goldcorp is now trading 52% off its peak price, while Barrick, the world's biggest gold miner, has retrenched by 51% in price.
Harmony, one of three South Africa based members of the Tier I group, fell by a dramatic 14% on the NYSE on Tuesday. There were bigger falls among smaller names; Centerra ploughed down by 17%, while Alamos slid 18%, and Great Basin Gold crashed down by 23%. Among gold developers, or juniors, Gabriel lost a stunning 26% of its value in a single trading session, as did Kirkland Lake. Navasota Resources and Yukon-Nevada shed 23% each, while Dragon Mining lost a full 33% of its market value in Australia this morning, a fraction short of the percentage of value surrendered last night in Canada by PMI Gold.
The background is fairly uncontroversial: a dollar that has been firming since 15 July, less than two months ago, translating to commodities being more expensive in other currencies, mixed in with accumulating evidence of a slowing global economy, thus leaving the price trend outlook for raw materials in the doldrums, at best.
Where listed gold stocks have lost, on a weighed average basis, 57% of peak market value, the dollar gold price has corrected by 25% from its peak in early March this year, at the height of the Bear Stearns crisis on Wall Street. Before and after that, any number of professed experts on gold have been calling for the price of the yellow metal to continue rising, citing several well-known factors, not least good seasonal demand for gold from India and South East Asia in August and September, along with various views on the dollar, crude oil, geopolitical risk, and inflation, which all somehow mix into being individually and collectively good for gold prices.
Well, investors in listed gold stocks have clearly had enough. More recently, amid signs of weakness in the dollar gold bullion price, reports have been filing in from India, the world's single biggest market for physical gold, and the Middle East, another important market, that demand is, in a nutshell, very strong indeed.
More to the point, perhaps, is that recent days have indicated a possible breakdown in the inverse relationship between dollar gold bullion prices, and the dollar index, the trade-weighted value of the dollar. Where the dollar has shown signs of weakness, gold has tended to stay soft, indicating that its least path of resistance may well be to the south. If gold falls regardless of the direction of the dollar, hell could break loose.
Forecasting gold price trends is simply impossible, but those who glibly predicted an ever-rising trend are beginning to irritate investors who have collectively lost tens of billions of dollars on listed gold stocks in a matter of months. Mark Hulbert, founder of Hulbert Financial Digest, which has traced the advice of more than 160 financial newsletters since 1980, yesterday wrote about the views of various bullish - naturally - commentators on gold.
Hulbert wrote that such views were at least "in part keeping the Hulbert Gold Newsletter Sentiment Index (HGNSI) at abnormally high levels. That index reflects the average recommended gold-market exposure among a subset of gold-timing newsletters tracked by the Hulbert Financial Digest".
"In recent weeks I have written several columns wondering what it would take for the editor of the average gold-timing newsletter to give up believing that gold was in a bull market. And it would appear that we still don't know.
"That's because the HGNSI didn't budge at all on Tuesday, despite bullion's fall, remaining at 27.9%. To put that level in perspective, it is higher than where it stood in early August, when bullion was trading above USD 900 per ounce". Overnight on Tuesday, gold nearly touched USD 760 an ounce, before recovering somewhat. Hulbert accused the "gold bug" fraternity of using arguments that "sometimes involve disingenuous logic", captured in the attitude of "Heads I win, tails you lose".
Ganzer Artikel incl. Werteübersicht
http://www.mineweb.com/mineweb/view/mineweb/en/page33?oid=62115&sn=Detail
duke war heute immer schneller mit dem News reinstellen
.... das Bild von den "Füßen" gestren schreckt mich einfach noch zu sehr ab 
