Myrmidon my friend can't find a debt free silver rich stock!

WHO CAN???!!!!

Myrmidon: CEF has about half its value in silver in the form of 1000 ounce bars and bank certificates. About 6.5 million ounces. They list depreciation but idon't see any debt listed in their stockholder's annual report.

John, these were not my figures, someone posted that URL site, I read it and was surprised to see half tonnage in US and Australia for 1997. Your earlier comment that these were for half the 1997 made a lot of sense, however, the numbers were still challenged as whole year numbers.

I think the numbers are wrong. Another thing, I do not trust IMF numbers which a few weeks ago were posted. Since when we started trusting the IMF in anything?

How is the camel John? Please don't eat her up! It is a pet.

ASM/VSE has a hand in 500,000 oz of silver a year and has just completed large effort upgrade their equipment, pushing their share to maybe 1,000,000 this year. The property is near Durango in Mexico. They also have a prime exploration property about 60 km away, and a 50% share in a historical BC high grade gold mine, which looks to be coming on line sometime this year. The management team is headed up by Louis Wolfkin, former president of Industrias Penoles, the huge Mexican silver miner. The float on ASM is only 4.6 million.

Most of this comes from their company website, soo....

On the other hand, it was recently added to the list in a newsletter I subscribe to.....I am not sure if legalities permit me to say whose it is, but he has been around, in time and geographically.

I don't own any. Yet.

the website is www.avino.com

I'd like to open the field for opinions.

We have ignition. Houston?





.........................rock me forty days and forty nites.

Winston I'll check it out. Check out the Prime Resources web page. R.J. why not forget about the motive of Warren Buffett and just concentrate on VALUE. Maybe he left some on the table!!!

It aint over till it's over. My money is on gold and platinum. Hey but if ya like silver then..............jump on it.

SSC is rumoured to intend a reverse split. Any inputs.

Farfel: The perception issue is of valid importance in stock splits too!
A company goes to a great expense and trouble to adjust through perception its stock price!

gold up $2.60........wine-spectator-------

here we go.........we have lift-off.....

throttle-up-----aye---haggis-------aye----

where's the wonder from down-under?

For Ersel
Must not upset delicate truce .. But since you
asked .. RR shows all dwarfland telltale signs ..
Tiny body ..huge mouth.. no good with numbers ..
Any resemblence to anyone on this site.. real or
imagined is coincidental ... You have the right to
remain silent ....

If after twenty minutes at the poker table you haven't
figured out who the patsy is, well...then....


- Warren B.

Winston,
The Avino mine has been yielding silver on and off for centuries. Sometimes Wolfin's company even turns a profit.
The problem is that Avino doesn't drill off reserves, unless the policy has changed recently, very far in advance and the market never knows if it will run out of reserves or not.
Probably not, but the uncertainty has been enought to keep the price down. I doubt this has changed, although I gave up on Avino about a year ago.
I am curious to know the price. As you say, after the 3 for 1 reverse split a few years ago, there are very few shares out.
Avino also owns about half of the Bralorne-Pioneer gold mine in British Columbia. It received a permit to begin mining almost three years ago. So far, though, no mining has taken place.
It is very hard to make money in Lou Wolfin companies.

The Preacher

Hi I'm new to this discussion group. I need advice on a very stupid position I took. I went short on March's silver at 5.66. I know it's pretty stupid but I didn't know better. The question is: Should I get out and asume losses ( more than 70,000 dollars now ) or should I wait for the silver to back down before my position is due on march? Thanks for any help that you can give me.

Crusty,

well you might have thrown it away, but this old magpie squirrels the best gems away for a rainy day:

Date: Fri Dec 05 1997 10:10
John Disney__A ( Gold Production ) ID#24140:
To All

Wonders never cease-

I just got the following info faxed to me today.

It is a list of the top 6 gold producers with

corresponding tons of production.

South Africa 490

USA 330

Australia 300

Canada 160

China 150

Russia 150

I thought it might be helpful

*****

Seeing how many metaphors I can mix before dinner

salty

Heavy -

I wouldn't buy an ounce of silver up here. Got all my clients out of silver today. I'll buy it back at 5.70 - 6.00. Platinum is a great buy here and will give enough volatility to trade. I have only recently turned bullish on gold, and I will cautiously recommend my clients add to their gold positions, but the fun will be had in silver and platinum. You see? We halfway agree........

KO

I pay zero attention to WB. Last month it was George Soros buying up the silver. My point is that when you hear what the big money is doing, they have already flipped the other way. These stories crop up daily, money can be found in understanding that they are all bogus.

Would someone please provide an update on what's happening with Platinum on the oversea's market tonite. I have been unable to access Kitco quotes for two days and am lucky to get in here. Thanx.

Sorry to inform, but the precious metals do not perform or mimic stocks by any means.

For myrmidon
... they just cant divide and multiply.
I just sent the numbers without a source anyway - I got them
from Investek and now Ive lost them -
I HAD to eat that camel .. It was for the TRIBE.. I am a river
to my people... now she is PART of me... Oh I want to CRY .. I
miss Sheherezade ...see what you have done.

Athos, what a bummer. Wait at least until weekend, silver may come back down somewhat. Check RJ's note here, I think he's on right track. Good Luck...

Are these 1996 or 1997 production figures? I assume 1996 because the 1997 are not out yet.

Silver is like sh-t it's everywhere. It is all about quality not quanity. Gold is precious. Not everyone has it laying around the house for all eyes to see.

If you can afford it sell part of you position and go long!

Options in precious metals are a total waste of time!!

Crystal ball gazing raises you blood pressure.

BUY VALUE!!!!!!!!!

Herr Athos--

My advice ( unless you have unlimited funds ) is to get your ATHos OUT NOW while you still have your house and kids! Then buy some out of the money silver puts should it crash back to reality! IMHO

..

Myrmidon/All

what is a reverse split? Assume I know what a split is and its effect on capital backing..does a reverse split involve capital reconstruction? what effect is there on convertibles and Options and finally Dividend Yield??

You'll have to ask Crusty whence came the data.. Crusty?

if you can prove that it isn't a scam.

Athos-- it is difficult to give you advice--not knowing your financial situation. If you are $70 000 down on a silver position--there is one very definite piece of advice I can give you. Do not EVER trade again until you learn how to use stop losses. In fact do NOT even enter into a trade without giving your broker a stop loss order at the same time.

Now, as to your current 'situation'. You may get lucky and get out for less than $70 000. You may get extremely lucky and get out even. It is just as likely, however, that your losses will blow out ever farther. How does minus $140 000 sound to you??? How about minus $210 000???? It is your call.

I also suggest that you change your handle to Pathos ( said with humor and not spite--as that may soon be all you have left ) . Cheers, Nick.

Buying silver is like buying high selling low. Theres alot of people jumping on that bandwagon. Gold is undervalued to silver. I say the silver spark is there to ignite the fuel for the gold rally and Buffet and co. are in gold up to their eyeballs.

Down C$.20 to 2.20
What other companies is Lou involved with? What is it with his management that is so hard on shareholders? I know naught, but that the recommender of which I spoke casts a heavy eye on the management side of things, and just took two companies off his list for lacking in that sector. If he saw things really out of line, I can't imagine he'd continue be recommending it. Still, I'll take any enlightenment you can offer.

Athos-You're in quite a fix. For your sake I hope we have a good, short- lived pullback. My sympathies, but for solid, experience-backed advice I'll defer to the wiser among us. Good luck.

for Myrmidom
SEE ... In the desert .. pick up a bottle .. rub it..
and you get a djinn with the answers to your problem..
This Djinn is called SALTY ... of the numbers when you
need them ... You're a wonder Salty .. Hey pass the
djinn.

NOW you want to know where they came from ?? They came
from the djinn for cryin out loud.. Disclaimer .. neither
the djinn nor I counted the actual bars ourselves.. assume
no responsibility ... Typographical errors .. acts of god
.. war .. attacks by zulus .. or midgets .. or widgets..
.. Think I covered all the bases salty ??

For he to-day that shorts silver with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition:


Athos -

Your tale of woe tugged at my heart. I too put in some shorts around there, got stopped out. You had no stop losses in? What you described is the reason silver is rising. Holders of the short side of the contract are getting squeezed and a short squeeze can be brutal. I think silver will drop to the $6 level before February is over. I also expect a run on $7 in the same time period. I hope the former will precede the latter. Rather than take some pretty big losses, have you considered adding some new shorts? Nothing rises in a strait line. I don't envy anyone who would get in front of silver now though; its a freight train and the inertia will knock you flat. Can you afford the 70K? If so, wait for a drop and take you losses. With a little luck you can get out of this thing with a very small loss or, if you want to get aggressive and add some shorts, a profit?

Haggis is busy---counting all the money he is making on East Coast Minerals and Legend Mining. They have both gone ballistic today.

Most Aussie golds down today -- bit of a comeback toward the close. Profit taking on recent large gains.

insure@2223------

exactly.........and quite well put!
you cannot hit a home run unless you step-up to the plate......

that is the very reason for my constant buying
of gold options.......it will again happen..........
and you had better have some tickets........

patience........planning...........and more patience....
with today's environment.......it just might well occur tomorrow......

insure took the first step...and succeded......can you????

Heavy Hitter, RJ, all,
That sounds like an interesting theory. WB might have been sensing an imminent drop in the gold market, which he might own a HEAVY stake in, decided to come public early with the news in an attempt to prop up prices. I would really like to know WB's motivation for the timing of this press release. I'm sure that gold figures into the equation somehow. It's getting to late for such ponderings

RJ, I should have listened to you about silver two weeks ago.

Gold for the good guysGMJ

RJ: Agree with you 100% These are professional speculators who play the markets to win big at any cost. They have no affinity to the commodity be it Silver or Goats Milk. Just make the buck and get out! Follow them and your probably going for a ride off a cliff.
Soros sold out his Gold position after the 1993 rally and didn't give two s**ts.
One thing I would NEVER DO though is short PM's, unless you have big bucks to lose.
Neutral yes, short no..........

Winston,

Mr. Wollfin runs a gaggle of companies. His big one is Coral Gold. There's also Avino, Bralorne, First international, Levon Resources, Hurley River, and on and on. Only Avino produces anything
I've been seeing him at investors conferences for years telling the same story. Although I can't prove it, I would imagine he promotes, then sells when the shares riise, then buys back and refinances the companies when the prices collapse..
Bralorne was 2.00, now .30 Coral was 5.00, now 1.00 First inteernational was .40, now .12, etc
I think the business of the Wolfin Group is to sell shares, not mine metal. Othern than that, he's a heck of a nice guy.

The Preacher

Insiders using silver to catch the publics eye in the PM's, thus fueling a rise of gold to the moon. They can't corner gold but if they attract alot of attention with silver investors will jump on gold pushing prices up for a short covering rally not seen before. All they need to do is give it a push and bingo the shorts get out. Use your imagination.

I could not agree with you more. However, what I was refering to was the style of the investors involved with Berkshire Hathaway. These are not quick flip guys - although there is always a first time. More likely they see a long term ( multi year ) play unfolding.

However, there are questions. Firstly, the timing of the annoucement raises questions. Why now?? Are they trying to force an issue? Secondly, WHAT are they exactly doing? This is not necessarily clear. They may be taking advantage of a short term pop in silver. Or, they may be taking a position in a commodity to take advantage of a major shift in the price structure for silver, now that there are low inventory levels and silver is in a production deficit. Finally, they may be taking a position where price is relatively unimportant - hedging themselves against a currency breakdown for instance.

..

have a reverse head-and-shoulders bottom in the formation stage - looking at my "futures" contract chart. We are now working on the right shoulder. If this is correct, and only time will tell, we can expect a little more slippage, some sideways consolidation, and then we're off to the races. The possibility of a large move beyond the "head" low and "left-shoulder" low look pretty remote to me. Chow.

Heavy -

I trade precious metals for a living. Its all I do. I don't care where the price moves. Up or down, I trade both sides of the market, its all the same to me. I tend to view these markets a bit shorter term. Were I speaking of delivery, I would agree to your points. Gold is low now, its a good buy. So is platinum. Silver is too high and to bulky too store. As for trading, the coming volatility will offer excellent opportunities to trade both sides of the market. Does anybody know what will happen after silver stops going up?


Cherokee -

You must have unlimited funds. You have been buying gold options at every level from $400 on down. By my count 100% of them have expired worthless. I congratulate you on you tenacity.

Silver has already gone up 60 %. Do you want to buy an asset that has already made a big move and open your self up for a loss. No one really knows how high it will go. However I would not be short. Buffet is the fact of old news. Remember buy on the rumor sell on the fact. You place your bets.

For KO
Did you ask about debt free mining companies. I have
table here ...says Prime has 33.2 mill debt.
Of Canadian companies only Franco Nevada debt free.
They also look good on cost but not enough data to
verify. US mines lotsa debt .. ouch.
Aussie mines .. Australian resources no debt and
delta gold no debt. Acacia debt small.
RSA Best debt picture is Anglos .. almost 7 mill
oz production and only debt has been picked up with
freegold ( 66 mill ) and Vaal ( 43 mill ) . If they get
western areas and joel from jci ... those are also
debt free.
Disclaimer .. I hold delta.. and some fregold.

CEF was @ an 11% discount to NAV as of Sat.

to all silverbugs: remember soros and apex silver? he didnt start a new silver mine to snag a few bucks. his is a long term outlook with an eye to a future of silver shortages and much higher prices

Do you have a cross reference that I can verify?

Check out their web page and tell me what you think?

www.prime-res.com

You prove nothing.

KO
Are you sure about the effect on silver production of gold-mining closures? I have been labouring under the misapprehension that a significant %age of silver mining production is actually as a by product of Zinc/Cu/Fe mining and is therefore dependent ( usually ) more on their commodity prices than on my preciouss. What leads you to your assertion?

Crusty
Yeah, that's me, disappear in a puff of smoke...

salty_the_DGINI@thebottle

Comments quickly- I have to go to bed.

KO, my fizzy, nutty friend...you better pray the POG continues to rise! Otherwise, high/medium cost gold producers will continue to fold...and they will desperately DUMP their silver inventories onto the market in order to survive. Only in the long-term will the failures of such gold producers benefit the silver market....haven't you figured it out yet?

Unfortunately, you are yet another chauvinistic silver-bug who still hasn't determined that the ultimate fortunes of silver and gold are intertwined. You should root for gold as much ( if not more than ) silver!!

P.S. In the future, if I go into a jewellry store and can purchase a 1OZ. gold ring for let's say $100 ( instead of $300 ) and a 1OZ silver ring for $15, then don't you think I would be much more tempted to purchase the gold ring given that most people value gold above silver and there is now considerably less price difference between the two metals?

That raises point TWO: a collapse in the POG will pull consumer consumption away from silver and direct it toward gold....hence, price of silver weakens.

You are partly right. Silver is a by product of copper zinc and lead mining. In a deflatioanry commodities market some of these mines hut down too, therefore further decreasing silver production.

Same result - silver is truly rare and precious.

Looks like we're going to get over $7 tonight, EBN showing +.17 to 6.96 if this holds, there will be blood in the streets. These distressed shorts are becomig frayed, and tattered nerves make for vicious bedfellows. A 30 - 40 cent gap up in New York tomorrow will be brutal, a down and dirty squeeze to 7.50 and then call in the mechanics........ Time to take this market down a peg or two. Pick up a net 1.50 on the way down from those elivations. The air is way too thin up there, silver always gives you another shot at it.

OK

Obviously, you have personal experience with the man and to that I have nothing comparable.

However, I would like to point out a couple of things. Your examples of the depreciation of stock in his companies are absolutely meaningless in the current market. What VSE/TSE resource stocks haven't been whacked this bad? Or worse, for that matter.

Another thing, many exploration companies run honestly and efficiently by capable management fail to ever discover or bring to production an econonmic orebody. There are many pitfalls in the business. Good management can't always avoid all of them all of the time.

The latter comment I guess applys generally, and doesn't necessarily address the specifics of Lou's management/promotion of his companies.

In any case, I appreciate your insights, and I may just have to call the man up, and see what's up. At a glance, the field fundamentals look pretty good, so it may be worth investigating.

Herr Vertigo

Resist the temptation! You'll simply add to the put to call ratio and cause another melt-up!

Banks don't own silver.

Who cares if bankrupt gold mines dump silver. Eventually their supply dries up!

The value of gold is in what the industrial market can do with it.

The value of silver is in what the the industrial market can do with it.

Silver is rarer than gold because the central banks don't contol its price!!!!

See golden-eagle_digest/goldbug613.html. This was The Goldbug's weekly comment dated June 13, 1997. There is a complete rundown of the premier silver stocks. Also see his comments on Avino Silver Mine March 7, 1997. If you require charts on all of these go to http:/chart.canada-stockwatch.com. Good luck

Herr Athos

Please read carefully RJ's most recent comment about the silver squeeze now inevitable if you're still thinking about hanging on or digger your hole deeper by adding new shorts!

KO, your analysis presumes that the ultimate value of the two metals is determined via indudstrial usage.

Moreover, your analysis presumes that all the CB's will unload their gold someday and cease to treat it as a financial asset and/or reserve.

Do you really believe that will happen?

Did the WALL STREET New Paradigm sell you a bill of goods too?

I am sure you are much smarter than that!

For KO
If I look at Prime Balance sheet - it shows
long term liability 47 mill canadian with note
INCLUDES deferred taxation whatever that means
- This number looks fiendishly close to US$ 33 mill
number I have in other table. Thats the total extent
my knowledge and info this subject.

With the indices so overbought+ Would that the gold shorts would get such a silver squeeze.

for KO
you are drunk with silver power. Let some one else drive.

Where did I ever say that I was anti gold?

All I said was that central banks can influence the price in a big way ( e.g Argentina, Australia ... )

THEY HAVE NO IMPACT ON SILVER!!!!

Photography uses silver and plenty of it. It has industrial demand beyond jewellery and coins. This matters!!!

I own gold. I Like silver better.

If WB was going into silver as an in-out trader investment, why would he take delivery? Seems like a lot of nusance for nothing. That amount of silver is a lot to heft around, and they don't do it for free. Besides this, there is the issue of storage. The fundamentals of his move can be found looking at the logistics of his move, I think.

I am genuinely pleased to see the great fortune of the silverbugs.

Let all goldbugs root for them tomorrow ( wouldn't it be a kick if silver goes up at least 1.00?? Or even more??? ) .

Hopefully, their good fortune will help turn around the fortunes of gold.

Wednesday February 4, 12:43 am Eastern Time

FOCUS-Asian stocks sink, currencies stable, fragil
By Sarah Davison

HONG KONG, Feb 4 ( Reuters ) - A poor showing by Asian stock markets on Wednesday confirmed early week strength as unsustainable, but declining dollar demand allowed most currencies to trade firmer, market players said.
``All the markets went up for one day. Now we're back to the realism that perhaps things aren't as rosy as we thought,'' said Miles Remington, sales trader at Soc-Gen Crosby Securities.

``Markets are going to have economic problems going forward, and economic growth will be under pressure.''
http://biz.yahoo.com/finance/980204/markets_as_1.html

Clinton's friend Charlie Tree ( sp. ) has cut a deal and will talk, DNC illegal funding.

You can't have a war during the Olympics. Except at the Olympics. Things are getting crazy. The only thing real is Gold.

Everything will heat up again shortly.

Good Night All

HighRise

I'm not drunk with silver power.

Just bored with unsubstantiated crystal balling and hairbrained technical analysis e.g.

Elliot waves, triple tops and bottoms, Kondratieff cycles and other mumbo jumbo.

Peace and good night to all.

You go away for a couple of days to look at some rocks.......

I markets go madddddddd.........

Prime Annual report on web page shows tax liability but not long term debt. ( see note 10 under 1996 Annual Report financial statements ) . My "Investor's Digest newsletter printouts show no long term debt i.e. bank loans or line of credit requiring interest payments.

KO: You said to Athos in 00:23 that 'Options in Precious Metals are a total waste of time'.

Why is that? What do you think makes them different than other options? Like all options they ( at least calls ) seem to give plenty of opportunity for reward for a known downside risk.

Athos -- Hope you have a very deep pocket! Can hardly believe you had no stop on your 'losses'. Personally, I think the time for a silver reversal, short term, mind you, is very close at hand in time, but not necessarily in price, given how silver can/does move. So, how deep IS that pocket, and why the hell are you short to begin with? Even the fundamentals don't match up with that position! Now theres' a concept! Believe what RJ and Nick have also said earlier! A correction may be due but it may not buy you much/any redemption should it actually occur. Get a game plan together and don't include the house. Sometimes, salvation is in not trying to salvage a position. Beyond all that, I don't know what to tell you, except for; Good trading to you. And I DO hope the best for you!

To anyone -
Whaoa silver you are at 870 yen/oz - NOT ONE KURUSH
MORE FELLA.
The plat/silver did not break its recent low but
no matter how I bend the lines it looks like gold/
silver did. I find this depressing. Also my harmony
took it in the chops. Any body draw different conclusions
I hope.

KO, have a look at this.
I don't think it is a scam, for several reasons I have alluded to in previous posts. Does this mean you cannot lose money on this one? No, but the odds certainly aren't stacked against you as in a classic smoke and mirrors hype scenario. Solid production typically precludes that kind of scamming, and additionally stacks the odds in your favor against a background of rising metals prices.
Now I am going to take a look at this, what is it, Prime Resources?

for KO
okay they treated 33 mil tax liabitity like a debt since they
assume somebody must pay it.

RJ -- RE: your 1:32; Agree!

Just reported on the evening news:

Gold down to $125.83.

Jeeeez--I'm glad I sold my gold shares!!!

Which evening was that?

To all Durban Deep sportsfans.
Typo in MJ may have been fortuitous. Will be getting
info from d deeps - resource base may be big time -
say no more - say no more - keep it DARK.

Midas--you don't have to be literate or numerate to get a job with a tv station. Just look at the people on CNBC!!!

Well folks--if you had listened to Haggis--you'd be 25% richer today than you were yesterday.!!! His little silver twins like the action in the "poor man's gold". Very volatile--so stay on yer toes--but--hey--sure beats losin' money on pms!!

What do you mean, "resource base may be big time"?
As I understand the 110 million oz you quoted me the other day was derived from a MJ typo, but you beginning to think that the typo may have been closer to reality than the intended number was. In any case, what was the "correct" ( non-typo ) number MJ was trying to get across? In your opinion, was Durban's recent surge built on the typo? And its correction on the typo's correction? And further, its re-correction on the re-correction of reserves numbers you anticipate soon?
Was that confusing enough?

Yallah nemshi-- oh great desert warrior J.D. The Rams at the Gate are showing signs of life after the desert heat wave which has afflicted them. Perhaps the 'carpenter' will yet discover the holy grail!! ( RGR +.06 to .043 ) .

Nick. They reported the Buffet story, as a by-the-way bit of gossip. Then quickly on to more substance. They'll rue the day.

"The fundamentals of his move can be found looking at the logistics of his move, I think."
I noticed WB took London delivery on all purchases.
I notice silver is higher in London than on Comex.
I notice Goldman Sachs was involved on the long side of silver and that Rubin is from G.S.
I know that WB is and has always been an insider manipulator and not the image of the marvellous investor which the media has spoon fed to the credulous.
It looks to me as if there is something spooky going on.

Okey guys thank you for your advice. Nick@C relax not everyone has your deep of knowledge or your attitude ( thanks god ) .
A few extra facts:
-Yes, I got the money to back up my position no matter what the price go but the question is silver going to go down before the due day on march.
-It's my very first experience in commodities ( before that I have only bought Silver unallocated last year through my bank, making a nice profit ) .
-I went short at the time because the price went from 6.40 to 5.66 ( as a matter of fact I tried to catch it at 6.30 but I couldnt get tickets to the states on time ( due to Xmas ) . I live in south america.
-I would have reverse my position on time but I had a family tragedy and didn't really care much for price movement for a few days.
-When I checked back it was up to 6 and I thought it was going to go down any day until yesterday +0.40 and tonight's +0.30.

Now the question is do I offset or do I wait backing up my position ( even getting more short positions as RJ suggested ) for the price to get down before the due day on march. I hope this explains my sad position.

mozel: Could you be thinking that CBs are trying to get a handle on silver like they already have on gold? A quarter of the world's production isn't a bad start.

Silver is in backwardation for a very good reason. It ain't gonna be worth as much in the future as it is right now!!

How long before the Indian jewellery goes into the melting pot to pay current debts???

The silver mining stocks are not following the bullion higher.
The majority must feel that the rally will not last.

A public announcement of a 130 Million oz hoard in one pair of hands certainly creates the same market overhang.
How long odes it take demand to consume 130 M oz of silver ?
I can't see CB's in this directly, but I perceive the footprints of spooks. I wonder if its even primarily monetary. It's only 2% to WB. That's peanuts compared with a tip about who will win the next big fighter contract for example.

SA Gold Index down 4.3% I hold SSRIF ( Standard Siver Resources ) :Why doesn't it move with the bulion market? ( Chart at http://www.stockmaster.com/sm/g/S/SSRIF.html )

People believe this is a spike in price and will not last. Same reason PAASF is only up a bit. If the price stays up through a few option expiry dates and FND beliefs will change. March silver-SIH8-has 2/13/98 for the options and 2/27/98 for the first notice date. Tom

A quiet evening. Toodle-oo.

Do not open e-mail messages that you receive from any W Buffett ( sic ) with "Silver!" as the subject. Depending on your os you may end up with nasty viral. Do not pass this on, it is probably a hoax.

try this

send email to jsmithwire.net.au if todays updated chart on East coast and legend mining are wanted.

http://www.wire.net.au/~jsmith/charts/silver/news%20silver.gif

The president of the World Bank has admitted he got it
wrong in predicting Indonesia's economic fortunes.

Ginny Stein reports from Jakarta, James Wolfensohn, has
had to defend the World Bank while conceding he failed to
detect corruption and other weaknesses in the Indonesian
economy.

If you took a sledgehammers to this guys head, well, you could
improve his rational thought processes by eliminating the
irrational. And, hey, thats a good thing for a hell of a lot
of people.

TWO MORE THAI BANKS MAY BE
CLOSED
Wednesday 4 February, 1998 ( 7:58pm AEDT )





The official Bank of Thailand says it has targeted two more
commercial banks as it prepares to begin the second round
of its clean-up of the troubled finance sector.

The bank is expected to announce rehabilitation plans for the
First Bangkok City Bank and Siam City Bank following their
failure to recapitalise.

The central bank has been urging commercial banks and
finance firms to recapitalise to ease liquidity problems since
more than half the country's financial institutions were closed
down last year.

Analysts say the banks are likely to face massive capital
writedowns which might wipe out shareholders' equity.

Both banks took out massive short-term borrowings from
the central bank's Financial Institutions Development Fund
to try overcome a liquidity shortage.

http://quote.yahoo.com/intlmarkets
Many indices are in the red today.
What is it that makes this fear walk the streets

Perhaps the world fears the US coming off a tad?
Could that be all?

Or perhaps Asia is due to meltdown again.
Thailand leading the way.
Turkey not to bright either.

The lockstep tightens.

Perhaps currency's, commodity's and bonds
Will shed a little light.

YELTSIN WARNS CLINTON AGAINST
STRIKING AT IRAQ
Wednesday 4 February, 1998 ( 9:54pm AEDT )




Russian president Boris Yeltsin has warned U-S president
Bill Clinton that he may provoke a world war if the
Americans use force against Iraq.

It's Russia's most critical statement so far, concerning the
possibility of a U-S strike against Iraq.

Russia's Interfax newsagency quotes Mr Yeltsin as saying
that the latest moves were quite unlike Mr Clinton, and that
Russia had done its utmost to avert a military clash.

The Russian leader said the United Nations Security Council
members would vote against the use of force.

The crisis follows Iraq's refusal to allow U-N weapons
inspectors to check some 60 sites, including 40 presidential
palaces in Iraq.

The United States and Britain have moved large military
forces to the Gulf region, and are considering a military
attack.



Return to the World News Menu

plus ...news from the Asia Pacific Region in Indonesian, Chinese and Tok Pisin

 1998 Australian Broadcasting Corporation
Wed Feb 4 22:00:00 1998 ( AEDT )

AEDT = Australian Eastern Daylight Time which is 11 hours ahead of UTC ( Greenwich Mean Time

Italian rescue officials say 20 people died when a United
States military jet clipped a cable car line at a ski resort.

The Italian news agency Ansa quotes officials at the resort --
near Trento in the Dolomite Mountains -- as saying all those
aboard the cable car died when it crashed about 100 metres
to the ground.

Passengers were evacuated from the line's other cable car,
which was on its way down and remained suspended.

Rescue personnel said most of the passengers were German
skiers.

All
FWIW- My take on SSC based on long term chart patterns
which are repeating again. Very similar to '73/'74
'78/'79,'86/'87 and present, it looks like this move up
should be a major one, with the first leg ending Feb/Mar.
This is based on monthly bar charts, which I've kept for
many moons.

Boris Yeltsin talks of a world war if Clinton acts against Iraq and gold just sits there..........

"I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country; corporations have been enthroned, an era of corruption in High Places will follow, and the Money

Power of the Country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon

the prejudices of the People, until the wealth is aggregated in a few hands, and the Republic destroyed."

http://www.yahoo.com/headlines/980203/international/stories/iraq_22.html
Albright Says Arabs Back Tough Iraq Stance
So far only Britain has sent forces to join the U.S. armada. British Prime Minister Tony Blair said on Tuesday: "This isn't Britain linking itself with U.S. policy. This is British policy. We want Saddam Hussein dealt with."

If diplomacy fails to halt the stand-off by next week, U.S. Defense Secretary William Cohen is set to tour Gulf Arab states to coordinate a program of what a U.S. diplomat in Doha called a "substantial bombing raid" against Iraq.
--------------------------------
http://www.yahoo.com/headlines/980203/international/stories/gulf_1.html
US Has Enough Firepower in Gulf for Iraq Raids

RJ says it more succinctly, but pay attention to the last paragraph:

February 4, 1998

Silver Hits Nine-Year High
As Buffett Takes an Interest

By NICHOLAS ELLIOTT
Dow Jones Newswires

NEW YORK -- As if silver needed another reason to rally, it was revealed Tuesday that investor Warren Buffett is interested in the metal.

The announcement by Mr. Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Inc. that it owns 129.7 million ounces of silver unveiled a major participant in the recent price rally. The amount Berkshire owns is larger than the entire current silver holdings of 103.78 million ounces in warehouses of the Comex division of the New York Mercantile Exchange, and compares with estimated
total world silver supply in 1997 of around 570 million ounces.

The Berkshire purchase would have an indicated value at current prices of around $858.6 million. "We're talking about a major amount of money," said Tim Evans, a commodities analyst with trading company Pegasus Econometrics in New York.

Berkshire's announcement follows the filing of a lawsuit seeking class-action status in U.S. District Court in New York last week, alleging that Phibro, the commodities-trading arm of Travelers Group's
Salomon Smith Barney Inc., and 10 other unidentified defendants, manipulated silver prices higher last year. The suit was filed on behalf of Kerry Seale, a private investor based in Aldergrove, a town near
Vancouver, British Columbia.

The suit alleged that the defendants forced up prices by moving silver from Comex warehouses to London and other locations where it wasn't as visible. Phibro denied the allegations, saying it hadn't taken any
silver out of Comex warehouses in the previous 18 months and hadn't moved any to "England or elsewhere."

Berkshire Hathaway said in its announcement that all the metal it purchased was through a single brokerage firm and that it "had no knowledge of the actions or positions of any other market participant."

Stocks of silver held at Comex warehouses declined by 90 million ounces between late May and the end of 1997, while Berkshire said its purchases of silver were made between July 25 last year and Jan. 12 of this year.

Silver climbed to an 8 1/2-year high of $6.378 a troy ounce last December. Prices have continued to rise since, with the Comex March contract rising to a nine-year high of $6.6300 an ounce Tuesday.

Berkshire's announcement said its buying was prompted by a view that "equilibrium between supply and demand was only likely to be established by a somewhat higher price."

David Christensen, an analyst with Merrill Lynch Global Securities in New York, said the news from Berkshire is likely to provide a "short-term positive boost" to silver prices because Mr. Buffett is an esteemed investor and because the company indicated in its announcement that it plans to continue holding the silver.

Early Wednesday in Hong Kong, silver had leapt to around $7.05 an ounce.
However, Mr. Evans of Pegasus Econometrics warned that buying by participants such as Berkshire isn't likely to sustain prices at current levels.

"We're not talking about someone with a new industrial process that requires large amounts of silver, or photographic demand ... or anything like that," Mr. Evans said. "They're going to be holding it until the price goes up and then they're going to be selling it ... This is the kind of market that's fun while it lasts, then look out below."

--Loren Fox and Stephane Fitch contributed to this article.

From what I learned in chart analysis, gaps tend to be
closed later:TVX ( high 4.60 ) had one at 4.05, which it
closed yesterday. NCM has one at 165. DROOY at 2.FN at
28 and 26.EN at 20,18 and 17.GGO at 20. NEM has none at
the moment, but closed one at 26. AEM has one at 5.2,
SWC at 17.25. etc. As I am long in these stocks, I hope
the chart lies. Any comments?

Warren Wednesday. That is what this day shall be ever called in the financial markets. This name shall go up there with Marlboro Friday and turnaround Tuesdays etc. Gold will still muddle around awhile but we will all look at this day as the time sentiment changed hence Warren Wednesday.

BTW: Austrian Olympic Commitee announced, that each medal won by an Austrian at the Olympic Games in Nagano would be rewarded with Philharmoniker-Coins!! Gold = 30 pcs  1 troz, Silver = 25 pcs, Bronze = 20 pcs.
Austria expects about 20 medals at these Games!

silver 7.02!!

check out ingers comments on WB's silver purchases

http://www.tfc.com/syndication/current.cgi?tfc

Why can't he have liked GOLD.This move may HELP GOLD ??????

http://biz.yahoo.com/finance/980202/japan_epa__1.html

http://biz.yahoo.com/finance/980203/asia_europ_1.html

http://biz.yahoo.com/finance/980203/asia_japan_1.html

http://biz.yahoo.com/finance/980204/markets_si_2.html

http://biz.yahoo.com/finance/980204/markets_eu_1.html

The Silver run is unfolding just as outlined ( 1/10 15:24, 21:22 ) with a projected high in the mid $7.00 range. The wave 2 decline will follow. I was side tracked for awhile ( 1/28 21:24 ) and gold did not hit my objective before this decline. April gold now looks to be headed toward 288, any close under 285 would project prices to the low 270's. SnP is poised to make a powerful move to new highs. This move may tack on more points in the shortest period of time since this bull market began.

You deserve Guru's accolades! Great call!

http://biz.yahoo.com/finance/980204/indonesia__3.html

IRS look good

http://www.wire.net.au/~jsmith/charts/silver/ecmchart.PDF

if more is wanted e-mail jsmith@wire.net.au

With silver at 7-9 year highs, Hecla looks almost free at $5. Any thoughts?

I just received an e-mail from Gold Fields regarding Nasdaq listings.
It is a level one ADR ( unlisted ) , but does trade over the counter. This appears to be a temporary situation as Nasdaq listing approval takes time. The ticker is GDFDY and quotes should be available within a few days. The CUSIP number is 380 59R 100 should you want to trade this one. The ADR contact is Cliff Faircloth at the Bank of NY ( 212 ) 815-2367 or cfaircloth@bankofny.com.

You could be in the middle of a nuclear holocaust, and some would still be babbling on buying the dips.

Buy Clifton Mining and lots of it.

1. Indonesia examines fixing rupiah to dollar . Page A17.
2.Medicin grows dangerously scarce in Indonesia as currecny plung makes it prohibitively expensive. Page A17.
3. Zimbabwe's gold output declines 1.8%. Page A17.
4. Major Thai corporate restructuring would pay 5 cents on $ to creditors.
Page A19.
5. What caused Asia's crash ?. Page A22.
6. $18 Billion for IMF. Editorial
7. Japan's Policy Paralysis. Editorial
8. Why circuit breakers ? Hint; not for the little guy. Page A23.
9. Letter to the Editor from Jude Wanniski re Gold, greenbacks and the
depression. Page A23.
10. Buffet/silver story . Page C1

Guy is sitting in armchair watching TV. Voice from TV says,
" Embezzling that money was the most fun I ever had with a calculator ".


Yeah, I know, it takes a pretty dry sense of humour to get it .

boris yeltsin warns of wwIII possibly starting if the
us attacks iraq........

what is different this time than last? iraq is ready to
strike at jerusalem with gas and bio's......and the us.....

bad for humanity..........good for gold.......

the us had better find another alternative.......

gold is not going to re-test any of the recent lows.......
we've had our pull-back.........on-ward and up-ward............

Loonie closes above US69

TORONTO ( CP )  The Canadian dollar closed above 69 cents US for the first time
in two weeks Tuesday, gaining more than a quarter of a cent in active trading.
The loonie ended trading at 69.08 cents US, up .26 of a cent from Monday's close.

The last time the currency ended the trading day above 69 cents on North
American markets was Jan. 21, when it closed at 69.20 cents US.
Analysts said traders may be buying the loonie because they expect Canadian
interest rates will continue to rise. As well, commodity prices have recovered a bit
in recent weeks from three-year lows prompted by the weak economies in Asia.
Weak commodity prices have hurt the prospects for Canadian companies in the
forestry, mining and gold sectors and led traders to worry about the impact on the
Canadian economy.
The Bank of Canada raised interest rates half a point last week, the fifth rate hike
since last summer, in a bid to defend the currency and attract investors to Canadian
dollar-denominated assets.

Does anyone know what the daily limit is for silver on the Comex?

It's good to see something go up for a change ?!

Please remember that this project has PGE, in particular rhodium, and gold. These have as yet to be factored into the share price. EARLY DAYS.

Exploration is still at an early stage.........

J Gutnick has the next door tenements, and I don't think he realizes this as yet.......project was part of the take over of Eagle Mining.

Back on the job, so postings will not be as frequent

Whatever Boris Yeltsin says, it's a bull sh*t...

US Airways to redeem Preferred stock owned by Berkshire Hathaway.
Based on yesterday's closing price Buffet will get $574 milllion worth of
US Airways stock in exchange for his $358 million of preferred stock.
That is a profit of $216 million.

My comments; That makes his silver purchase "easier to digest" because, effectively he "theoretically" reduced his silver price by $216 million. It must be nice to have big assets to play with.

.

.

stock now selling for around 1$ has traded as high as $20 in l980 and in the 5$-10 range several times. That would be a good move from 1$, huh...If silver goes above $10, I expect SSC to be at least $5 per share ... comments???

acording to my broker's margin sheet it is 1.50 = 7.500.00 I believe in 1980 or 81 it was locked limit down for several weeks,ouch

Gold might hit 310 today,as long as yyour thinking positive may as well think big,the day is still young. ( only joking ,kinda )

In his morning commentary, Ted Arnold of ML says it is difficult to see how Buffet can get out of this position with profit. What with Indian demand drying up and the production rising. Opined that corporate shares owned by Buffet have come under pressure and that is what may have triggered this move.

1. They expire.

2. Short term unexpected price swings can kill you.

3. They require you add "time" as a variable to your investing which is not required to anything like the same degree when buying stocks, mutual funds or hard metal.

Sure they can make you rich, but also poor and a lot faster than any other investment. Too nerve-racking for me. I'd rather buy something backed by smart managers that have lots of time to recover from a crash of anykind outsode their own control.

Money.
BUFFETT BUYS SILVER!!! ( or, he's no
Bunker Hunt! ) .... That's right! Warren Buffett's
Berkshire Hathaway has been buying up oodles of Silver
( yes, as in silver dollar ) . Berkshire made the
purchases between July and Jan. 12, and now owns some
130 million ounces! That 130 million ounces is worth
some $845 million at the current price of around
$6.50!!! Yowser!!!! So what does Buffett see in
silver? Apparently, he's been following the metal for
some 30 years and he finally became convinced that the
supply-demand equation had been tipped in favor of the
buyer. That is, it's undervalued!!! Silver got down to
$4.60 or so an ounce in July. It hit a high of $50 in
1980. Why is Buffett revealing this? Because Berkshire
"has received inquiries about its ownership of the
metal..." OK. This may have something to do with a
lawsuit filed recently by a silver short against
Phibro ( commodities arm of Salomon Smith Barney ) and
10 other unnamed ( !! ) defendants. MAJOR HMMMM. As they
are wont to say in my biz, this
story has legs!!!!

.

correct!

GOLD UP $3.20 HO HO HOO

I am just wondering out load, WB can't be investing in Silver Equities, can he? It would be interesting to find Silvers that have recently had exceptional VOLUME. Nah, he has the physical, what would he want with Silver Equities! Besides, he's short of cash. Any comments?

And besides...I thought it was the UN Security Coucil calling the shoots ?!

Is Young Bill accountable to anyone ? Maybe he could do a trade...
put Monica in Moscow for a while....teach the Russians how it is done !
Could take the pressure off Old Boris ?!

Clito should learn that there is more than one way to skin a cat !
Maybe his mind is on other things?

Looks like the Iraqs and the Russians may form a "new" oil cartel ?

Nomercy:

Thanks for the nod.

I must say that after perusing the overnignt and early morning posts ( EST ) I am quite astounded. I had been expecting pretty much unanimity in a bullish outlook towards silver now that WB had declared himself a player. Instead there seem to be more people interested in picking a top in this market than in riding the ride. Two things pop to mind from this observation. First, very few of the Kitco faithful have participated in this move, second, most are missing the point about the fundamentals, what they mean and what WB saw in them.

From a short term trading perspective I must say that anyone trying to figure out a way to be short this market is flat out nuts. The idea in investing is to put yourself in a position where you have low risk and expectations of high gain. Shorting seven dollar silver in the middle of a short squeeze is about as far from low risk and potential high gain as one could imagine. If one is right that $7.00 is the top your potential gain is perhaps a $1.50. If WB was happy to buy his silver at $5.50 once it is near certain that three weeks later he will be happy to buy it again at the same price. If there is one thing known about this man it is that he is not a quick flip speculator. His first rule of thumb is to buy something that you can put away for the long haul. Whatever his reasoning, one must know that he is a buyer at $5.50. With a warchest that can with no difficulty buy up all the above ground stocks of silver bullion at $5.50 this must seen as a pretty good floor price.

If one goes with this line of reasoning on the downside, then all that is left is to figure out a top on the upside. We know that 10$ is a very attainable price because it was breached in the 1987 silver rally. The fundamentals at that time were radically poorer than today. Since 1987 something on the order of 1 billion ounces of silver has been consumed from bullion stockpiles.

If we believe that a top of $10 is well within reason then it would appear that at $7.00 there is about twice as much risk on the upside than there is on the downside. In order to for a silver short to have a zero expectation one would then have believe that the pullback is twice as likely as the continuation. For the bet to actually have a positive expectation the pullback would have to be greater than a 2 to 1 favorite. For the bet to make sense on a risk adjusted basis the ( return / volatility of return ) the true odds would need to be much higher. There is very little info out there that would lend credence to such a view.

This line of reasoning does not assure one that the price of silver is going higher. It merely points out that being short at these prices is a very poor bet irrespective of the outcome.

A few points that have been overlooked so far in this saga deserve some attention. WB has stated that he has been collecting physical silver through London for the past 6 months. The fact that Comex warehouse stocks have declined in concert is a very telling thing. WB had silver delivered in London, from a European based entity, if there were sufficient bullion stocks in Europe then the silver would have been delivered from those stocks. No one is going to pay the freight and handling costs of moving the Comex material across the Atlantic unless they could not get their hands on the material in Europe. This means that bullion dealers in Europe are effectively tapped out.

The second point, and the one that is the big kicker in this equation, is that the silver users group was bleating about a manipulation $1.50 ago. There is very little doubt that silver users also have very low inventories and will at some time be forced into the market to buy their needed material. The terminal phase of all the squeezes across the commodity spectrum in the last several years, has seen the consumers in a near panic. Their time is coming.

Finally, there is a lot of talk about India being the swing factor. It is true that jewelry and silverware are going to the demand areas which are going to be rationed. The question is, what price will it take to cut that demand by something on the order of two thirds, in order to restore equilibrium to the supply and demand picture. The reports being issued by Merril Lynch that silver demand from India has gone to zero in the last few weeks are misleading. It may be true that Indian importers are waiting and hoping for lower prices and running down their inventories, but it is patently absurd to believe that Indian silver demand will go to zero because of a twenty percent price increase. If someone is going to buy a trinket with an ounce of silver in it, their all in cost is probably going to be at minimum $10 - $20 depending on the craftsmanship involved. If that piece goes to $12 - $22, it is hardly going to shut down the marketplace. As for there being a gigantic meltdown and refining effort because silver prices have risen, don't bet on it. It will be many dollars higher before melting down jewelry for the silver content becomes at all a reasonable transaction.

All the above comment are obviously the musings of someone up their eyeballs in silver.

rj-----


you are correct......almost...... began slightly below the 400 mark.....
not that long ago we were at $400oz.....remember?

look to be back in the near future ( $400+ ) .......tenacious?....absolutely.......
un-limited funds? where's the lawnmower and rake? let's see.....
$2. here......$5. there..........hey, i CAN buy another option!

imnsho-------who cannot afford to buy gold at this juncture in history...
the options are speculative and apply pressure to the sellers of gold---my contribution to paper.......the physical is the real insurance......and both are being hand-over-fisted--------as was
silver just recently!

one day i'll be a real metals trader........for today......i'm just an
owner of 22 gold calls........and i still have my ba!!s....and a lot
more.........we'll see............as we saw with silver....

last year i was telling people about buying GOLD AND SILVER calls.....
over and over......insurance and tickets to the super-bowl of metals...
i had plenty of silver options when she took off.....did you have yours?

will the situation in gold be any different? it, one day,---soon----
will aspire to reach for the stars......the silver profits more
than paid for all the gold calls i'll buy this year.......

so----------what's yer point? there was no profit from the silver calls
until silver took off........the profits FAR EXCEEDED the investments...
is this not possible with gold? now? later? is your way the only way?
what is your way? you've made excellent calls and i salute you as a
metal warrior.........how-ever......my blade can cut as deep, and as
much bone, as any there is.......

!;....cherokee!;...climbing-under-the-fence.......the-gate-is-locked....

boris yeltsin and the rest of the world KNOW this is
the time to assert them-selves.......

look at klinton.......if you were an adversary, when would
you make your move? become assertive? when weak-ness is evident....

what is evidenced by us policy now? fractionation..... foreign and domestic.......we are in the cross-hairs of the world.....the us$...
us bonds.......our represenatives and minions........

beware.......it is open season on the us..........and the reaction
will be severe........our long term actions predicated this reaction...

!;!;!;

$US down 2% over last two+ days; down again this morning. It is interesting that while sislver was going ballistic late yesterday afternoon, silver stocks did nothing - then out of the blocks this morning. I hold SSO, ASM and FSR all listed on the VSE.

A Scotsman had a narrow escape today. While visiting a safari park his
car broke down and, on leaving his car to repair it, he was set upon by
a pride of lions. Remarkably, he survived his ordeal relatively
unscathed.

A spokesman for the safari park said:
"We believe Mr. McTavish owes his life to the T-shirt he was wearing at
the time, which read: 'SCOTLAND - WORLD CUP CHAMPIONS 1998' - not even a
ferocious pack of man-eating lions could swallow that!"

Good nite..................

Early trading UP ARE RYO .07 AGE .30 TVX .15 WIM .02
DOWN PGU .08

Arnold doen'nt see how W.B. can make a profit on silver??the guy has made a profit on every thing He has done,besides him holding 130 million ozs of silver is like most of us holding a couple bars.News man better go see the eye surgeon.

WB, my new best friend.. i'll have to pull down the pictures of Bunker and Jerome Smith. Love those Hathaway shirts... maybe he is adding a new silver thread.. anti-microbial, you know.


-FINALLY SSRIF is moving.. I was amazed when it ended the day lower yesterday. Bought some at 4 1/8 for my IRA back in November. Go baby go.

One interesting note:
I buy silver coins and scrap from coin dealers in my area, nothing big, just a cheap way to invest, I went up to my refiner in Lynn, Mass ( outside of Beantown ) on Monday and watched the melting of about 600 ozs of my silver scrap/coins. My account rep said that Silver has been flowing into the refinery, mostly in the form of Photo flake which is recovered from film processing machines. It seems that operators were all cleaning out the machines' silver static collectors and filters to take advantage of the high price. This flow is a one time boost since it takes several months to collect more in the machine.

Most coin dealers and pawn shops have cleaned out their old inventory at 5.50 an ounce. Now they will go back and pull lower grade collectibles and Modern commemoratives from their cases and melt them.

This rally will only last if the small investor comes in and starts to inquire about buying a little physical silver. American Eagles will move.


-U.S. Mint down to about 40 Million Ozs of silver left in Strategic Stockpile, when that is gone, they will be in the market also.

Very good post of yours at 9:45 today and I agree with most of your fine observations.

Let's not forget about the very complex psychology of trading though. Since last night, this Silver thing is now a bit too much in the news everywhere!

When something becomes too obvious, it rarely unfolds accordingly in the markets.

While the long term fundamentals of Silver are extremely positive for as long as the inventory situation remains and/or gets worse, extreme caution is needed in the short term now that this huge move took place over the last few months.

When inexperienced and small traders get on board because of big news like the one about Warren Buffet, we know what usually happens short term.

Prudence is needed.

Revenue Canada office~~~~~~~~~go team gold!

Baghdad owes Moscow an estimated $7 billion or more and several Russian companies have already penned oil deals to begin once sanctions end.

Cost of silver ( per WSJ article ) $859 million
less, profit I made on US Air $216 million

NET COST OF SILVER $643 million

divided by 130 million ounces equals $4.95 per oz.

If I really believed in US Air ( what a cash cow that is for me ) and in
silver ( gosh it's cheap and irreplaceable ) than I should make out okay.

Now, how can I finance that $643 million; ah yes, margin debt ! Sounds like a reasonable risk /reward scenario for me.

Too many users,Too many users,Too many users,Too many users,Too many users,Too many users,Too many users,Too many users,Too many users

Seems as though US business is putting strings on IMF funding. Asia tigers will lose more of their sovernty ( sp? ) . Definately there is a policy of containment for all of Asia, including China. Can the devaluation of the yuan be far behind? If I were in Asia I would definately be buying gold, heck I am buying gold.

By Adam Entous
WASHINGTON, Feb 3 ( Reuters ) - U.S. businesses on Tuesday
backed the Clinton administration's controversial request to
boost IMF funding, as long as the money is used to open markets
in Asia and not to prop up their competitors.
Rockwell International Corp., Boeing Co., the American Farm
Bureau Federation and other groups told the House banking
committee that Washington should provide its share of funding
to the International Monetary Fund.
"Failure to provide the IMF with adequate resources poses
significant risks to the global financial system and to
American interests," John Cohn, a vice president of Rockwell,
told the committee.
The Clinton administration has asked Congress to approve
about $18 billion in additional funds for the IMF to replenish
resources drained last year by multibillion-dollar bailouts for
Indonesia, South Korea and Thailand.
But the administration, weakened by the White House sex
scandal, faces a difficult fight in Congress, where many
lawmakers bitterly oppose any U.S. role in the bailouts.
To sway skeptics, top administration officials have
discussed the issue with more than 200 members of Congress in
recent weeks. Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan met with
Republican senators on Tuesday to argue the IMF's case.
"They may have reservations but they are very open-minded,"
Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin said.
Strong support from powerful pro-trade businesses could
give the Clinton administration a badly needed boost as a
doubting Congress debates whether to release the money.
Many lawmakers have already said they will not support the
funding, accusing the IMF of riding roughshod over worker
rights or ignoring the rules of the free market.
But business leaders said the banking and market reforms
included in rescue deals worked out between the IMF and Asia's
hardest-hit tiger economies should improve the access of U.S.
companies to Asian markets.
Business groups said the reforms, aimed at abolishing
monopolies and cartels and ending trade privileges, should help
deal with some of their long-standing concerns.
"The IMF-led negotiations are unleashing, with a speed and
scope that would have been unimaginable just a few short months
ago, a wave of much-needed and long-overdue reform of many
economic, industrial and financial policies in these
countries," Andrew Card, president of the American Automobile
Manufacturers Association, told the committee.
But some business leaders and lawmakers said the IMF needed
to provide far more information about the bailouts and the
conditions it has set for its assistance. They also worry that
the bailout money might be used to subsidize U.S. firms'
rivals.
"The U.S. must ensure that any funds contributed to the
South Korean bailout are not used to prop up companies," said
Rep. Peter Visclosky, an Indiana Democrat.
The House banking committee has tentatively scheduled a
Feb. 25 vote on IMF funding legislation.
The measure, sponsored by committee chairman James Leach, a
Republican from Iowa, would authorize Washington to boost the
IMF's resources by $18 billion in exchange for assurances that
IMF policies will support banking reforms and open markets,
honor labor rights and promote environmental protection.

http://www.iepstein.com/frprdata.html

.

"-U.S. Mint down to about 40 Million Ozs of silver left in Strategic Stockpile, when that is gone, they will be in the market also."

And WB, his country's friend, will be ever so happy to re-supply.

http://www.stocksite.com/

click on first article.

gotta run!! go Gold.

Damn stuff gave me no chance at all to buy more. I caught very little of this silver rise, felt too much like chasing the market. Picked up 40 - 50K oz around 5.80 but I bailed on all of it yesterday.

DA is quite right about shorting this market. This is not a bull you want to get in front of..yet. There will be a spectacular fall in the price of silver, but nobody knows how far is up. Damn tricky market. Only one thing I hate worse than taking losses, and that is missing the move

Cherokee -
You made some great calls on grains last year, and I hope your gold pays off big. Its looking more likely that you will see black ink on your latest calls.

To All
I know Im supposed to be the propaganda minister of RSA
mines, but I would not rush to buy goldfields. I like Anglos
a lot better particularly if they get Western Areas and Joel
from the pickings of JCI.
Goldfields management has continued running the bad half
of Kloof forever now when it should have been closed long
ago. That is either due to lack of brains or lack of b@lls
to take on the Union on closures. They seem to think the mines
will close themselves. Maybe they are so badly managed it
can only get better. ?? I dont think things work like that.
Its always possible to do it worse if you try. Im probably
wrong - just one man's opinion.

No one seems to recognize the fact that this site is up and running perfectly about 99.9% of the time. Some people will complain whenever they recognize a quote that is more than two minutes old, when there is a little traffic, or when something breaks... even though Kitco provides this site for free!

The Kitco folks are doing a great job of keeping this site running, especially when compared to other sites.

WB is a player with a long term vision. He has gone to a lot of trouble to set up his current position. It is not likely that what now appears to be a spike run-up is even close to his goal. The underlying fundamentals are bullish, even if masked by what some will say is a speculative binge.

I think Buffet went to school on the Hunts. He knows you can't take a profit in a hurry on any kind of volume without killing the silver goose. So I would expect him to hold tight until silver approaches his goal, and then to unload gradually over many weeks.

Is it really possible that this is WARREN wednesday and
suddenly all america falls in love with PM overnight -
wouldnt that be simply GRAND. We could all become sort of
PM Statesmen ... and speak with Gravitas or even GRAVYtrash ...
It doesnt seem to fit somehow .. but maybe we were there the
day .......

"They may have reservations but they are very open-minded,"
Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin said.


____________________________________________________


Last stanza of an old fling, maybe '91 or '92.

O Great White Father in Washington sent out reservations
Tol' me they were tickets, didn't check the stipulations
Still waitin' in the airport weaving baskets for the plane
How'd them Hare Krishnas get back in again by train.

For you, Mozel.

This is an interesting articule from the Orlan J. Grabbe site. Its long but interesting.



Black Monday

On the last Monday in October, the Dow dropped 550
points and, to everyone's relief, the exchanges stopped
the trading thirty minutes early. If the new rules had
not required the halt, it might have been much worse.
Is this the beginning of the great crash?

If it is, it won't be from a lack of planning on the part
of President Clinton, Robert Ruben and the Federal
Reserve. According to credible sources, it has become
government policy to "protect" the investment
community from the laws of gravity.

The government has even admitted as much. Alan
Greenspan gave a speech in Lueven, Belgium on the
14th of January, this year, in which he touted the
Fed's obligation to bail out banks and private financial
institutions not just by printing unlimited amounts of
money but also through "direct intervention in market
events."

S&P 500 Contracts

For a while now, there have been rumours among
traders that the US government was stepping into the
market from time to time to purchase S&P contracts.
The obvious reason was to thwart short sellers and
stem possible panics.

The rumours held that the government was buying
S&P futures contracts through the good offices of
Goldman Sachs, the firm once headed by Treasury
Secretary Robert Ruben.

If true, many people must have known about it.
Everyone who did would be in a position to profit
dramatically by purchasing the S&P futures in the full
knowledge that the federal government was poised to
intervene in the market to guarantee the profitability of
their trades. Under those conditions, anyone could
trade S&Ps as profitably as Hillary Clinton did cattle
futures.

But I was sceptical. After all, such activity would ( or
should ) require congressional approval. Also, if short
selling is a legally sanctioned activity, wouldn't it be
highly illegal to secretly intervene with public funds on
behalf of the longs and ignore the rights of the shorts?
But seeing is believing, and now I'm convinced its
true.

Tawdry Tuesday

The next morning after Monday's big 550 point break,
I, and everyone else trading S&Ps witnessed a most
remarkable event. It must have been the most blatant
display of market manipulation in the history of Wall
Street. Or at least the biggest and most public. In spite
of this, to my knowledge, not a peep was made by the
establishment press.

The tip-off was the "timing" of a dramatic rise in the
premium ( number of points in which the S&P
contracts were trading in excess of the value of the
underling stocks ) .

I have traded the S&P for years and I've never seen
anything like it. The average "fair value" of the
premium that day was 600 points.

Exactly six minutes before Bill Clinton was to address
the market crisis on television, the premium rose
almost instantly to 3,500. This was undoubtedly
caused by the concerted purchase of what had to have
been at least a billion dollars worth of S&P contracts.

The Computers Blinked

The strange thing is that it almost failed to work.

Normally, anytime the premium rises just a little bit
above the fair value, computers which are programed
by the arbitrage investment groups automatically enter
orders to sell the overvalued contracts and
simultaneously enter orders to buy the undervalued
stocks generating an automatic riskless profit. But this
time it didn't work. At least not like it should have.

The premium rise was so fast and so big that,
evidently, the fail-safe systems kicked in whereby the
computer didn't believe what it saw. Under these
conditions, it stops trading and calls a human to see
what is wrong.

When I saw the 3,500 premium, I thought the same
thing. Some kind of computer error. I immediately
looked to see if the stock prices were rising, and they
weren't. Dead in the water!

I looked up at the TV, saw Bill, and it dawned on me.

It was Slick Willie doing what he does best. Blatant
manipulation of the highest order.

I jumped in and made a very good profit. A lot of
other traders did too. Of course Hilliary and Craig
Livingstone were way ahead of me. But the computers
were slower than all of us.

It took about a half hour for their operators to override
the systems and order the mass purchases of stock
that the feds had been counting on. Ultimately, though
belatedly, it still worked.

A New Bull Market?

All things considered, the con was perfect.

The back of the would-be crash was broken and the
bull was reborn. At least for now. The real mystery is
why and how the media keeps mum.

A concerted investigation by the Wall Street Journal,
New York Times or Washington Post would surely
reveal enough evidence to blow this outrage sky high.
This is nothing less than the illegal clandestine
tampering with the free market.

But like the murder of Vincent Foster, the rigging of
Wall Street is a dirty little secret the media
establishment would rather not reveal.

The "Big Lie" & Waiting for the "Second Shoe"

The American people suffer less from ignorance and
more from an illusion of knowledge. The percieved
knowledge that the proveribal "freedom of the press"
will protect their society from the "Big Lie."

I, for one, want to congratulate the Laissez Faire City
Times on its first issue today on the internet.

Just as the VCR helped to strip the scales of socialist
government duplicity from the eyes of the Russian
people, it is the internet and efforts like this newspaper
which will ultimately do the same for the Americans.

Hopefully with the same result. I can't wait to see the
other shoe drop.

Let freedom ring!

Reify, will answer your question later today.
Hello DJ
Hello Arden
Hello Strad Master

Filed at 9:23 a.m. EST

By The Associated Press

OMAHA, Neb. ( AP ) -- Speculation has been swirling over who has been bidding up the price of silver to the highest levels in nearly a decade. Now, we know at least one of the mystery buyers: legendary
investor Warren Buffett.

The nearly 130 million ounces of silver bought since July by Buffett's Omaha-based investment company, Berkshire Hathaway Inc., is more than the total kept in warehouses by the New York Mercantile Exchange. It is worth about $850 million at today's prices.

But in the surprise announcement made after markets closed tuesday, the company sought to assuage any concerns that Buffett might stray from his steadfast buy-and-hold policy.

``Berkshire has no present plans for purchase or sale of silver,'' the company said in a statement, adding that the silver position accounts for less than 2 percent of the company's portfolio.

So far, Buffett's bet -- like many of his others -- has proven correct. Dwindling supplies of silver have been pushing prices to the highest levels in nine years.

Silver has been on the rise since July 1997, when it cost $4.60 a troy ounce. On Tuesday it jumped 5.5 percent, or 36.70 cents, to close at $6.615 a troy ounce for delivery in March. In London today, silver climbed more than 10 percent to $7.05 a troy ounce from $6.385 Tuesday.

Buffett stayed true to his mantra of buying assets cheaply but broke new ground by entering the precious metals market. Berkshire Hathaway normally focuses on stocks of big companies like Coca-Cola Co.,
McDonald's Corp., The Washington Post and Gillette Co.

``I have not seen or read or heard of Buffett or any of his investment techniques that have focused on precious metals,'' said analyst Brian Zahm of Kirkpatrick Pettis in Omaha.

``He might have seen a price he couldn't resist,'' Zahm said.

A major factor behind the recent rally in silver is that demand has been outpacing supply, as it has for the past eight years, causing stocks in the metal to fall. New York Mercantile Exchange stocks of silver dropped to 103.77 million ounces Monday, their lowest level since May 30, 1985.

Adding to the boost were assurances from the exchange that the silver market is not being manipulated as claimed in a lawsuit filed last week by a Canadian silver options trader against Phibro Inc., which
denied the claim.

Berkshire Hathaway said Buffett first bought silver more than 30 years ago and ``since that time he has followed silver's fundamentals but no entity he manages has owned it.''

``Last summer, Mr. Buffett and Mr. ( Charlie ) Munger, vice chairman of Berkshire, concluded that equilibrium between supply and demand was only likely to be established by a somewhat higher price,''
the company said.

Berkshire Hathaway denied having any knowledge of other actions on the silver market. It said all of its purchases were through an undisclosed London brokerage firm and came after price declines.

XAU up 5.49%, on a ~$3.80 rise in spot gold. Nice ratio.

Normandy not trading???

Meridian down today??

People speculate about when the Dow is going to crash and although I have no idea of the timing I do know that those in control will not leave any money on the table! These Mutual Funds continue to throw someone elses money into the market and the poor donot seem to be aware that it is their money. The Meltdown is coming and after the crash these financial gurus known as Mutual Fund Managers will be blamed. For the second time in 69 years the rich will steal the poors money!

BillnOregon: that is a very interesting commentary about govt manipulation of Spoo's. One thing we can count on regarding govt manipulation: their biggest asset and capability is the power to spray money around wherever convenient. For sure, W. Clinton would have no qualms about using such tactics. IMF funding is another example. His constituency in the electorate would not even understand this, much less care. Gold ( and other stuff ) is the place to be.

John, the desert is beautiful when it is not raining. Last night the rain in Phoenix caused telephone problems, I was cut-off the net and couldn't get connected. This is the ugliest part of the country when it is raining. People don't know how to drive in the rain, so lots of accidents occur. Deserts are good only when the sun is shinning, which I hope it will happen soon here.

I am of the opinion that Buffets Disclosure was intended to draw attention to silver while he continues to BUY GOLD! He understands the real supply demand numbers and will swiftly take his position.

HATT, I was thinking the exact same thing! Lets hope we're right. The silver market is too small for the big boys, and for me that's where the real leverage is...S.A. shares.

'There was virus goin' around
Papa caught it and died last sprii-iii-iing'

Buffet=Buffett. Warren AND Jimmy...I see there is confusion...

away

uffett

go plat

All,
Bill Griffith on Power Lunch/CNBC @ 12noon, will be dicussing WB and his silver holdings. This was billed as the lead story. I realize these are just the talking heads, but it still gives us insight to the mood on the street.

Gold for the good guys...GMJ

Had a long discussion yesterday with a former collegue regarding the ( alleged ) Y2K problem - he is convinced that this hoopla is another manipulated agenda benifitting those that have a vested interested in "gloom-and-doom" and making money on those who take the bait.

This person has worked in the industry since 1962 and was a lead computer specialist/designer/software guru in Bell Labs until the telephone divestiture. 2 years ago he had contracted with several large "blue-chips", as well as, some medium size and local banking concerns.

He says the only people that will be devistated are those small companies that are currently ignoring the problem and don't want to spend the capital for hardware changes or upgrade software... His take on these firms is that since they are small in nature - they still have some time.


CONCLUSION: Are these Y2K folks manipulating their own market ? Yes.

One example: I just read "Time Bomb 2000" which a friend had purchased for me. Authors are husband/wife team - she is trained in economics and working in a bank ( boy, what credentials - do they really believe that the banks are not on top of this ) . He, on the other hand, works in the industry BUT only so he can sell books for Prentice-Hall ( 25 of them ) .

IMHO

post scriptum: I've read the post over the past many months from Y2K expert - SO - please don't attack. Challenges are welcome but be specific. I may be completely wrong on this BUT let's discuss it.

bbl

Assuming that W. Buffet paid an average of $5.5 per oz of silver, this relates to an investment of $700 million.

If he decided to switch now from silver to gold at current silver prices ( around $7.00 per oz ) he will be putting $875 million into gold - WHICH CORRESPONDS TO 3 MILLION OZS. A DROP IN THE BUCKET FOR GOLD.

Question...
What are the odds that Warren just put 2% of his porfolio into silver only? Are we going to hear soon that he put the other 3% into gold bullion?

Glad to see that you're willing to read about y2k. Most people dismiss the problem out of hand. My last 8 months of reading and research have lead me to a very sobering conclusion. One of my main sources included reading the newsgroup comp.software.year-2000. I highly recommend this source...browse the archives at http://www.dejanews.com - in the computers - other catagory.

Another great source is Rick Cowles website...you probably saw reference to it in Ed Yourdan book...it can be found at http://www.euy2k.com Rick recently report in his weekly column that many players in the utilities industry still don't get how much work is needed to be done. See his weekly columns section on his web site.

Good luck

SSC up 28% today. You see John is not only the SA stocks which make big moves but the NA also.

Best said: "Every dog has its day"

My friend, where did you find a broker willing to handle those far-out thinly traded calls. My discount broker is virtually stone-walling me on several trades. No trades yet today, blah blah blah.

Want to pick up some Oct gold 400's.

Thanks.

Sorry WetGold, mistaken on many counts.

Ed and Jennifer Yourdon, the authors of "Time Bomb 2000" are a father/daughter team. Yourdon is the closest thing to a mainframe programming guru there is. It behooves us to pay attention to him.

Secondly, Time Bomb 2000 does not hype total-collapse scenarios, but it does not discount them either. It presents several levels of possible problem severity in an effort to encourage people to examine the problem ( s ) which might occur and take steps to prepare for whatever level of 'annoyance' as they see fit.

Thirdly, the link to the Y2K news clippings page has been posted here many times. Many articles listing many companies and govenmental organizations ( there's an oxymoron for you ) taking action, banks like BofA preparing to pay out 80 million dollars in bonuses alone just to keep their programming staff from bailing for bigger bucks, power companies that are just now beginning to analyze the embedded chip problems, etc. etc.

I am a programmer, and I have seen a 50% increase in my hourly rate over the last 6 months, and I plan to make a killing on pure supply/demand fundamentals because of this problem. Just because someone makes money in a certain situation doesn't necessarily imply market manipulation [right? ;o ) ]

I look for eveving gains,when the Japan market opens they should be agresive buyers.

Does anyone know about a junior gold stock called Sonoma Resources? I heard that they have $.22 / share in cash but the stock is trading today at $.21. Sounds like a good deal. Also they are issuing warrants at $.34 so I would think that they would expect the stock price to rise above that level.

Sonoma trades on Vancouver. Tick SNA

Okay let's see now take 2 cups of gold, 1 cup of silver,equal parts of
lead,zinc,copper and aluminum,a pinch of panic,a whiff of inflation,
a hint of recession,a pound of depression and manipulation, shake
vigorously and pour into a shallow lake bed, simmer for 6 mos. and
Wah Lah, the EURO DOLLAR, the next devaluation crisis heading your
way brought to you by your local authorized currency dealer.

Thanks for that.
At this point in history it should be obvious that the Great White Father in Washington is nobody's natural father.
I don't have any secret chart decoder rings or star signs to share on the PM markets, but I will give you this.
The greenback money system is a company store with a facade featuring neon signs showing the magic of compound interest. For a typical working man or woman, except for the illusions and sleights of hand done by Wall Street magic with numbers, it is no different than a slave labor camp in which the inmates are paid with scrip and the IRS functions as camp guards who collect the rent you are charged for being in the camp. You can forget using that little popgun you keep in the basement to get out of the camp. You are going to have to get out by law if you want out.
The Constitution is a trust compact in the common law. The courts will not accommodate the government so far as to invalidate the Constitution. "A Trust organization created under the U.S. constitutional right of contract cannot be abridged." Crocker v Malley 279 US 233. If you want to be a freeman, you have to act like one.

Take a look at these currencies. The U.S. dollar is down against almost every country.

http://www.cnbceurope.com/markets/currency/

Futures Contracts
Updated as of: Feb 04, 1998 @ 12:13 pm ET

Sym. Company Name Last Change %Chg High Low Vol.

GC J8 Apr. Gold 3005 +33 +1.1 3025 2965 50.8K
SI H8 March Silver 6780 +165 +2.5 6860 6560 32.9K
HG H8 March High Grade Copper 7720 +45 +0.6 7730 7660 12.6K
PL J8 April Platinum 3915 +53 +1.4 3930 3875 1.18K
PA H8 March Palladium 23900 +205 +0.9 23900 23700 238

BBL

Lot of pressure in the spot price of silver sellers are being patient

EB:

Barring any unforeseen catastrophies in the shipping lanes, the wink museum should be operative by tomorrow or Friday at the latest. I got the call last night that the packing crew had crated up the prize exhibit and that it was winging its way westward.

Best of luck on opening night.

Help: my puter messed up. gotsome lost stuff, but need to rebuild bookmarks. Would appreciate sites for Gold & Silver options schedules and quotes on options. Many thanx

Forgot-- email if you wish to chass@vistatech.net

Put in an order and see if it gets picked up. Or get a different broker. He is supposed to do exactly what you say. He may groan that it is like catching lightning in a bottle but he is supposed to put the order in anyway.

Might I suggest getting a little closer to the money and a closer month? And try a spread ( ratio ) . Your profit potential is MUCH greater and the cost can be the same if you run some numbers. Gold would not have to get to anywhere close to $400 to make some good money. And your risk is the amount you pay for the options. Call your brokerage house and ask to speak to an options expert. Ask him/her to build you a 'ratio' spread.

Cherokee - this play is much more lucrative than to buy out-o-money calls. MUCH. But, since ( you say ) gold is going to $400 this month than you had better sell puts too ( bottom is in, right? )

Volatility is high

bottom is in ( supposedly )

Premiums are juicy

Oh

My!

away...to buy smart and reap greater rewards

gonnawin

Gold & Silver Index is at the high of the day - UP 7.24%!

I'm not sure but I think you are talking very cheap options 50 to 100,which only a floor trader would sell,because every trade both sides pay com.,and floor traders only pay fees,so not much action in the option pits today probably lot of floor independent floor traders got wiped out by yesterdays silver action and last couple weeks gold action,as always I'm only guessing.

Dear Mr AG & RR:

Here is my reply to your request for advice on the Asia tiger
problem. Trust in Gold and everybody else pays in cash.

Your 09:45 makes more sense than anything else I've read today. To paraphrase a much hated platitude "It's the fundamentals, stupid!"

These are the kind of opportunities that are made for the smaller traders like myself. Low risk, high gain potential, great fundamentals. We'll see $10.00 silver before we see $5.00 silver and we will NEVER again see $4.00 silver

P.S. You're obviously a poker player.

APH, D.A. R.J, Vronsky are the greatest. APH is giving us the best market calls in all areas, particulalry silver and he is keeping us up to date. D.A. shared his information with us on silver for a year now in addition to his excellent analysis on the market in general. R.J. is certainly helping us in short term trades and Vronksy has given us a flood of information on all matters silver and gold related. This is my heartfelt apprectiation for you most valued contributions. Your are to be commended for your leadership

Thanks and best wishes

D.A.: One question that has been niggling at the back of my head is the timing of Buffet's announcement. Why at all? Why now?

One answer is that this was going to come out with that market manipulation suit that will no doubt be retargeted at Berkshire.

Says things like "he expects to sell it back to the mugs...", "...people glaze over when you say silver...", nothing mentioned about supply and demand.
Also figure this he has 5% Mc D's, 8% Coke...but how much did that cost? With silver he got 20% of the supply with 2% of his portfolio....bottom line it is undervalued, that's why he's buying.

http://biz.yahoo.com/finance/980204/markets_si_8.html

Most excellent. I will, however, have to delay the opening of the museum. I am still bailing out ( water ) . The latest storm has caused some problems with my alarm system. My doberman quit. And the display case floated down the block with the rest of my belongings. The delay is only temporary and I should be ready in a few more weeks. That will give you time to make flight reservations ( 21 day advance ) so you can make opening night. You and your family have season tickets. The best champagne and ritz crackers ( with aerosol cheese and salami, of course ) await your arrival. It will be a night to remember.

away...to make preparations

excited

ted, i still have no email, dammit! but electricity is a go!

Africa's third largest gold producer saw output fall for the first time in 11 years in 1997. Zimbabwe said production fell to 24,287 kilos, down 1.6% from the year earlier figure, which was the highest since 1940 when mostly independant diggers were stil exploiting centuries-old sites. Analysts say companies are scaling back in Zimbabwe becasue of the falling price of gold and sharply rising cost, and they expect output to remain static this year. The amount of gold being mined in Zimbabwe is well behind leader South Africa and Ghana, the second largest producer on the continent. End story..

The way I see it I am mistaken on only 1 part: that is, that it is a father/daughter team as opposed to husband/wife. A look at the back cover had me believe that she looks only a few years younger than him. I'm not sure who gets the compliment on that.

YOUR SECOND POINT: He is good at not giving the appearance of partisanship as a politician speaks in the third person to "keep-above-the-fary". When you write over 25 computer books you get good at that.

YOUR THIRD POINT: Government agencies are looking into its implication and seriousness --Come ON --- money down a rat hole for some bureacrat.

LASTLY: OT for you and thousands others. No - I'm not saying that you are not justified in making some side cash to get some more "Eagles" BUT recognize that there are some ( how many - I don;t know ) computer analysys/experts/gurus that stand to make alot more money than you could in overtime SEEING the "once-in-a-millenium" opportunity that this presents. BIG BUCKS for these folks.

Even though you could only challenge me on 1 minor detail I do appreciate your professional response. Thanx ...

.

ASM.v +27.27%
HL +20.78%
SSRIF +17.39%
FSR.V +16.69%
PAASF +12.35%

Thats about a year's worth of gains for the "better" mutual funds in the general stock market. gotta love it!!

Never say NEVER...
away
7

For those interested in Copper ( James? ) and for those watching for a bottom:

As of yesterday, there were 101,975 short tonnes reported in the Comex warehouses. Sometimes last summer, this figure got as low as around 40,000 short tonnes! The buildup has been extraordinary and the current low prices reflect the situation.

Stocks in London also continue to increase daily.

EB, thank you. I went ahead a placed some June orders for 360 calls.

chas - here is a useful site for options quotes.
http://router.minot.com/~bohl/#OPTIONS

All: I would also like to express my thanks to those who are keeping us up to date on Silver. If I had been reading the posts yesterday, instead of doing my 'day job', I could have added to my silver stock position. Currently I have a nice 25% profit on PAASF -- wasn't able to buy more today, given the commotion. I'm going to hang in there for a while. Didn't expect so much excitement on gold, so haven't bought more yet there either! Might at the end of the day if XAU weakens.

Did everyone notice that there is some talk that the Fed might lower interest rates? I might not if I were AG, but I certainly wouldn't raise them! I think someone on Kitco said not so long ago that this was the ideal situation for gold -- an aging economic growth period, with signs of fraying at the edges -- not a situation where the Fed will want to tighten the money supply noose. The cry0 has been rising nicely. And -- the dollar is too strong for the comfort of many. A very weak situation in Europe, too, where rates are likely to be kept as low as possible. And -- signs US of inflation just around the corner!

gold closes above 300.

All,
FWIW. Power Lunch on CNBC @12noon. Our favorite talking heads were putting the juice to the RPM's. Their take on the silver story was that Mr. WB was only a short term buyer, after he made his set profit, he would be selling back into the market, hence a pending crash in the metals...yah, right !!

Gold & Silver for the good guys...GMJ

Kiwi: Your 12:47 is amusing. When WB buys equities, he is a brilliant guru to be emulated. When he buys silver, it only goes up because the copy-cats will buy it, and then he can bail out. Do you think they believe their own nonsense, or is it sour grapes? Perhaps they will not do as they say when they can! Sounds like the same 'talking heads' that continously put down gold.

When the current belief system breaks down, and precious metals are 'in' again, the stampede my be a sight to see. We will need to stand out of the way when it happens.

RJ, are you SURE you havn't taken some major short positions? I've never seen you push so hard for a downside with so many posts. Hmmmm....Certainly silver has proven itself an incredibly volatile market, with plenty of risks both ways, but one must be skeptical about these massive piles of unsold, loss position, silver of which you speak.

The physical broker I deal with tells me that most of the folks who bought silver "high" in the 80's, sold it at a loss long ago, took their write off, and went into greener pastures. IMHO, there may be 500 to 600 million ounces out there that can be lured into the market by higher prices. Not nrealy enough to sustain a long term bear market in silver.

I think that we'll see $10 silver in late 1998, and I also think the chances of that $6.00 level you're speaking of in March are nil, To Hoo and Bo Hoo ( null and void ) .

We're certainly at the $6.80 to $7.00 level that's supposed to skake loss all this silver, so we should quickly see whether your asessment below is correct. But you also said a few weeks ago, that $6.00 silver is way too high, the market fundamentals don't support it, and that you'd "sell into the black hole of $6.00 silver all day"....has your view changed on that particular level? Now you say below that $6.00 silver looks tasty???

date: Tue Feb 03 1998 23:49
" RJ ( ..... Hidden Silver ??? ..... ) ID#411259:

Isure -

Count on it. I have been getting calls from clients who bought silver from my firm in the early 1980s. After all
these years, they have written off ever making a profit, and $6+ silver looks awful tasty. I think the 6.80 - $7.00
range could shake loose a lot of this silver. Apart from what Barbie says, many people took delivery of 1000 oz
weight hallmark bars - JM or Englehard, its all I trade. The stuff is deliverable to any user in the world. The effect
of this silver on the market is impossible to predict. This whole shortage has been engineered and will vanish in a
puff of smoke when its all over. There is no shortage of silver. Silver will still fly. That just the way it is. "

You left out the most amazing performance of all, SSC, up 33.33%!! Quite an extraordinary move for a stock that has barely budged to date, is reponse to silver's climb. I wish I had not been so hasty in abandoning SSC as a non perfomer and stuck with my earlier instincts. Namely, that when the public at lrage gets wind of this new bull market in silver, SSC will be the firts shares they'll turn to....

223, and others, congrats for sticking with your SSC shares. You made it all up in spades in one day! Those of us who lost out but hold a lot of physical, have eeked our 33% gains out over weeks instead of hours!!!!

Wednesday February 4, 12:33 pm Eastern Time

Silver shares up on news of Warren Buffett buying

NEW YORK, Feb 4 ( Reuters ) - Shares of silver mining companies rose Wednesday on news that famed investor Warren
Buffett had bought about 130 million ounces of silver, or roughly 20 percent of the world's annual supply.

Apex Silver Mines Ltd ( SIL - news ) was up 1-9/16 to 12-7/8, Coeur d'Alene Mines Corp ( CDE - news ) rose 1-1/4 to
10-1/8, Sunshine Mining and Refining Co ( Nasdaq:SILVW - news; SSC - news ) gained 5/16 to 1-7/16 and Hecla Mining
Co ( HL - news ) , up 11/16 to 5-1/2.

Peru's Buenaventura Mining Co ( BUE.LM ) ( BVE - news ) was up 1-1/4 to 14-3/8. Canada's Pan American Silver Corp
( PAASF - news ) rose 1-3/8 to 11-1/2 and Prime Resources Group Inc ( PRU - news ) added 11/16 to 8-1/16.

``This is fairly big in the sense that Warren Buffett is highly regarded as a top investor,'' said Todd Hinrichs, an analyst at
ABN AMRO.

Silver for March delivery jumped 17.5 cents to $6.79 an ounce in morning trading on the Commodity Exchange, a unit
ofthe New York Mercantile Exchange.

Silver prices have risen about 13 percent in the past four days and about 60 percent since Buffett started buying in
mid-1997.

Buffett said he disclosed his silver purchases -- made through his Berkshire Hathaway Inc ( BRKa - news ) investment
company -- because of recent silver-market price movements and because Berkshire had received inquiries about its
ownership of the precious metal.

According to Hinrichs, however, silver becomes less attractive as an investment in the $7-$8 an ounce price range because
most of the rise is gone by then. He said Buffett probably bought most of his silver under $5 an ounce.

``Now that this announcement has come out he might be selling into the strength,'' said Hinrichs. ``In a sense, the rise in
silver prices is a has-been event.''

Kiwi - did you notice no analysts were named in the article you posted. he also doesn't mentioned the name of the London Based Banks. I'll bet he quoted Andy Smith from UBS who is trying to keep a low profile in light of the questions regarding the status of their Korean gold loans.

Watch for a vol. move to 22.50 or so soon with swc

Your post about talking heads reminds me of the weatherman who
buy grain futures before he gives the weather report about the
oncoming drought. I gotta believe they report the news to
benefit their own trading.

I did not trade today so that I could wait for the dust after yesterday's news to settle. I agree thought that silver has great potential to hit $8.00 or $9.00, but I'm waiting for a small correction to happen soon, perhaps $6.40 ~ $6.50 before I jump into silver again.

Strapped Thai farmers turn to

rodents, raising environmental

fears

BANGKOK, Thailand ( February 4, 1998 00:31 a.m. EST

http://www.nando.net ) -- Thai peasants struggling with hard

economic times are turning to a huge South American

rodent to save the family farm. But authorities fear the

get-rich-quick craze to breed the water-loving animals --

variously known as nutria, coypu or beaver rat -- will end

in environmental disaster and financial fraud.

The animals, as large as a medium-size dog, look like

giant rats with webbed feet and strong front teeth. They

are at home in marshes and swamps and feed on all

kinds of vegetation.

Over the decades, promoters touting the ability of nutria

to breed rapidly have periodically sought to introduce

them in various areas around the world.

The problem is that not much of a market has ever been

developed for nutria meat or fur. And when breeders

can't sell nutria, they turn them loose -- usually into

swampy areas where they wreak havoc on vegetation.

In Thailand, the world's leading rice exporter, millions of

acres of paddies could be at risk, experts warn.

Nutria are already getting loose. At least one found its

way in January to a Bangkok karaoke bar, where its

appearance panicked a hostess who mistook it for a

giant rat.

The Agriculture Ministry released a statement Jan. 9

warning farmers to stay out of the nutria-breeding

business despite tempting advertising campaigns

promising riches.

"The nutria is not an agricultural animal," the ministry

said. "You will be deceived and will not have long-term

profits. If the nutria is released into nature, it cannot be

eliminated."

Louisiana is cited as an example. Nutria were imported

to that U.S. state in the 1930s by farmers who hoped the

brown-and-gray fur would catch on with the public. It

didn't.

Now, nutria have overrun Louisiana and become a pest.

Their voracious hunger has denuded marshes, and

officials say their burrows weaken levees and bridge

supports.

Thailand and many of its Southeast Asian neighbors are

reeling from an economic collapse and, like the

Louisiana farmers of the Great Depression, people are

desperate to find ways to earn extra cash.

Enter promoters extolling the nutria's money-making

ability. First introduced in Thailand just three years ago

by a Taiwanese businessman, the original 4,000 nutria

have multiplied to more than 1 million.

"I first saw my neighbor breed them and earn so much

money in a short period of time that he could build his

new house," said one breeder, Narong Viboolchart. "I

then decided to follow."

Thai promoters also play on an angle that always seems

to sell in Asia -- claiming that eating nutria can improve

your sex life.

"Its feet, tail and bones are treasures for us," said Suvit

Vivitkunaporn, an importer. "They are the key ingredients

for the sexual medicine."

But authorities see a more sinister angle at work. They

say the nutria business is really a pyramid scheme that

will collapse and leave the farmers broke.

The standard contract has a farmer rent a breeding pair

by paying a deposit of 30,000 baht ( $600 ) . The money is

returned after the animals have been breeding for five

years.

The importers pledge to buy offspring from the first litter

at $100 each, then $60 apiece for later litters.

Each litter can number from four to 12 animals, and a

mother can become pregnant three times a year. After

buying the offspring back, the importers rent them out as

breeders to other farmers.

Everyone makes money as long as new farmers can be

found to rent breeding pairs. But Thai authorities note

that eventually no new farmers will sign on, which will

leave the last breeders in without their deposits and with

no market for their animals.

Thais have discriminating palates and there is no

demand for nutria meat. Fur coats are unknown in the

tropical climate. And even in colder countries, the fur of

big rats is not much sought after.

"We think this business is sort of deceitful," said

Somchai Sunthornwat, deputy minister of agriculture.

The ministry plans to ban nutria imports, he said.

But in rural Kanchanaburi province in western Thailand,

advertising and radio campaigns are still inviting people

to join the nutria business and go into breeding.

"It is the best-ever economic animal," said Suvit, the

importer. "Pigs, chickens, even cows can never yield this

good of a result to raisers."

Suvit dismisses the environmental worries raised by

agriculture officials.

"The nutria is not a crocodile," he said. "If it gets loose, it

won't eat people. Why worry?"

By JIRAPORN WONGPAITHOON, Associated Press

Writer

One question I keep meaning to ask re silver. If all these folks are going to sell because $6.00+ silver looks "tasty", how does this square with the trading ranges we had in the early 80's when inventories were much higher and the dollar was worth a LOT more than it is today, relative to silver? It still looks grossly undervalued at $6.00 IMHO, both from an investment historical perspective OR from a simple intrinsic prespective, OR from a long term fundamental supply/demand perspective.

But I'm interested in your take on what sustained silver's $10.0 to $14.0 long term trading range, after the 1980 crash, ( with blips to $16.00 & above ) during the years when inventories by ANY measure were so much higher than they are now, and especially considering we're now talking about devalued dollars relative to those years?

Curious on your take as to why we now shouldn't sustain prices above that "tasty" $6.00 level, given that past history.

on yahoo.biz.com a search on the silver articles are about half split between the short spinners ( mostly London analysts not sited where they are from ) and some New York traders just giving the facts about stocks above ground and whose buying etc....there's perception then there's deception.
Trust noone I say. The biggest assest to this forum are the reliable fact finders like Donald and Arden with stock numbers and facts.
Looks like Bank of England will be investigating LMBA over this, portends of things to come in GOLD?

Also heard there are three other big positions taken in the silver...if the have only half of what Buffet got they have well over 50% between them, are they in cohoots...of course, coincidences like this don't happen....it's full blown corner!

I am a consulting manager for Information Systems. In the past year, I have been responsible for Y2K assessments with three separate Fortune 100 companies. Their lack of understanding ( and lack of commitment ) is exactly what brought me to gold investments, and this site. Each one of these companies had a big "study" going on, with no real plan for implementation.

IT IS VERY DIFFICULT to modify these systems while they are up and running, still supporting corporate operations. Modifications are always necessary, but require planning and coordination.

I'll bet that you've upgraded something on your PC. It's always a pain, and usually people put it off as long as they can! Suppose that you have only one PC, it's now working fine, but it MUST be kept up and running to support your business, you need to check your existing CPU ( pentium ) , printer, modem, operating system, and all of your business software. If your PC and any software is more than a year or two old, I'll guarantee that at least one component is NOT year 2000 compliant.

COMPUTER SYSTEMS store dates in many, many different locations. Your PC may have a Real Time Clock ( RTC ) that sends the current date to your CPU when you turn it on. The CPU sends the current date to the Operating System ( Win95 ) , the Operating System sends the current date to your applications. Servers, mainframes, and network equipment have similiar layers, and they all are constantly swapping info. What happens if there is a problem or error? NOBODY KNOWS! The combinations are limitless!

BUSINESS SOFTWARE for a typical business has been patched together over the past twenty years. Usually NO ONE INDIVIDUAL knows how all of the systems work together. Since all of the components have not been tested for compliance, we are going to have one hell of a mess in about two years.

Telephone systems are also affected. If you have a small business, find your PBX model number, and call the manufacturer. If it's more than 2-3 years old, it can probably be upgraded.

Here's an example of what's going on in the industry. Currently, I am working with a client on a $10M software development effort. Totally new system and code. Every few weeks I recommend that we spend an extra couple of months, and an extra million, to make this system Year 2000 compliant. The response is always the same: "Nope. Not in the budget for 1998. We'll look at that issue next year."

The Root Cause of this mess: The people that understand these issues don't have the background to produce a Business Case for the funding required to assess and fix these systems. Corporate managers can understand a slick presentation from the Marketing boys for money to expand the business, but all they "hear" from the computer weenies is a request for new toys.

All:

Someone posted a link to an article which had reaction to Buffets announcement. In it, someone from the Bombay bullion association made some estimates as to the drop in silver demand based upon current prices. The gentleman estimated that demand would fall to 2000 tons from last years 3850. Rounding off the numbers this would be a decline in consumption of around 60,000,000 ounces. Given that the current supply demand deficit is around 170,000,000 ounces, even this collapse in Indian demand is not going to do the trick. All these folks who think that WB has made a huge miscalculation are pissed that they aren't in on the fun.

Away for now.

Today officially marks the beginning of a violent up move in silver followed by gold in about two months. Warren Wednesday will go down in the record books as the turn.

Buffett announces his silver accumulation at 20% of the markets supply. For a full six months he has been doing this. His average cost is 5.50 ( not as good as lgb's 3.98, uh...hum ) and now he is in a position to make some TASTY bucks. With this PERFECT timing ( as usual, hmmmm...but that's a different story for another day ) , he then positions himself to rid some of this silver for a profit. He will slowly ( and as secretly as he accumulated ) be the seller of all this silver, approx. 10% ( buyers are the greedy pee-on small investors ) just enough to keep the price rising ever so slowly forward.... ( not to make it DROP, his plans aren't ready for that yet ) . Then, with MORE PERFECT timing, he will dump the remaining 10% to plummet prices and to make a killing when he buys it back up at 4.00. He will then have his silver more in line with LGB's price point, and silver will climb again....the process will repeat itself over and over again......WB 'the master of market movement' ( along with spuds ) will be the one laughing all the way to the bank. Remember...he needs a new pair of shoes~~~~~...

away

tw

RJ, I have been remise. I would like to offer, to you, a VERY SPECIAL invitation to the opening night at my museum. In a sense this 'wink' is yours too ( even though I will be the caretaker ) . It is through your understanding of these PM markets that gave me the 'understanding' of direction and fate of this here goldie. You are truly a wise trader and a good ally. I thank you again for your contribution to this sight. Yu the Man! Are you dry down there?? I can only imagine what the 'Wedge' was like....whoa.

d.a. - My wink would be much more special to me if this does turn out to be the bottom. The irony is large. Thanks bro for being a part of it.

For myrmidom
I thought that was a silver stock.
For info there is no silver is RSA.
I think NA is the ONLY place to play
silver. A bit is Mount Isa I recall.
I see DDeeps is also up 18% today.
They apparently found that 100 mil
again- Is somebody reading my mail ??

Commercial committment almost 5:1 short to long. This info is one week old but I don't think it could have changed substantially. The recent excitement on W.Buffett silver purchases in combination with the COT situation should result in unprecedented volatility in the already highly volatile silver market. Fasten your seat belts!

For Silver COT go to http://www.cftc.gov/dea/futures/cmxsf.htm

I have done extensive reading on Y2K and completely agree with the conclusion that this is a very real problem. This could very easily bring our civilization to complete gridlock and chaos. I have friends who say,"This is no big deal, all they have to do is change the date in the computers". People who make blanket ignorant statements like this have obviously done no intelligent investigation into this problem. GO SILVER!!

squealing like a stick pig to the press about Buffet. Looks like CFTC is releasing a statement today about the whole affair.....all publicity is good publicity....fundamentals are sound...silvers going up, up, up surfing the wave...
http://biz.yahoo.com/finance/980204/focus_buff_1.html

Keep in mind that new supplies are coming on stream in 1998. If I remember well, more than 60M ounces on an annual basis. Still this, coupled with that forecast reduction in demand from India of 60M ounces, will reduce the deficit by 120M ounces...but we will still have a deficit.

As I noted yesterday the $8 drop in Gold appeared to be clearly
manipulated, in advance of a number of bearish news for US$ not to mention the "suprising" Buffet Silver announcement.....In the 70's
at some points Silver lead Gold up Deja-vu?....Yeltsin's "threat" to
Clinton of a WW over Iraq has to be taken seriously, Iraq owes Russia US$ Billions, and Russia wants Iraq 's proceeds of oil revenue
to purchase Russian weapons, in an attempt by Russia to get out
of the extremely tight IMF ( US$ ) rope chokehold inposed on her
for a number of years. Yeltsin is also looking over his shoulder
at the Duma, who are dreaming of the old Soviet Union days, and
who sense very low military morale. Some Russian soldiers I hear
are deserting the army daily, some even shot on the spot, some
are resorting to robberies to survive since they have note been paid
for weeks at a time....I have a feeling that the conference at Davos
concluded that a lower US$ was necessary....looking at the yen
up 2 1/2 Yen at 123.60 and the Mark below 180....I have read at least
10 news stories proclaiming "IMF funding will be approve"???....
Donald maybe this could be next week's contest....Look for the focus
to slightly turn from Asian currencies to the fundamentals of the US$ and it's largest debtor position, as well as the stregnth of the US economy,
given Asian markets supplied at least 1/3 of true Global growth.....
Gold should close above 300 today.... all of course JMHV

http://biz.yahoo.com/finance/980204/phibro_con_2.html

I recall seeing an ad many years ago in a computer industry rag that stated this, "60 Billion lines of COBOL code can't be wrong." . It was an ad urging people to add/retain COBOL to/in their programming skills. I think it was in 1990 or there abouts. Think about that for a minute. The estimated average of a date datum or calculation in every fifth line of code.

No disrespect intended toward your friend but that's a s#$%!*&!!t load of code and a BIG, BIG problem. I think the Social Security Administration has spent 8 or 9 years and only gotten 65% or so of their code inspected and cleaned up. The problem with computer SYSTEMS vs their COMPONENTS is that a typical 'system' may have 100's of components ( software subunits ) which ALL MUST WORK PROPERLY. Not one component can fail without at least casting the entire validity, if not functionality, of the system into doubt. This truly is like a chain of which no link can break without the entire chain failing.

This is a classic problem of logistics. Repair of code is only about 30% of the cost. Testing consumes 40% of the cost. The other costs revolve around infrastructure ( hardware ) and administration of the projects. The problem for this industry is that all systems must be fixed simulaneously and perfectly for us to retain our current functionality. We only have 18 months to go before major systems begin to grind to a halt.

And just to throw a little conspiracy into the mix; why is it that the Euro debutes on 01.01.1999? The commentary on this is that the code conversion needed to deal with the Euro, at least for international corporations accounting and inventory systems, is more involved and difficult than any Y2K project. Is this just bad timing? Or is it possible that the Europeans already know that Y2K will blow a huge hole in the boat of the US and many others ( themselves included ) and they are positioning their critical systems to replace the US as the anchor for the world economy??? Remember the Europeans have a sense of history that we do not have. Which also means they look at the future a bit differently as well.

Clinton administration has just announced the formation of a commitee
to look into said problem...it does appear serious...I heard a discussion
on this issue some time back, and ONE way I see where it could effect Gold etc.... is as people begin to understand that they may not be able to withdraw CASH from the Bank machines, they will starting soon begin to withdraw extra cash from the system, thereby adding obvious pressure on the money supply in circulation etc....all of course JMHV.....

I am not suggesting that the ISSUES are the scam rather those in the position to exploit those of lesser knowledge. I particularly like your comment:

"The Root Cause of this mess: The people that understand these issues don't have the background to produce a Business Case for the funding required to assess and fix these systems. Corporate managers can understand a slick presentation from the Marketing boys for money to expand the business, but all they "hear" from the computer weenies is a request for new toys."

This is very true.

For several years, I've negotiated ( and been directly involved with those who have ) detail of contracts regarding features/retrofits/upgrades/generics and new/modified "bell-whistles" for large switching networks ( hundreds of $M ) . Some customers include Bellcore, Siemens, Lucent, Northern Telecom, et al. I do have some knowledge of how it works and do not state my position from that of a novice. I still contend that the commercial market ( big players ) will be covered.

In terms of the consumer market most of these people ( US ) do not constitute a threat/demise in local financial or global markets although it may be a damn inconvenience for most since as you say that there is SOMETHING it our PC that will be hit.

Whenever I read references to the WINDOW95 ( Gates ) product I cringe. W95 came out with less features and user friendliness than MacIntosh had 10 years prior. When the general public bought into GATES as opposed to the MAC product line I knew who I'd be dealing with from that time on. Then again -- I had an SQL/CD4 QUAD receiver in the 1970's when only 17 people on the planet had one ( if you've ever heard the sound from it you would not understand why it never took off - BUT - this is another topic )

Thanx for your input ...

7 dollars and 26 cents....$7.26....as per ebn...check it out...up, up and away....go SSC...and gold not doing so bad either....

March Silver closed above the $7 level for the first time in many years!

Quite an exciting day again today in the Silver market, especially late this afternoon as huge buy orders were coming in extremely fast.

Some big shorts are about to give up if March Silver closes above the $7 level for a few sessions in a row.

coincidences like this don't happen....it's full blown corner!


Take her out, see what she does. Christmas tree.

Later..

You're right about having to be in to make money. the trouble with SSC though is being in long enough. Last winter when I bought it we were playing under the old capital gains rules ie 12 months for long term gain. Now under Clintonomics we are penalized for selling before 18 months. So I'm left with the dilemma of not just figuring out the profits and losses but figuring out whether it will be higher or lower this summer. :^ (

I really hope that when Mr. Clinton finally goes to jail he'll be put in as room mate with Steven Segal's friend, "Tyrone". I'd even donate him a bar of soap for his subsequent shower games. The bastard.

what a negative lease forward rate for a metal actully means?

Looks like silver lease is at 30% ouch but what does negative 25% forward....as I see it someone will pay me in 3 months time for me to lease silver off them?
Is this market goin haywire or what?!

I say this leasing metal is the biggest ponzi scheme going... and all does is to illustrate the lunacy of banks leasing money at all.

It is usery and it is being shown for what it is.

Right on, and I am sure that the potential silver buyers in India are aware of what you say.
I feel that the projected 60 million ounce drop in silver purchases from India is sour grapes. I think that the guys making the statement have missed the boat and hope to buy those 60 million ounces on the cheap and for their own accounts.
When WB a value investor buys, I assume that he will patiently wait until full value is achieved before selling.

Regarding your comment:

"People who make blanket ignorant statements like this have obviously done no intelligent investigation into this problem"

Your "blanket statement" convolves back into itself like a 1-dimensional "Klein Bottle". My experience ( and those professionals that have no axe-to-grind and wish to scare clients ) agree that the ISSUES are there BUT large blue-chips have been addressing the problem ( although I will agree its been hard to convince the WEENIES as stated earlier. )

I know first hand that ALL major switching networks ( ATT, MCI, SPRINT, BA, BLS, et al ) and their vendors ( Siemens, Lucent, NTI, etc ) have working these problem for years in unison with regulatory agencies/organizations including Bellcore, Bell Labs, FCC, etc.

The telephony environment ( pre and post divestiture ) had/has/been/is heavily regulated and overseen and will continue to be for national security reasons. The technology here changes SO OFTEN that major changes occur every 6 MONTHS ( including hardware, software, feature, etc ) . THIS IS HOW IBM GOT INTO TROUBLE IN THE 1980's --- ThErE LACK of flexibility to change quickly.

My experience with banking is more complex since many are still "in-bed" with IBM and their "mainframe" focus ( although their distributed processing is in place ) . Banking ( in general ) have not broken away from their IBM mentors and the IBM Marketers are good at what they do.

Let me state that I am NOT troubled by those providing information as to the possible problems that could exist at 2000 -- if anything -- this was probably necessary to get the WEENIES to listen. I am questioning the validity of some "doom-n-gloomers" that will undoubtably beget a profit on their vigorous analysis of a trend that is ( for the most part ) being addresses more so than not.

Anyone know if SSC still has a stockpile of silver?

OK, there is a Y2K crisis coming. How do we make money out of this mess? I don't think that it will be the End of Civilization as we know it, but it will be a major "crisis" similar to the oil shortages of the 1970's. Remember the 1970's:

Businesses that were dependent on cheap energy collapsed ( steel, transporation ) . Money poured into energy investments ( e.g. oil exploration, nuclear ) .

No one wanted the big gas-hogs from Detroit. The Japanese stumbled into their export craze ( and made fortunes ) because they had small, well-built cars available with great gas mileage.

Most of us believe that PM's will go up ( that's why we're here! ) , but how else can we make money on this??!! Show me the money!!

Yes - we are hear to make money.

1 ) Has no options/futures holdings regarding silver.
( Removes manipulation motive and tanks lawsuit. )

2 ) He knows where to put it. ( Not the USA. )

3 ) He bought on dips not rises. ( Again tanks law suit. )

4 ) He will not sell in a manner which jeapordizes the market.
( Stupid thing to do. He's not a Central Banker! )

5 ) His reputation is spotless.
( A minor profit in metals would be spittin' money to this man and not worth ruining his reputation. )

6 ) He has moved some money into Zeros ( 2 Bln ( in 12 Bln of Zeros ) approx 5% of BH holdings ) .

7 ) He has publicly stated that he sees "nothing to buy in this market" ( equities ) .

8 ) He is shifting his focus to a defensive posture for the first time in his investing career.

9 ) What else hasn't he admitted to??? GOLD and OIL ???

10 ) I say both gold and oil.

Gold at approx US$ 1 Bln = 3.3 Mln oz accumulated over same 6 month period as the silver purchases. This would give him about 5% BH holdings in physical metal and 5% in Zeros; a typical position of a conservative investor in uncertain times.

11 ) What does he own in oil now???

Regardless of whether Yourdon is a sincere Cassandra or an opportunistic golddigger, two words are key -- information and preparation. If your information ( combined with your own rational analysis ) dictates that Y2K is a non-event, take action on that basis. My info from this vantage point ( a major utility company in a top 10 US market, plus a diligent researcher of several Y2K related info sources, pro and con ) seems to indicate that much needs to be done, not much is getting done, and the powers-that-be have their collective heads where heads should never be. I am making pretty modifications to systems that need general overhaul for Y2K compliance. I want to keep my job ( for now ) and therefore must suppress that natural urge to shout 'Fire!' in this crowded movie theater.

I am mostly a lurker here, trying to divine the prevailing sentiment on PM's so that I may augment my preparations for a possible partial or full collapse of the financial infrastructure, not to mention a possible collapse of power generation/transmission facilites and food sources. It may not happen. I pray to God it doesn't happen. But the signs are not encouraging. I missed the silver boat. I will do my best not to miss the gold.

Anyone wishing to discuss Y2K further, let's take it to e-mail, t0c2365@yahoo.com if you are interested.

Has anyone W. Buffet's email address?

The least we can do, is to email him a thank you note, expressing our sincere thanks for our handsome returns.

No one is suggesting that the problem in a "non-event". Period.

How does the new competitive market in the electric utility industry fall into place with this problem ? Are the newer companies funding new infrastructure and transport facilities to serve as a catalyst for solving the challenge of acquiring and maintaining a customer base and addressing the Y2K issues ???

Organ: I can attest to the damage nutria do here in Louisiana. The state trys to encourage trappers to take them out and the gators get a few but they otherwise have no natural enemies. They virtually destroy marshes. The term used for the result is a "nutria eatout". One correction to the story is that the nutria were not introduced by Louisiana farmers, but by one farmer, McIlhenny the maker of McIlhenny Tobasco Sauce. His escapees now populate the gulf of Mexico marshes. If just a few escape the Thai farmers, they will likely need to start importing more rice in a few years.

To Ted and All: A couple of weeks ago I got an e-mail from a company called EMR Microwave Technology ( EMW - Calgary ) . Jan 2 close price was $0.48, today's price - $0.60. Claims it can reduce refractory gold production costs by $50 US per oz and solves environmental problems. They operate a 10 ton pilot plant in Fredricton, NB - better get over there TED and give us a report. I believe this is the same technology I ran across in 1984 in Ontario when the developers of the technology were trying to turn rubber tires into oil - at that time they claimed it had a mineral application as well. I saw oil come from the process, but they were never able to set up the plants they envisaged. I didn't follow it further so I do not know why. It may have been for scale-up reasons or cost. They appear to be concerned about scale up as they have a pilot plant with a capacity of 10 tons per day - not just laboratory scale. Their web site is http://www.emrmicrowave.com ( just copy and paste this to your "Open" box ) . The question, of course, is what effect this will have on gold production, expanded economical reserves and subsequently on gold prices. It will make a big difference to some of our high cost NA and RSA producers.

With all the talk of the Y2K going on today, I thought I would share something that I was told a few days ago. One of my old college buddies is in the Information systems consulting field. A bunch of us got together recently for dinner to reminisce as well as find out what each other is doing. We got on the topic of Y2K and he told us about a Y2K issue that I would never have thought of. Normally you think it simply will affect your computer and it's systems, credit cards etc...

However, he told us that in the Year 2000, the Jeep Cherokee will not start. There is some sort of a date chip within the car's computer that will become 1900 in the year 2000. It has to do with maintenance and basically the car will think that it hasn't been serviced for over 100 years and this is a dangerous situation. Therefore the car will not start.

Personally, I think he had to many beers. But if someone out there works for Chrysler?, let me know if this is bunch of hooey or not. Thanks!

Sorry to get of the PM subject, but I have to know!

I am extremely interested to get more detail on your first-hand knowledge of major telcos' efforts to resolve Y2K issues. Please e-mail t0c2365@yahoo.com at your earliest convenience. Thanks.

WetGold: I grant you that many companies are addressing their Y2K problems. I work with some of them. The issue is whether or not they will finish on time and do it accurately. Name one of those large caps you mentioned that's already Y2K compliant and maybe I'll feel a little better. Come on! Just one! I don't thjnk that is too much to ask in Feb 98. Then name one large bank that is already Y2K compliant. I don't believe this bull that everyone ( or even most everyone ) is going to magically be ready for Y2K testing come the beginning of 1999. I've been in the coding trenches for 25+ years. I know how these things work. Buy silver ( after the correction ) and gold!

The problem we are facing is that our economies and infrastructures have developed in such a way as to develop a symbiosis with their information systems. There is a dependency there for the 'first world' which is truly difficult to see if one is in the midst of it all. Go camping for a month in a desert or mountain area and then return. You will see what you did not see before: that these systems are everywhere. They are the mortar of our collective enterprise. When they do not work we will experience a great convulsive shift just like an earthquake. The house may yet stand, but no one will want to return to its confines. Certainly a great rebuilding must occure after this. I sense that governments will be begged to enforce order and bring order to the public which will be in shock followed by confusion and anger. The life styles of comfort and abundance will be replaced by difficulty and scarcity.

Not one is ready ( from my knowledge ) today.

However, knowing your background YOU KNOW that a programmer never feels that his code is READY. You know programmers ( i'm sure ) that have gone back years later ( in their spare time - ha! ) into code to fix something that is 'bugging" ( sic ) them.

OVERALL -- I agree that they are not ready.

For me - I don't care ( at least not now ) since I am heavily invested into physicals and the paper I have will be in the same boat as others with paper. SO -- I'm covered.

Congratulations to all you silver bulls!

Gold stocks acting very well. XAU made up all of yesterday's loss although bullion only retraced some 60% of its drop. Looks like I won't be able to buy more gold mutuals at firesale prices after all. As I have said before, it now is our turn to buy the dips. Gold and gold stocks headed MUCH higher, but patience and a strong stomach to survive repeated steep reactions will be required.

According to the 1996 stockholder's report they had 7.989 million ounces of silver bullion in the year ending 12/31/96 and 8.976 million ending 12/31/95. I don't have this year's report yet. IMHO

Straddler: I can't add anything to your automobile story but I did read this just last year about a bio medical company. They had to recall brand new defillibrators from hospitals for the very thing you mentioned. Logic that runs in the embedded chips within the defib unit shut it down automatically if it's last maintenance exceeds a certain time period. The logic in these embedded chips worked only with 2-digit dates and the 2000 rollover would look like the unit had not been maintained in 100 years, thus shutting it down. And this happened in 1997 with brand new units!

Do you remember the name of the manufacturer of this "Biomedical" equipment ??? Depending on the vendor its important to understand if this chip was "off-the-shelf" or internally burned. This may lead toward similar problems on other product lines of the "alleged" chip manufacturer.

TIA

The most significant Y2K problems are NOT in the telephony switching equipment. Since these systems do not rely heavily on the age of historical data, you could shut the entire U.S. phone system down for a day or so, reset all of the dates back five years, and start-up again. Voila. You have another five years to fix the problem. ( From a Year 2000 viewpoint, air traffic controls systems, and most manufacturing systems are similiar. )

The toughest problems are in the BUSINESS systems. Financial systems must be able to calculate dates ( and ages ) to control inventory, contracts, checks, bills, invoices.... In January 2000, these systems will not be able to provide financial reports that tell how much money the company has spent, received, or even if the company is making a profit.

Based on experience, I don't think we'll have major problems making telephone calls in January 2000.

By the way, my current client that wants to delay all of the Year 2000 issues until 1999 is one of the largest communications companies.

I will be in Orlando - Ft Myers and Key Largo the 18th to the 26th of this month. If there are any Kitcoites in these areas, I would love to have coffee with you, let me know.

Bjack@cdsnet.net

WetGold: I'm outta time at the moment. Heading back to slaying Y2K dragons and getting my code READY ( smile thingy ) . I'll do my best to find the original source of that story and post something this evening, say around 10pm KT ( Kitco Time ) . See ya.

http://biz.yahoo.com/finance/980204/belgium_ga_1.html

Yahoo story at 14:11 post has a huge glaring error. The quote in the story re CPM data states "According to New York consulting firm CPM Group, the market has been in a deficit since 1990, with a 168,000 ounce
deficit projected for 1997."

It should read 168 MILLION ounce deficit, not 168,000. And roughly the same projected for 1998, perhaps a bit closer to 130,000,000.

Armstrong has used up his ammo and is pissing into the wind. It's all going to land back on him, as he is CRUSHED along with his pals at Merril Lynch, as many of us have been predicitng he would be. Whine on Armstrong...or join the winning team!

To your question, I must reply that ( 1 ) you might get a better answer at www.euy2k.com and ( 2 ) personally, I don't see it happening. The deregulation is not producing parallel sets of transmission lines or substations as yet, and even if that was the intent, it would take much more time to implement than the time remaining. The existing infrastructure was created over decades.

Deregulation has more to do with allowing other companies to buy power on the cheap from whoever, reselling it to consumers at a reduced cost compared with the 'monopoly' utility, using the existing lines and alternate measuring hardware. It does not appear to be a wholesale redefinition of the transmission system, just renting out to other companies.

For those who doubt the equities markets remain "irrationally exuberant," then they need only look at the performance of Cisco Systems ( a tech stock ) .

The company announces its profit beat street estimates by one mere penny and this little fact provokes a three dollar rise in stock price ( 62 to 65 ) .

This type of euphoria seems completely unsustainable. There definitely is a day of reckoning approaching and I believe it will be sooner than later.

Irrational exuberance in bonds and industrial equities...yet only
mild interest in PM's.

PM's remain the one investment sector ready to explode upward.

You've shown your hand and I now know you do not understand the telephony market and how government and customers ( local and global ) rely on this service INCLUDING the BUSINESS community.

Statement: "Since these systems do not rely heavily on the age of historical data, ..."

RESPONSE: False. Millions of $US are generated to supply historical data to telco customers and governemtn agencies.


Statement: ".. you could shut the entire U.S. phone system down for a day or so, ..."

RESPONSE: FCC requires that SS7 outages greater than 60 seconds ( changes from time to time ) must be reported within 1 hour to the FCC with reports to follow hours later.


Statement: "... reset all of the dates back five years, and start-up again. ..."

RESPONSE: Telephone switching ( just 1 ) has literally thousands of manufactured parts and thousands of hours of software from around the world to make a call. Reboot is a complex discussion ... many subsystems ...


Statement: "... From a Year 2000 viewpoint, air traffic controls systems, and most manufacturing systems are similiar..."

RESPONSE: You are joking ...


I'd love to further embelish but I am heading out for the evening.

bbl tonight

Your points are well taken, though I'm, not convinced that WB will have as much control as you think has does over market movement. the big players have ALWAYS played the little guy's for suckers, we can agree in that.

AS for me, my plan is to SLOWLY begin dollar cost averaging OUT of silver at $8.00 and above, and re-accumulating if we see dips back to $6.00 and below.

Trying to call a market top is just as risky to your long term bankroll as trying to call a bottom. As far as this conservative investor is concerned, risk reward ratios have been excellent with silver, but will certainly shift less positive as they they have in the past 2 days.

Meanwhile, like the very sharp folks who bought the DOW at 777 in 1980 and "held" through thick and thin, selling only when unprecedented P/E ratios and valuations ocurred,.... knowing they are not smart enough to perfectly time the market..... I see silver as a long term value play. and will buy/sell accordingly. I'll be partly out at $8.00 2/3 out at $10.00, and likely holding a core position for years.

I'll leave the futures and options to folks who are a lot smarter than I am and can afford to lose all their money. ( As RJ so succintly pointed out re Cherokee and other's Gold longs, and Puetz's S&P shorts...where IS Puetz these days anyway? I keep wondering how he can make money on those shorts in a rising market, it's a trick I want to learn... )

Rumors of silver's death, have been greatly exaggerated....

Having followed the silver industry closely the past several years, I really do not think there is another silver company that so accurately and insistently predicted a meteoric rise in silver at this particular time of the year ) .

I wonder whether they might have "influenced" WB's decision to make a significant move on silver. Certainly, I would imagine the gentleman or his associates ( who are known for doing amazing amounts of research into any potential investments ) must have held discussions with key industry figures before deciding to corner 20% of the Ag market.

Why would FSAGX be up 2.95% at 3:00 while FDPMX is only up 1.81%? Doesn't FDPMX hold silver investments?

Been watching CNBC all day - a ton of spin doctors trotted on about silver. I liked the one guy who said silver is rising because insiders have been front running Buffet's purchases for the last 6 months. Another guy recomended fading Buffet on this play. The talking head asked him to repeat that, then he summarized for him. Fading Buffet? That strategy isn't going to make anyone rich is it.

D.A. - do you trade bonds? I need a place to park money - another 20x would be nice. Also, my mail is flooded with nice calls directed to you. I've been forwarding your posts to friends since your pallidium calls. Maybe Kitco hasn't profitted much - but alot of friends and I are extremely greatfull. Thanks again.

Missing Link: FSAGX fell considerably more than FSPMX yesterday. So up moter today. But regardless of day to day fluctuations FSPMX will almost certainly outperform FSAGX in a real gold bull. The South African shares provide more leverage -- both up and down.

Here is a quote from the http://www.euy2k.com site. Full URL to his article is http://www.y2ktimebomb.com/PP/RC/rc9803.htm An interesting read.

"Very few of the suppliers I spoke with appeared to know anything about Year 2000 issues. I approached the control cabinet for a 13.8Kv recloser assembly made by a major transmission device OEM, and saw literally hundreds of microchips inside. I then looked at the fault monitoring device control rack and saw two digit century dates, and looked at the fault logging module and saw each of the seven days of the week represented. My heart sank. I approached the supplier representative, who had the audacity to tell me that the device didn't care what day it was, much less what century. I then pointed out the digital LCD date crystal, two century digits, and the calendar representation of day-of-week. He just shrugged his shoulders and said he didn't know anything about it, then scurried off in search of a potential customer rather than continue fielding my questions that were obviously making him feel uncomfortable."

Got into Stillwater Co. ( SWC ) at 20 1/4. Do you have a gut feeling for Platinum and Palladium? Surely it is as easy to corner these markets too.
I anticipate such cornering and I position accordingly.

We must thanl W. Buffet by email. ALL SILVER BULLS !!

Wall Street Journal has reported that a White House Steward ( whom they
named ) saw Monica and Slick in the private study of the White House
and afterward he went in and retrieved lipstick stained tissues.
This is important because it corroborates private meetings of
Lewinski and Clinton after April 1996 which Clinton denied having
in his sworn deposition. Also tends to corroborate Lewinski's
sexual relationship with Slick which he also denied under oath.

Slick perjured himself!

Isn't this year 2000 discussion off topic and arcane with minutia?....

I say REBOOT, Abort, Retry or Fail.....I bought a farm just in case.

Of course, given their tremendous performance this year, in retrospect, I would have been much smarter to pay more attention to those two metals.

My own "layman's sense" about these two metals is as follows:

I think the day Yeltsin dies ( and given his sad state of health, that day may not be too far off ) , those two metals will probably go through the roof. Uncertainty about Russian supplies seems to be the primary factor creating great upward price movement.

So, I suspect that your investment in Stillwater might pay off very handsomely indeed in the not too distant future.

I do not post often here because it is obvious that there are many who are far more informed than I. However, allow me to make an observation based on my own personal hard-bought experience.

A holder of silver since the early 80's, I originally bought on the reactionary bounce upward from $4.85 which reached $15.00 after the famous runup to $50.00 fueled ( only in part ) by the Hunts. With the collapse of the International Gold Bullion Exchange caused by the increase in silver prices, I again bought into a leveraged physical program at $9.00 to $10.00; what at the time looked to us unitiated as the new bottom. I held this position all the way down, thru margin calls, etc. and have held on through the whole bottom, complete with interest payments etc. Therefore, my experience has been in both bear and to a lesser extent bull markets.

It was never difficult to feel the difference between the two. In the bear market, every small and hopeful rise was a hard-earned and drawn-out affair fighting for every little price increase over a period of time. Then, the falls would always come suddenly and savagely. Limit down and more, without warning and at the slightest pretext. ( The reasons were always apparent to the analysts...although they never seemed to see the obvious until afterwards. ) In the bull market it was just the opposite. How long has it been since we saw a limit-up day in the metals? I don't even remember one during several wars, etc. But in 1979-80 they were common.

What do we have here? Every possible opinion has been chewed over for weeks on this forum, which concentrates those with interest in these matters in one convenient place. And how many of us were caught by surprise by Warren Wednesday? And by this I mean really caught, with metal ( or futures ) paid for with real money? in lieu of just trumpeting empty "calls" for a rise. We have seen that many missed the boat when the ship left port.

This market has a different feel to it. Sure, some are "calling" for a correction to $6.40 or $6.50. But even that would not be a collapse. I, for one, am finally starting to feel glad I held on.

Kuston my old nemesis. The kinder gentler LGB does not wish to rub it in, but remember a few months ago when you were ridiculing my heavy investment in my own company's shares/ Well, as of today, those hsares I bought for $14 in the summer, are now worth 70% + more than what I bought in. Also made a bundle on Globalstar stock fund, 83% gain in less than 8 months ) another of my 401 K options.

It's a nice gain considering that I have far more invested in LOR and GSTRF stock, than I even have in silver. We launch Globalstar tomorrow at 5:22 AM by the way. ( After which I will quickly dump most of my shares in both, following the upward blip that will occur after the announcement ) . If the launch postpones, as many of them do, I'll wait for the sucessful lauch and take my profits.

( Apologies to Gold forum folks....we use a lot of Gold in this rocket science Biz though! )

The all time high in the Dow is just above 8200 and it made quite a big run up over the last several weeks to come this close again to this historical number.

Even the NYSE composite index did extremely well lately, its futures reaching all time highs this week.

It could have been worse:

Date: Thu Jan 08 1998 21:33
Puetz ( bpuetz@holli.com ) ID#222167:
Thar she blows -- 9000 is history on the Hong Kong market. Another psycholigally important support level is broken. Tokyo below 14,000 is next. Then comes the big NYSE stock market crash. Stay tuned.

I believe FDPMX is nearly out of South Africa ( maybe 5% in SA stocks ) .

FDPMX is being hurt today, IMHO, by weakness in Meridian, Normandy, and

only small gains in Euro-Nevada and Franco-Nevada.

I suspect - and I may be wrong - that the FDPMX stock mix has been

radically revised in the last six months. This has greatly improved its standing amongst PM funds, from bad ( in 1997 ) to one of the best-performing in this calender year. This has had the odd result of changing its ranking amongst all 7000 or so significant mutual funds, from being in the bottom 20 ( as it was at times last year, on a YTD basis ) , to being one of the top-performing funds this year, YTD.

Thus it is with a low beta....

Some like it volatile.

I do have some concern that the repositioning of FDPMX is such that it will not accelerate as rapidly in a hysterical gold bull as it would have with the 1997 mix. But of course I do not know.

At any rate, I am glad it is doing better. And I pray for George Dolomky ( spelling uncertain ) every day. Well, not _every_ day.

Where has he gone? I'm still trying to figure out how to make money on S&P puts in strongly rising market as Puetz has told us he is doing..along with his readers.

My only regrets re the DOW is that I pulled all my money out in August, and parked it in MMF, failing to average any back in. However, I've made excellent gains in my own company's stock options, 75% average over less than 8 months, so I won't complain since it represents more than half my total 401K.

Now do you see anotehr "buy" opportuinity coming in the DOW? My heroand mentor, Bob Brinker, had stated that anything below 7400 would be a full blown buy signal. He made this statement at the HEIGHT of negative Asian crises sentiment, a gutsy call, and a good one, as so many of his calls have been over the years, on both the buy and sell side. The guy has the best overall record of any analyst I know of. The precise inverted opoosite of a "Puetz" if you will.

APH...good call..you recently posted that silver would be above $7 dollars..commentator on CNBC said this afternoon that silver could reach between $8 and $10...also that a bottom had been put in on gold.

30 year bond at 5.861%. Volume on NYSE 700 million shares. Also heavy volume on NASDAQ with 822 million shares. The brokers are making money.

I read in the Wall Street Journal that Warren Buffets purchase of silver amounts to approximately 20% of world production. For Mr. Buffet, this $850,000,000 position would represents only a segment of what would be a 5% portfolio position in precious metals as a hedge against ( unknown perils? ) such as currency devaluation.

I suppose Mr. Buffet was fortunate to have had the forsight to acquire this position when he did. If he had decided that a 25% position in leu of 5% would be even more prudent, he would have had to buy the entire world production and I remind you that this represent only one mutual fund ( I assume this wasnt entirely a personal aquisition ) .

That begins to reveal to me the enormous size of this potential demand for metals as a 5% safe haven for every prudent investors portfolio. Obviously, a 5% PM position is not a common practice, or the demand would support or drive much higher prices. In fact, I doubt that there is enough metal in the world to provide a 5% Buffer for all accumulated portfolios at todays prices. However... if equities should come down in value ... and precious metals go up in value ... then the possibility of a 5% position could become increasingly attainable.

SSC closing up 38% in ONE DAY!!! Best mining share move in a long time. Bullish for the metal, no?

Like you I've been following APH's call's closely. So far he has been spot on with the cycle calls, perhaps more accurate than anyone on the forum. APH now constitutes what I consider part of a brilliant triad of analyst/traders consisting of himself, Realistic, and DA.

All three of those gentleman have put the Johhny come lately's, naysayers, and so called "experts" here to shame in the past few months with their take on the silver market. I've been with them all the way, bought all my physical in July, and not selling yet. I find their contributions to be perhaps the most valuable on this forum.

well it was a no brainer,just called my broker margin on front month raised as of now 3105,int.2300. maint. and I personally don't think it's going to stop there,another few days and the small guys will be locked out.Thinking about going long tonight anyway,was 702,703,maybe put a 20 pt stop,h,m thats alot of june gold calls though

Andi Spicer

Mining and resources editor

Davos, Switzerland Thabo Mbeki, the deputy president, said this week he was confident that central bankers had reaffirmed gold as a reserve asset.

Speaking at the World Economic Forum, Mbeki said: "There is clearly no desire to move away from gold as part of central bank reserves. The new
European Central Bank will hold some of its reserves in gold,

and there has been no loss of confidence in the metal's basis value."



Criticism of the banks and the secret manner in which they conduct their gold selling and leasing activities has dominated the talks.

http://www.inc.co.za/online/news1/business/headlines/p15.html

Here are the latest Comex inventory figures released after trading today:

Gold: Fell 129 troy ounces to 445,107

Silver: Unchanged at 103,021,805 troy ounces

Recall a Canadian Mfund buying 1 Mln oz Gold back last Fall. This represented 5% of their portfolio. It seems there has been quite alot of activity on the part of some smart money to quietly move some of their money into PMs as a hedge. Very possible that Buffett has completed his gold and platinum purchases as well prior to this announcement.

The worm has turned as there is no other name so widely connected with smart investing as Warren Buffet. I can imagine that most thoughful people are thinking he also has bought into gold in a big way.

I called my PM deal and he said 1,000 oz silver bars were flying out the door like bats out of a cave at sun set. This has impacted American Eagle ( Ag ) ask/bid prices alot as he said people just wanted big, heavy bars. He now has Eagles Bid: spot+$0.50, Ask: spot+$0.70. I asked him when Bid would return to normal and he said if silver stayed up for a month or so.

So it looks like there are already ALOT of followers blitzing the retail markets right now.

Japanese waking up soon,4 strong days for the yen,I'm looking for some more movement up in the spot!

I checked out the 15 minute time delayed option and they are not currently available but thanks for taking the time.

I don't know where he is... let's hope he is "learning".

The astonishing bull market in the North American equities has been extremely difficult to derail given the worldwide events of the last few months and we have to respect it.

At the same time, we can also safely realize that the gains of the past couple of years are unlikely to repeat so that leaves us with some more numerous corrections and sideway movements than what we have been used to in the past 2 years.

A quick correction to the low 7000 would indeed become a good bet agaisnt the lows of the late October.

I hope gold skyrockets tomorrow. Unfortunately, my mind says a correction down may be in order. Until the stock market hits a panic down, China effectively devalues it's paper somehow, Japan implodes or sells all it's treasuries I see good downside risk. I can no more predict this market than fly. What I can do is wait for the downside risk to be minimal i.e.,gold at 280-285, or do as I have done-stake myself to a percentage position in metals,hold cash and wait for events to unfold. If I need more risk I can always jump back in the market and pray one of the above does not occur and not sleep at night. Futures to be bought at 280-285 or 330-340. Right now it could go either way,I'll pass.IMHO Any thoughts-please! Tom

I've had a small investment in silver since it was 4.40 an ounce. Though I have confidence in silver, I don't know if it has support and stability above 7.20. What do you think? Does silver have a shot above $7 or $8 per ounce? Being realistic, I'd have to say there would be too much profit taking and silver could never hold those levels. Also, I looked and saw that Kitco's closing spot on Silver was 7.24? That can't be right can it, CNBC just quoted it at 7.02. Thanks

I have "shown my hand"? Judging from your criticism of me and others here today, heres some advice:

Throw out those polyester clothes, trade in your 1978 Ford LTD on a new convertible, find a nice woman, and get a life! With an attitude like that, you MUST be a short little nerd that still owns a sliderule. So what if companies have to report network problems to the FCC?

Y2KBug__A: Right on, dude! I didnt mean to imply that there werent problems other than business systems. Just that there will be some easy ( but temporary ) fixes to some of the problems.

miles_A; please email me at wperry@hmfservco.com if you would like to continue our conversation.

delayed quotes are only availabile when the markets in NA are open.

You are'nt just a silver bull--you're a silver pitbull. Congrats.

Contrary to the rumor I did not throw pie in Bill Gates face altho I would have liked to. He forces you to upgrade your email program with them which requires you to have a 16 RAM memory which forces you to buy a new computer ( all of this kept me off of Kitco ) THEN his new email software gives you the finger everytime you get mail ( they have a icon that rises and its just like being flipped off ) . I hope he is short silver!

If you recall, you said " And how many of us were caught by surprise by Warren Wednesday? And by this I mean really caught, with metal ( or futures ) paid for with real money? in lieu of just trumpeting empty "calls" for a rise. We have seen that many missed the boat when the ship
left port."
I'll freely admit I was entirely suprised and I'm pessimistic even now fearing that the price will bottom out again. But emotions are my worst investment enemies in buying metals so I try to ignore them. Last fall when I bought a 10 year supply of sterling casting grain at between $4.30 and $4.85 I was confident that the price would go back up to the $5.50 range like it was during the 94-95 period. I never would have guessed that silver would have hit $7.00 or I would have bought those worthless call options last summer. I think now the boat with silver this high is entirely a different one than last fall's boat.
I think the lesson to be learned here is that prices are still partially a function of chaotic factors, that the metal's behaviour one time period doens't necessarily predict behaviour the next and we just can't read the future. IMHO

PH in LA,16:17. Can't resist concurring with your sentiments. I have been in the PMs since the 70s. Made some, lost a lot along the way. But have never lost the faith. Am ahead now; having been in silver since the low $4 range. In truth, this silver market is beginning to feel a little like the old days. Even gold beginning to look better. To me, gold is long term physical core holding. Silver is where the action is and is going to be near term. But beware: it can jump up and bite you. Silver $25 -$40 by 2001. Gold - who knows? $600, $1000, $2000 same time frame. Depends on the dollar, inflation, WAR, social and economic chaos - you pick. Paper's days are numbered. Can you believe hamburgers were EVER 25 cents? BIG ones.

I read the url as:
( bog ) Board of Governors, ( frb ) Federal Reserve Bank, federal, United States....
A list of marginable OTC stocks ( WORLD ) . Are Fed Reserves bing held in stocks? Is the Fed leveraging their reserves? !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Would very much appreciate your read of this. Many thanks.


http://www.bog.frb.fed.us/boarddocs/press/general/1997/19970728/OTC0797.ASC

http://www.bog.frb.fed.us/boarddocs/press/general/1997/19970428/OTC.ASC

I read the url as:
( bog ) Board of Governors, ( frb ) Federal Reserve Bank, federal, United States....
A list of marginable OTC stocks ( WORLD ) . Are Fed Reserves bing held in stocks? Is the Fed leveraging their reserves? !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Would very much appreciate your read of this. Many thanks.


http://www.bog.frb.fed.us/boarddocs/press/general/1997/19970728/OTC0797.ASC

http://www.bog.frb.fed.us/boarddocs/press/general/1997/19970428/OTC.ASC

Thanks for the recognition. This leg of the March Silver advance should top no later then mid next week between 7.65 and 7.80. Sell your position and or short any rally above 7.50.

.

I can't see the POC going anywhere soon. Aside from the inventory overhang, there is also a shortage of refining capacity. This does'nt bode too well for AU since copper is supposed to be a great inflation predictor. I was short copper last summer got stopped out a couple times with close stops & gave up. Right now I'm short a copper stock WTC T. It has gone from 4 to over 8 in a few weeks strictly from promotions. Unfortunately it's thinly traded & is being kept artificially high because an investment house wants to do a financing.
BTW, nice of you to keep Puetz's record in front of this forum.

BUT WE DESPERATELY NEED THAT IMF FUNDING!

http://biz.yahoo.com/finance/980204/rubin_says_1.html

I posted, here a few days ago after silver went from 585 to 605 in a heartbeat,I called it back for one last chance,even said please,it didn't even look back,it said you had your chance now you must share me with everyone else.Bottom line is it is cheaper and easier take a lady out when nobody else wants to.

I am not a big fan of Hackworth but this piece has a lot of truth in it.
It is circulating through the military e-mail like crazy. I have known Hendrix since he was a Lieutenant Colonel. He is one of the finest most widely respected warriors America has ever produced. He is brilliant, quiet, tough and absolutely honest. It is unprecedented for one of our top units to need 180 day to get ready for combat. This is big trouble for America and big trouble for Clinton. I think it is treasonous incompetence to let a force of this importance sink to this level. Clinton cannot get out of this just by firing Hendrix. This is vastly more important than lies, sex, or suborning perjury.

DEFENDING AMERICA
Colonel David Hackworth, USA, Retired

"War is an ugly thing but not the ugliest of things; the decayed and
degraded state of moral and patriotic feelings which thinks that nothing is
worth war is much worse. A man who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a
miserable creature and has no chance of
being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than
himself." - John Stuart Mill
**************************************************************
RARE ACT OF MORAL COURAGE ( 28 Jan 98 )

"The V Corps Commander, Lt. Gen. John W. Hendrix, has blown the whistle on his own 41,000 man outfit saying it needs 180 days to become battle-ready," says a Pentagon source.

Wait a minute! Hendrix commands one of the U.S. Army's best units which is currently deployed on a red hot mission in Bosnia and is the first to go if trouble strikes anywhere else in Europe, Africa and South West Asia and it ain't ready?

V Corps-whose 1st Armored Division and 1st Mechanized Division whipped Saddam Hussein's Army in less than 100 hours-is supposed to be fit to fight anyplace, anytime, able to roll in a few hours notice.

Brave General Hendrix has told it like it is. A tank leader in Hendrix's
outfit says "We're broken. We have been forced to do too much with too
little without clear focus for too long."

Only a few months ago V Corps reported, "We're best in the West," but that was under General John Abrams, who's now back in the states being groomed for four stars.

His successor, General Hendrix, after a couple months in the saddle, is
saying his active duty corps which costs the taxpayer $207 million a year
needs as much time to be combat ready as the Pentagon says a National Guard division needs.

Only a Congressional investigation will reveal when the war fighting skills
of proud combat units in Germany slipped to those of weekend warriors.

These units have been the main ground striking force in Europe for almost 50 years. Their readiness did not suddenly plummet from perfect to horrible in the last six months.

The real issue here that needs immediate investigation is have politically
correct senior leaders let combat readiness decline while they were telling
Congress their units were ready!

It's been a long time, too, since a senior officer such as Hendrix has had
the moral courage to sound off. In my memory only four Army generals since the Korean War have fallen on their swords and put honor over career to tell the truth in matters affecting national security.

They are James Gavin, Henry Emerson, Harold Moore and John Singlaub. All were given the boot. All are in my personal hall of fame.

And now Hendrix. He skippers one of the four fighting corps in the U.S.
Army, and he's saying: Our military machine is broken.

For two years I've been reporting in this space what your kids have been
telling me: Our military aircraft are crashing in record numbers, tanks are
falling apart like 1930s Grapes of Wrath trucks, combat units are
understrength and not trained for war and ships are sailing with crews that
are overworked and understaffed.

Any grunt or junior leader-off the record, of course-from a green
replacement to a navy lieutenant to an Army, or Air Force captain will tell
you that operational readiness stinks.

Even the mainline media are reporting the story. They're saying things have not been worse since the dark, grim days after Vietnam when our military machine was broken and couldn't even execute a raid to snatch the Iranian hostages without turning it into a bloody disaster.

But still the high brass in the Pentagon and their taxpayer- funded lying
spokesmen are insisting all is well. Sadly, even General Henry Shelton,
chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has bought into this party line.

U.S. News and World Report recently lashed the Pentagon about their sad readiness condition. Shelton responded by saying our forces are good-to-go and "the Pentagon's carefully monitored readiness
statistics do not indicate serious degradations in the force."

I could expect such a snow job from someone like Max Taylor, who brought us Vietnam, or Colin Powell, who after Desert Storm didn't bring us the promised snake's head or John Shalikashvili, who brought us our military's current meltdown. But not from a great, straight-shooting warrior such as Green Beret Shelton.

A message to Henry Shelton: Don't believe your briefers or the puffed up
readiness reports. Take off on a recon by yourself and spend a week each on a fighting ship, with a grunt platoon, a fighter squadron and a maintenance unit.

Talk to the Joes and Janes and get the real word. They are the truth.

The Swiss Franc moved up .96% today
The U.S. Dollar moved dn .73% today

In other words ( as I understand this ) the U.S Dollar lost 1.69% against the Swiss Franc making ( safe haven ) PM more attractive.


Also the Yen moved up 1.94% making ( safe haven ) US T-Bills less attractive.

Dow/Gold Ratio = 27.18

Point taken!!! Risk now is stil minimal. Thanks I needed that. Tom

March Silver currently 6.99 = about 6.95 US Spot.

Take care...Barb

XAU/Spot Ratio = .251

Gold/Silver Ratio = 41.26

I have a fair amount of physical silver, bars , eagles, and coins. I would like to know how to get best price if I decide to sale. My coin dealer says 50cents less than spot on englehard bars, surely Ican do better than that? Any suggestions appreciated.

With various sources showing spot silver at 7.20-7.30 silver is poised to definitively break through the 7.00 level in the futures tommorrow. This is the signal that even committed shorts like Princeton Economic's Armstrong have admitted they will have to cover.

It is possible Berkshire will be named in a lawsuit tomorrow in an attempt to stave off armageddon for the shorts. I suspect the market will not react meaningfully to such a manuvre. But desperate men will do desperate things...

From a big, big, picture point of view the physical scene in London is "troubling". If, in fact, there are massive stock piles available out there as RJ and others have alleged for some time now then why are
lease rates so high?

I don't care if you worship the stuff, at 30% lease rates it seems to be a no brainer to loan the stuff out and get more back at the end of the month.

Unless there is no stuff to loan out.

Or the precieved "credit risk" ( the ability to repay the loan in kind ) is very high.

Then there is good ol Warren. I find it particularly unerving that virtually the entire drawdown of COMEX stock piles can be attributed to his purchase program. As others have pointed out here, if you are buying silver for storage in London, then why not simply simply buy it in London from some of those warehouses "so full that they have no available space"???

I look at the factual data available at this time and I am starting to think that there are no stockpiles out there.

At all....

So we may be standing on the brink of a historical moment in the history of the markets. Unless someone finds that warehouse on the docks of London soon even a price spike similar to what happened when the Hunts tried to corner the markets cannot necessarily be ruled out.

Those audacious, "best case" targets of 9, 10, or even 15 may be a tad to low.

The point is that the data is pointing to a market that could be desperately dangerous to underestimate - especially on the short side...

Midwest$ and those worried about the stability of Silver above $8.00.

Please go read the "800 lb. Gorilla" article at WWW.golden-eagle.com for Ted Butler's analysis. If this guy is right, we are all in for quite a ride.

BTW, don't we all sort of miss Vronsky's URLs from time to time?

to do ? I don't remember voting for anyone on the IMF.

Buying cheap options on gold futures is a low cost way for a goldbug with only a few bucks to get in the game. By now I realize most of you Kitkoites that post are experienced high rollers with deep pockets, but Ill bet there are many lurkers with limited funds that have caught goldbug fever from you. A gold call for $30 premium + $35 round-turn commission for a chance at high percentage gains is possible. If they bought a call to open a position, the price they paid for it, $65 in this case, is all they could lose. For me it has been like buying lottery tickets. Mostly losing tickets with a few small wins. I keep playing for the big win. I think my chances are much better with options than with lottery tickets. I think most people have enough sense to not risk all of their rent money on lottery tickets or options.

The Federal Reserve has the legal authority to regulate the banks who loan money on stocks. It sets the margin requirements based upon risk standards as it views them. I think the document is just to let individual banks know which stocks are marginable.

Kitkoites = Kitcoites

That was Trimark Fund. They bought @ around 320,so it hurt there recent performance a little. They are very smart managers. I sold their funds when they started up in the early 80,s ( MF sales ) . If I had kept my original investments in them I'd be spending my winters playing golf somewhere warm. They are the biggest in Canada & I'm pretty sure that they are still #1 over 10 yrs.

Date: Wed Feb 04 1998 18:13
PH in LA ( Silver: Largest Naked Short Position ever in the World's History! ) ID#225408:

Yes, ph I for one definitely miss the automatic url's that took us directly to the fine timely articles on Vronsky's site.

Barb Hughes et all:

Would you mind elucidating the phenomenon of backwardation for some of the slower among us? If a buyer could buy silver in a forward month for under spot, what would prevent him from buying at the lower forward month and at the same time selling in the spot market, thereby locking in a certain profit?

Also, what is the actual technical effect of the high lease interest rates we currently see in the silver market?

The sceptics are out in large numbers. Most believe the move in the PM's
is not real. This is really a rare opportunity to make alot of money. Deflation is still an issue. Full employment and companies bidding for help.
When can you remember low employment and no inflation. Commodities at a record low and you can't give it away. This is a short lived prophecy that sooner than later will be resolved to the upside in a very big way. The thunder and fury from gold when it moves will be quite a time to remember. These will be interesting times and rare investment opportunity.

now I need to get to 7-11 to get a few tickets because the lines are out the door !

In the past I hace opined that one of the big problems with the PM markets is that virtually all the big money was on the short side. Well, looks like that new era paradigm is changing rapidly. Now a more even playing field between shorts and longs. The times, they are a changin!

The reason for so many typos in our posts can now be confirmed. They are being inserted by the Kitco webmaster's manipulation of this forum. In my last post I specifically wrote ( b ) old-eagle.com and it appeared as ( b ) olden-eagle ( apologies for my typos, too ) . I only mention this so that some among us be not confused.

Until of course the POWERFUL THUNDER of Gold's power is heard.
"They" are really up against it. ... I don't believe the issue of congress not fully approving the 18 Billion $ promised to the IMF has been
sufficiently discussed here, I'm of the view that it is of great importance
to keep "their" paper game going, one can can see this by the almost panicked and voluminous statements made hourly "assuring" the
markets that said IMF funding is a done deal?

A. Goose, Global WEF Leaders Db complete ( Hurrah! ) ...

Surprises: 1 ) Number of "Gold Leaders" all of whom 'reside'
on ONE Continent--no GOLD companies/corps from ANYWHERE else ( except through ownership links, of course ) .
Following the trail to Londontown...

THE 800 POUND
GORILLA

I really hadn't planned on writing another gold/silver lease scam piece for awhile, but I
happened to read Martin Armstrong's article of 1/28/98, and I got the feeling he was
taking issue with my contention that the silver lease con was over, or that it ever existed. If
you haven't read his piece ( located at the bottom of this article ) , please do so, because it
is an extremely important statement on the current predicament that the large industrial
silver users and derivatives shorts face. It very clearly telegraphs the exit strategy planned
by the big users/shorts. That planned strategy is the single biggest threat to the workings
of the free market in recent history.

Armstrong's agenda is clear - the only hope for the big users/shorts in silver is for the
government, any government, to come in and confiscate all available physical silver and
arbitrarily terminate all paper contracts of silver. They are obviously disturbed
by the prospect of resolution by the forces of the free market. If you
were in their shoes, you would also be disturbed. For the sake of the markets, let's hope
they don't succeed in their exit plans.

In classic double-speak, Armstrong rants about the upward manipulation in silver, while
cleverly ignoring that at $6/oz, silver is cheap. What's also ignored is that whatever
amounts of silver the buyers may own, either in physical or paper contract form, the
sellers of that silver were not coerced into those transactions. Now, it is clear that the
sellers are having second thoughts. Yes, there has been a manipulation in silver, but it
has not been of the upside variety. The real manipulation has been the fifteen year
downward rigging of silver prices through the leasing scam and the 800 pound gorilla in
the room that everybody is doing their best to ignore and speak around. But the gorilla is
getting tired of sitting still and is starting to throw his weight around. He will be ignored no
more. You see, the gorilla is the largest naked short position the
world has ever seen, and its resolution is going to be a monster.
Funny, Armstrong didn't mention that.

You might want to get out a pencil and paper, or calculator, while I attempt to validate
what is a pretty strong statement, that silver has the largest naked short position ever
witnessed in the world's history. Don't worry, this will be simple math, as I'm no rocket
scientist. The latest available data from the COMEX ( Jan 29 ) , indicates a total open
interest in futures and call options ( the two classes of contracts that can result in the
ultimate liability of having to deliver physical silver ) of over 170,000 contracts. Convert
that into ounces by multiplying by 5,000 ounces ( the contract unit of trade ) , and you'll
come up with 850 million ounces. That's the total amount held long and held short on the
COMEX. ( Of course, there is an unlisted derivative and lease market, which could bring
the total real short position to 2 or 3 times the listed exposure, but since the Central
Banks or the bullion banks don't disclose their real books, let's stick with the published
statistics. ) Against that 850 million ounces, now measure available total inventories and
world production. Even if you assume all visible inventories ( around 100-200 million
ounces ) and total world production ( around 500 million ounces ) were somehow available
to the COMEX shorts ( admittedly ridiculous as the inventories are owned by someone
not necessarily the shorts and world production can't even satisfy world consumption, so
by axiom isn't available to the shorts ) , there is no way the shorts could get their hands on
anywhere near enough material to cover their potential obligations. Are you starting to get
an idea of the dimensions of the silver short position? We're not quite done yet, because
if this were the normal configuration of open ( short ) interest to inventory and world
production in all, or other, commodities, my claim of biggest ever short position would be
bogus.

So take out the newspaper again, and test me by going through the same exercise with
other commodities. Lets do two or three together, and then Ill challenge you to prove me
wrong by finding any commodity that even comes close to the silver short to
inventory/production ratio. Let's start with corn. Total open interest in corn futures and call
options is 540,000 contracts, or 2.7 billion bushels. Forget inventories and world
production, US production alone runs 9 billion bushels. How about oil? Total open
interest for futures and call options runs a whopping 715,000 contracts, but that translates
into 715 million barrels of oil, or only about 10-15 days of world production. Gold has a
combined futures and call option open interest of 435,000 contracts on the COMEX,
which translates into 43.5 million ounces or more than 50% of world production, but that's
a very small fraction compared to known stocks. ( I'm aware of the large off exchange and
lease exposure in gold, but remember we are only comparing known statistics ) . No, silver
is in a class by itself for having such a lopsided short position to real stuff ratio, and has
for the past fifteen years. And don't think that this skewered ratio exists only in
comparison to other commodities. While in extreme cases an individual stock may sport
a short position equal to 10 or 15% of shares outstanding, the total short position for all
stocks runs something like a half of 1% compared to all shares outstanding.

The point of all this is not just to demonstrate that when it comes to the short position,
silver is off the charts when compared to anything else, but to stimulate your thinking as to
what this means. What it means to me is that we have the bizarre
situation where the size of the derivatives position of silver
towers over the size of the real market. In silver, not only does the tail wag
the dog, the tail is larger than the dog! How can that be? How can a derivative market be
larger than the host market from which it is derived? Now here comes the tricky part. If the
paper market in silver is much bigger than the physical market, guess which market
determines the price? As you answer that question, remember that the
paper market setting the price ( not discovering, but dictating ) is
against every principal of commodity law. Forget commodity law, how
about common sense? It is impossible to have a short position larger than what exists or
could be produced, yet that's the condition in the silver market. And if someone sold short
more of something than existed, don't you think that would have a price-depressive
influence?

To those who would say, so what - there are just as many longs as shorts ( I have gotten
that response ) , please consider this; all it takes for a long to complete his contract
obligation ( aside from selling out ) is to fill out a check. A short ( who doesn't buy back )
must round up and deliver material that doesn't appear to be available. Besides, the
longs aren't the ones wailing.

Now do you have a sense of the real problem in silver? Now do you understand the
screams of alarm at $6 silver, and the lawsuits and the cries for government intervention?
After crushing this market for 15 years with massive paper shorts, the deficit balancing
supplies from the lease market have dried up, leaving only a literal paper tiger. The only
question is whether the government says to hell with the free market and bails out the big
users/shorts, and rewards them for manipulating the silver market for 15 years with their
massive and uneconomic short positions by mandating an artificial settlement. For the
sake of free markets, let's pray they don't.


Ted Butler

1 February 1998

This quote from ealier today, re-inforces the theory of tight supply and inability of shorts to deliver...WB will make a "modest fee" as they scramble to provide the promised physical...

"Buffet said he had already taken delivery of 87.5 million ounces of silver and had contracted for a further 42.2 million
ounces for delivery at various dates until March 6, but would would be willing to defer delivery for a reasonable period
on payment of a ``modest fee'' if any seller should have trouble making delivery."

Consider, can they all buy silver?

The most important thing to observe is that Mr. Buffett did NOT use any form of paper to represent his silver. No options on silver, no futures, no options on silver futures, no silver mining stocks, no leased silver deals from mining stocks and no MARGIN! Most of the large buyers of metals are buying the physical, outright. Mr. Buffett had Berkshire

Hathaway purchase silver as part of its long term economic investment outlook. Not to be confused with a leveraged, quick profits bet. Understand, that Berkshire plays within the world paper economy parameters, they are not looking for a currency replacement. What is not seen, are the personal holdings of Mr. Buffett, Mr. Soros and

countless other world wealthy. In those accounts you will indeed find silver, but also, much more gold!

Note, that he was buying thru much of last year. So were a number of others. The one common thought from them all is that, the real wealth will be held in PHYSICAL form!

you may also follow in the footsteps of giants

Sadly, IMHO you're likely right about somebody suing Buffet's company over its silver buy. One would think that grownups would take responsibility for their own actions but they apparantly don't these days. I hope that if they sue him he countersues and destroys them.

Oh, well, got turn off Kitco and the Kitcoites to go to my Wednesday ballroom dancing lessons lest my wife accuse me of Kitcoitus.

He feels some professionals were privy to Buffett's purchase.

"We believe that Mr. Buffett was perhaps forced to make his premature
announcement due to increased surveillance in London and erratic price behavior in silver."

Yer site anyway....eh....but I'm still workin on that self-evaluation anyhoo.....not a pretty-picture ...eh!....EB: Does anything work correctly in California as my e-mails keep bouncin back into me face ( SLAP,I needed that! ) ....Guess I'll just keep the GD ( Gosh Darn ( Bart ) charts ta me lonesome ( yer lose---my gain ) .....
Thiessen ( anyone ever heard of em? ) gives a major speech tomorrow and wonder if he'll put his BIG foot in his mouth like he did two weeks ago ( duh ) ....and send the poor loonie crashin again.....but ain't shootin yerself in the foot a national past time in the 'Great white North'??--A question to rational ( ? ) humans is: ain't 33% of a total Real estate sale a little ( ?? ) excessive for the gov'ment ta keep till the yfigure ya don't owe ( har har ) em any more....and ain't it TYPICAL of here that they ( Revenue Canada ) don't have the forms you NEED to fill out to try and get yer money back....The IRS are blood sukers too but at least they have the necessary forms......Go team gold!! and all politcians are worthless trash ( can I say that word? ) ....Good night Chet----good night David~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

GFD:

Amen!

You write "Unless someone finds that warehouse on the docks of London soon even a price spike similar to what happened when the Hunts tried to corner the markets cannot necessarily be ruled out."

Indeed! I was speaking with the trader at Refined Investments, Inc ( Wilmington Trust Company ) yesterday after reading the "800-lb Gorilla" article already cited and I, in the euphoria of the moment, mentioned that a silver price even in the 100's of $$ would not be impossible. He didn't bat an eye, agreeing with me.

Does anyone else worry about some kind of government takeover of the market, and nationalization of existing supplies? After all, what other possible solution is there to resolve the alleged huge naked short position which cannot even remotely be accomodated within the existing market mechanism?

NEW YORK ( CNNfn ) - Although the market outlook
for gold has been affected by a number of factors in
1997 and into 1998, Jacques Luben, executive director
of the Platinum Guild International, says that none of
these factors will work against silver.
Here is a transcript of his conversation with CNNfn
anchor Deborah Marchini on "Before Hours".
DEBORAH MARCHINI: I know you represent
the metals industry to a certain extent. Tell me, if you
can, what's going on with Warren Buffett taking up 20
percent of the world's silver.
JACQUES LUBEN: Well, it actually makes a lot
of sense. If you look at the way that he would want to
balance his portfolio, he's obviously made a lot of
money in financial assets. And the fate of the stock
market, in large part, depends on inflation being low.
So, here you have a situation where you could buy
silver at a relatively cheap price -- which he started
doing last year -- and you've got the industrial
component going forward because there has been a
shortage of silver.
So, even without inflation; even without a
weakening dollar, silver was poised to go higher. By
acquiring silver at lower prices, he was able to benefit
from the shortage. And of course, if inflation picks up
and the dollar weakens, silver will go that much higher.

MARCHINI: He'll have a hedge against it. OK.
The industrial uses and industrial shortage of silver
explain in large part why silver has diverged from
where gold has gone, which is basically down to
nowhere. Silver has rallied sharply.
Or could other factors be at play? I'm wondering if
somebody -- like the Hunt brothers back in the late
'70s, early '80s - might be attempting to corner the
market in silver. The Hunts, of course, went broke in
the process.
Nobody's suggesting that's what Warren Buffett is
trying to do, but one has to think that if you're
purchasing one out of every five ounces of silver that
are out there, you're going to have some impact on
prices just by virtue of your actions. My question really
is: How much of the rise we've seen in silver prices
might be because somebody's out there buying in large
quantity?
LUBEN: Well, I think that it's pretty clear that
when Warren Buffett started to buy, that started
catalyzing the move higher, and so you have a lot of
commodity people who are trend followers and the
higher the price goes, the more buying comes in.
But I think there's a huge difference between the
Hunt situation and this situation, which is that it's pretty
clear that the Hunts had to borrow a lot of money to
buy the silver and hold onto it, and a lot of their
positions were in the futures market. Here you have the
most respected money manager in the world, who's got
a lot of cash; who can buy the silver and then put it
aside.
And I don't think he's trying to squeeze the silver
market. I think he's just trying to diversify his portfolio
and he can hold on to it for a long, long time. So, I
think there is a huge difference in those two situations.
MARCHINI: Well, my question wasn't about
market manipulation. It was really just about the way
that markets worked. If somebody is out there buying
up 20 percent of the market, could that alone push up
prices?
LUBEN: Absolutely.
MARCHINI: What about the disclosure that a
single individual has now purchased 20 percent of the
market? He is known as one of the savviest investors
there is.
LUBEN: Absolutely. I mean, it would probably
have the same effect that it would have on US Airways
( U ) or Salomon Brothers ( CXB ) when it became clear
that Buffett was building a position in those two
companies.
MARCHINI: They just went right up.
LUBEN: That's right.
MARCHINI: We've got the price of silver up 58
cents right now. I remember silver moving in pennies
and increments thereof. That's a huge move.
LUBEN: I also remember silver moving up in
increments of dollars in the late '70s and the early '80s,
although I don't expect that to continue.
That's obvious, if you have 20 percent of the
world's silver going off the market and there is an
industrial shortage. Remember, North American silver
production has been virtually nonexistent for years
because prices have been very low. Even some of the
Latin American producers in Peru and Mexico have
been under pressure with the low silver price, so it
would take much higher silver prices to justify
reopening some of these mines, and I think that the
shortage will be there for a long, long tim

He went on to say that "finacial markets are inherantly unstable"
"We may begin to believe we are immune from market collapse"
"Need to reconsider the roles of the IMF, who is supposed to be a lender of short duration in cases of emergency, and the World Bank, which is supposed to be the lender for the long term growth"
"We must have discipline ( Gold? ) for stability" on a global scale"
"We must change the rules, in order to avoid a 1900 ( 29 ) style
collapse in our finacial markets"......

Where do you believe we are as far as timing ? Is silver being played to
ignite gold since silver can be manipulated far more than gold. Any comments on platinum and do you prefer gold overall ? Thanking you in advance for your insight.

Where do you believe we are as far as timing ? Is silver being played to
ignite gold since silver can be manipulated far more than gold. Any comments on platinum and do you prefer gold overall ? Thanking you in advance for your insight.

Storm-battered California prepares for more rain
SAN FRANCISCO ( Reuters ) - Californians began clean-up
efforts during a reprieve Wednesday a day after being walloped
by the first major El Nino storm of the season.
The dry spell promised to be brief, however -- another major
storm was due to hit the region early Thursday morning.
Counties and cities around northern California declared
states of emergency after Tuesday's storm dumped up to seven
inches of rain, causing rivers to break their banks, sodden
hillsides to topple in torrents of mud and forcing thousands to
evacuate.
Forecasters at the National Weather Service said a series of
as many as three more winter storms were lining up in the
Pacific, ready to belt California with more rain and wind
beginning Thursday.
``The next one is not quite as copious in the rainfall
department, but it will be enough rain to cause problems,'' said
Miguel Miller of the NWS.
``We definitely expect flooding, and possibly disastrous
flooding.''
Separate storm systems were expected to hit on both Saturday
and Sunday, a relentless pummeling forecasters said bore all the
hallmarks of the El Nino weather phenomenon.
``This is not a normal winter pattern,'' Miller said. ``It
is a winter pattern that has been all charged up.''

Trust me bro-----I'll get to the bottom of this if I can escape my current predicament of house arrest....Will leave no stone unturned~~~~

Trust me bro-----I'll get to the bottom of this if I can escape my current predicament of house arrest....Will leave no stone unturned in my search for the ultimate 'truth'~~~~

All this talk about silver going to 9.00, 10.00, 15.00, 50.00, and now
100's of dollars per ounce!

Hmmm... Let's see. We've seen silver at 50.00 per oz. The fundamentals look even better this time. Consider this. At current spot, it only costs about 1500.00 to control 1000oz of silver ( 20% leverage ) .

If silver goes to 50$, you make 50,000.00 on an investment of 1500.00!
Yes it's a long shot, but my god! Look at the possible return! You can't make that kind of bread selling crack!

If there's an investing boob out there that hasn't heard about silver by now... This mornings Wall Street Journal, all the business news radio programs, and tonights Nightly Business Report. Add to this, Yeltsin 'expressing' his views on Iraq. If this doesn't get the precious metals markets moving, then nothing will.

Re your 18:04. Sadly, our top brass have the commander in chief to look to for example re lying on the job. I'm with you, when we spend more to service our national debt, than on teh national defense, in times when we're in skirmishes worldwide and nukes have fallen itno the hands of merchants..we're in trouble.

Sadly, the American populace will be just as complacent on this issue as they are re Bill Clinton's lies and misuse of his office. The public at large no longer cares about character, morality, integrity, or honesty in it's leaders. Bill Clinton's ALL TIME HIGH poll numbers coming AFTER the Monica, Kathy Willey, Paula, Chinese influence peddling etc. etc. scandals, confirms entirely that we, the American public, are indeed sheep who will follow blindly any leader, as long as we have a decent paycheck, and a little job security. Even if said leader has absolutely nothing to do with the good economic conditions we enjoy!

It's perilous times we have facing us, masquerading as good ones. The quiet before the storm.

We are agreed that "Real Wealth" is and will be held in Precious Metals.
What are your "THOUGHTS" regarding the major currencies being backed by PM's? Do you see a Euro, USD, and a new Asian United Asia Currency that includes Japan and China? Thanks in advance.

Wasn't WB's dad a US Congressman?

Exactly. All the chips are in place. If Gold does not start moving now there is something seriously wrong in the equation. I mean, even Rhodium has soared in the last few months.
GOLD let's go..........

cat's outta the bag...dog's in the dog house....fat pigs in the slaughterhouse

time for people to show us the money and prove their real PHYSICAL worth

stormy seas are lapping at the house of cards, biblical tides late Feb., right on JTF...the rats will be the first to leave the sinking ship.....

SYSTEMIC FAILURE IS IMMINENT

yer canna sell wha yer don haf.......learn well paper shufflers.

It will take a lot more than action in silver and B.Yeltsin shaking his finger. The perception of the herd must change and that will require a big downward movement in the equities market together with a weakened US$.

I would like to find info on a junior mining stock on Vancouver. Sonoma Resources ( SNA ) was trading at $.21 today but I heard they have $.22/share in cash. Sounds like a deal. Do they mine gold , silver or what?

prometheus-------

ira epstein is my brokerage firm........i've had no problems getting fills on any gold options out to feb '99. my broker used to laugh
when i was buying the silver options.......until silver took off....
he's now a believer.......and just turned bullish on gold......right....

not enough modems. Normally I download your page at 1.3K/sec, tonight, 28 bytes/sec.
Maybe some of the guys who made a killing in silver today can pitch in and help you upgrade.....just a thought.

Gold is still in recovery, but when it wakes up and finds out is little brother silver has been in the spotlight it will be an explosion heard from every corner of the world. No, gold won't take this sitting down. Look out silver when your big brother wakes up your in for a surprise.

I note that today ECM had a nice runup from A$ 0.58 to 0.70, on good volume.

Anyone with news from the assay, or is this following in line with the rest of the silver mining stocks?

I love it when a plan comes together, don't you? GO SILVER!

Mr. H. Hitter,

Timing? Most of the very large buyers completed much of their conversion all of last year. When we speak of these entities one must know that they purchase much larger amounts than Berkshire. Most cannot understand that it is difficult to take five or ten million oz./gold in physical in a month or less. Note that Mr. Buffett has taken six months and only purchased about half of his silver! Even here we speak of only $300m for the amount taken. At this time the market is very, very tight for large money to go into physical. Paper, yes! I could move five billion US into paper metal very fast, but not physical.

Is silver being played to ignite ? Only the small paper movers are trying for the fast buck squeeze. Most of them get eaten when the lions come for food. The big wealth is only trying to convert! Silver is good, but always to small. Perhaps at $150us it would work? Most are looking for a currency/wealth holding with history! They, ( this includes some

CBs ) want a holding that is spread far and wide, and very deep! Gold is good.

Just looking at the trends of silver for last 6-12 months of the lease and forward rates before this backwardation thingy......
looks like gold may be following a similar pattern, with the 12 month forward rate recently slipping below the 1-month forward....really I guess what it says is that the physical gold has become worth more than the paper promise of future delivery......hmmm not a pretty picture.

Banks who don't make good on promises of physical goods should be murdered for all the pain and suffering they cause when the hold little people to their promises.....UBS beware.

Thanks, I've hit a wall of frustration with several phone calls and no fills today, while the options I was trying to buy went from 60 to 100. . Maybe time for a change.

SILVER LEASE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

In Our Humble Opinion ---the reason Silver Leases have worked, in the past now and in the future, is the FACT that to be able to lease silver you must have substance. IEYou are able to and most certainly will PAY OFF YOUR MARKER!!! The man off the street is not able to do this. Its kinda like going to a casino and knowing, that when you go to the tellers cage, your chips will turn into money. It seems like WB, tossed out the lure that HIS SILVER IS FOR LEASE, just in the same manner that ( Phil in LA ) seemed like he was trolling to get a lead in to the Ted Butler saga.

This is just our humble opinion.we know nothing..

Take careBarb

Which did better today--the geared SA's, or the geared Silvers?

a ) SILVER STANDARD-SSRIF

b ) PAN AMERICAN-PAASF

c ) DURBAN DEEP-DROOY

d ) RANDGOLD-RANGY

BOTH DROOY and RANGY gained more today than SSRIF or PAASF.

just a thought.

What will happen when we find out that Warren has really been buying gold, but was just too embarrassed to say so? : )

Will the paper market ever represent the physical?...or will a total collapse be necessary first?

It seems the vested interests in the paper game are powerful enough to keep the physical down indefinitely?

Thank you for your kind reply. Very much appreciated as always. Do you have any thoughts on platinum?

Does anyone know about this company Sonoma Resources. Do they mine silver or gold. I heard that they have $.21/share in cash but the stock only trades at $.22 Buy?

Will several ( or many ) bullion banks fail? And if so, what recourse will the corresponding central banks have to recover the gold that their client bullion banks have loaned? Are the bullion banks bonded?...by whom? Thank you.

Does anyone have a good, current source for p.m. options quotes?
Many thanks if so!!

Do you use internet trading,sounds like your doing a OIP ala Ken Roberts,that guy probably has a million oz's himself.Gold option trading was very thin today,silver's got the stage.

When ordered to bomb Pearl Harbor, Harvard educated Admiral Yamamoto advised his Japanese educated superiors against it. He said that bombing Pearl would awake a sleeping tiger. His superiors said the U.S. was a paper tiger. History tells us who was right.

LGB 19:16 Americans are complacent now but they will not remain so too much longer. All phase changes require a period of build-up until the required threshold is reached. We must remember that the U.S. mass media only very recently started paying attention to Clintons many fatal flaws. What we have known for years is of little importance to the required mass change in perception. The fuse is now lit. Clinton gets weaker with each passing day. The masses are still in denial but soon will come anger.

Recall that initially people rallied around Nixon. Only after months of media and Congressional pounding did the people turn on him. Clinton is much worse than Nixon. In addition to his political weakness, he has committed the primal sin of weakening the country before the enemy. Recall how the people turned on Carter when he did the same. Clinton is far worse than Carter. The change will come and it will be as shocking to many as the change in silver and the coming change in gold.

This pattern is ever so in all things. Problems become big precisely because people ignore or discount them until they become huge. The really sad part of all this is that just as many times in the past, thousands of U.S. servicemen may have to pay in blood for the sins of their leaders.

Is it still possible that OIL will make a bid outside
the BIS? If so, where might one look to follow this
drama? How has the collection of physical progressed?
Kitcoites have surmised RBA's 167 tonnes went to China
or South Korea. ( Korean collection of 161 tonnes looks
suspicious ) Any comments?

CNBC-TV just reported Warren Buffet purchased nearly 900 million

ounces of silver for US$130 million; US$6.92/oz.

LGB 16:18 - "Kinder Gentler"? "Rub it in"? I'm speechless. I also know you are confused; I have no opinion on LOR paper and I never have. I did have an opinion on your statement of Globalstar launching in 1997. Which I stated was false, and why. I was proven correct in hindsight. I also had an opinion about the way you twist facts and words to support your premise. I leave the proof of these to the anyone who cares. Since you and I seem to be closest to this industry, I felt it was necessary to my fellow Kitco readers to balance the statements at the time. Great discussions no longer are welcome here at Kitco - so it really doesn't matter anymore. Good luck with your launch tomorrow, for I believe global communications are as important to our future as any other technology out there.

Another - Did I misunderstand you posts last year? When you were promoting your gold theory last year - you stated silver and platinum would crash along with paper. I remember specifically asking this question just before I made a large physical purchase. Today, you are promoting world wealth will go into all physicals. I ask only for personal reasons. My physical collection has been going on for a long time, that's how I found Kitco many many months ago.

uhh not enuf modems? DOH! you must mean not enuf bandwidth.. alot of traffic goin through here 24 hours.

Yeah buffet is a major playa. He is the cause of the "silver manipulation" he did this some time ago i thought? isnt what hes doing like those 2 brothers some time ago? cept now its only 20% and not a 100%

Yer memory is short my friend, but we both agree that satellite comms. is an interesting field. Now go make some money in silver.....

Drooy still up more than 100% from its low. The xau is up about 25%.
Clearly an example of the superior operating leverage both upside
and downside with the high-cost producer. If we are in a gold bull
market this will continue on the upside.

Date: Wed Feb 04 1998 18:35
SDRer__A ( Donald, Many thanks! You're a brick! {:- ) ) ID#280245:
A. Goose, Global WEF Leaders Db complete ( Hurrah! ) ...

SDRer I wish I could help more but the research you do just makes my head ache and my eyes tear. Keep up the good work, I know it is important to all of us.

What are your "THOUGHTS" regarding the major currencies being backed by PM's?

Mr. Junior,

Any nation/state can put its economy/currency on a gold standard. They only have two requirements. Own a stockpile of gold and raise the price very high!

In the past, when currencies were gold, a nation could not lower the amount of gold backing its currency ( raise the price of gold ) because it lowered the currency unit worldwide and created payment imbalances. Today, no nation/currency is on a gold standard. The first country that starts will own the rest for some time.

Find me a country with many needed resources, little debt in relation to the assets and a national pride to lead? Let them price gold at many thousands not only in their currency but also in their resources! The world would buy from them, cheaply in gold but dearly in all other unbacked currencies. The markets would do the rest!

The large modern currencies, of today have only debt ridden economies to back them. They cannot change as debt blocks their path. To change is to live and to live, some debts must die. The owners of much of this debt must lose if change is to occur. Even the new EURO will not be backed by gold! It will HOLD gold only as insurance against the worst outcome, war.

Yes, an oil state comes to mind! It could even be China!

Was on CNN. He 's very savvy & even made money last year on the short side. He says that the people who think that the situation in Asia has stabilzed are dead wrong. More pain & carnage is in store. If he's right, I don't think that would be a net positive for AU.
Hi Ted. Flowers out here for over a week.

Night quotes,I'm sure that is a realy thin market with extra costs built in ( My brokers fees aabout 35 more than in the day ) plus London has no silver option market,I don't know about Japan,anyway I don' think you would have a easy time getting a good fill at night,futures differnt story or even front month option .Try to look at nymex click on the contract a chart will come up at the bottom click options,it will have the vol. of cont. traded and existing,later months and way out of the money are very thin even in the daytime. good luck

Night quotes,I'm sure that is a realy thin market with extra costs built in ( My brokers fees aabout 35 more than in the day ) plus London has no silver option market,I don't know about Japan,anyway I don' think you would have a easy time getting a good fill at night,futures differnt story or even front month option .Try to look at nymex click on the contract a chart will come up at the bottom click options,it will have the vol. of cont. traded and existing,later months and way out of the money are very thin even in the daytime. good luck

Monsieur L'orateur, sorry I did not reply to your question on reverse splits last night, but I had modem problems. Now the answer:

Reverse splits are the opposite of normal splits. For example, a stock trades at $3 per share and has say 200 million shares outstanding. A reverse split adjustment can be decided by the company with reverse split ratio of say 10:1. This means that the company now has 200 mil / 10 = 20 mil shares. The price of course will be adjusted to $30 per share. Dividents, EPS, options, all are divided by 10 to adjust to the revese split ratio.

Why does a company do it?

1. Perception of not having a low priced stock.

2. As you know stocks below $5 can not be margined in the US. Therefore,
in order for some brokers to be satisfied in loaning stock for shorts,
the company reverse splits.

3. It makes stock available for shorts, therefore it creates a buffer
price since shorts one day sooner or later must be covered.

The third reason is the most important IMHO. In the case of SSC a reverse split at todays price of 10:1 will bring the stock at $16 per share and will reduce the outstanding shares from 200 mil. to about 20 mil.

A few years ago RJR Nabisco ( RN ) had a 5:1 reverse split. The stock was adjusted from $6 to $30 per share. Just an example.

In your 07:46 post you mentioned that the "SnP is poised to make a powerful move to new highs" etc. I wonder if you are free to elaborate on that by giving us the same type of trading guidelines for it as you are doing for gold and silver? Your current expectations as to price range, time. Do you take clients? If so please contact me at magel@pacificcoast.net. The first name is Ron

jman---

the options are just that........insurance....

i've been buying gold and silver futures also......
caught silver after it bottomed last year.....
went from 1 contract to 13.....real fast......
got the livin-sh!t kicked outta-me, and went
back to 1 faster!! swore off metal's futures until
the confirmation of a bottom.......the options
allowed for great profits---in silver----and
have financed heavy gold investments....options and physicals....

ken roberts course is an excellent learning tool for trading
futures.......especially for newbies.......take the first step......

options------

risk tolerance low?
investment capital low?

options allow you to touch and play with the big boys......however,
all they can do is pocket your premium........woooooooooooooooo.......

patience..........planning.......stalk your victim....gold...
buy 1 option per month as they become available......slowly
but surely the numbers will grow.......and one day.......some
close or far-away day.....it will happen.........it is inevitable
and predictable.......the exact timing is slightly blurred......

'for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction' isaac newton

physics-------the laws of nature......man cannot but delay, the driving
forces of the galaxy........

push on something.......it moves......expansion and contraction.....
most natural thing there is.......man has created a vacuum by
causing an un-natural contraction in the pog.......

there will be an un-natural expansion in gold.....do not be in the way...

THEY said silver would NEVER reach the skies again.....what happened?

listen to realistic and you will never have the opportunity to step-up
to the plate.........where the home-runs are hit.......

you must swing the bat to hit the ball........there are SAFE, CHEAP
ways to play commodities......

when the student is ready, the teacher will appear.......ask.....it will be answered......there are many teachers here.......with no gain for
their efforts except for ego, manipulation, or altruism........

to which category do you belong?

cherokee@hal-pc.org................make my day......

gold options........YOUR TICKET........at what cost?

Barb Hughes:

Your reference to "trolling into the Ted Butler article" implies some sort of questionable motive on my part. Please rest assured that there is none other than a wish for informed comment.

"Leasing has worked for 15 years" as you say. But what do you say to T. Butler? Will it continue to work? Is it coming unravelled? Is this what we are seeing in the Silver Market? Somewhere in his articles Butler mentions a soaring of lease rates to 300% on was it palladium? Then a discontinuence of the practise. Should we look forward to that in silver? What are the implications for such an occurance? Wouldn't that tend to cement the trend upwards?

" ( You ) know nothing....."???

Thee doth protest too much. ........

The title goes something like "Was Warren Buffett Had". Got the spelling right this time R.J. ( sppppp! ) . One quote is as follows: "Talk of $10 silver may be totally crazy and highly dangerous not to mention irresponsible". He is giving some ground now talking about $8.08 as the mark to beat. P.S. APH love your posts to.

In an FT article tonight UBS Andy Smith states that at $7.00 silver
Indian demand is cut in half. He proceeds to say that if the Indian
currency falls that they have over 4 bilion oz's of silver to unload.
check out full contents.

http://www.ft.com/hippocampus/v83d4e.htm

Mr. Kiwi,

Will the paper market ever represent the physical?...

You will see it in out time!

Will a total collapse be necessary first?

Perhaps a almost total??

It seems the vested interests in the paper game are powerful enough to

keep the physical down indefinitely?

In a very real sence, games can go on forever. The question here is;

Can those powerful thru paper wealth go on indefinitely? History has shown that they end suddenly, with great puzzlement as to the loss of importance without wealth.

Date: Wed Feb 04 1998 20:24
ANOTHER ( THOUGHTS! ) ID#60253:


Nice to here from you again.

We assume that currencies, gold, and stability were hot topics at Davos, what is your take on the discrete discussions at Davos on this subject. Is a break forming between Businesses and Governments?

February 4, 1998
U.S. asks 21 countries to meeting on Asia

WASHINGTON, Feb 4 ( Reuters ) - The United States has invited finance ministers and central bankers from 21 countries to Washington for a special meeting on how to cope with financial crises like the one enveloping Asia, a U.S. Treasury Department spokesman said on Wednesday.

The meeting is expected to occur "in coming months""but a firm date has not yet been set, the spokesman said. President Bill Clinton first suggested holding such a session at a meeting last November of Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation forum in Vancouver, British Columbia.

Little has happened since then, leading to some grumbling that there was a scarcity of ideas about how to improve the global financial system to ward off future crises.

The Treasury spokesman said the meeting in Washington will be to discuss financial strains in emerging markets, especially Asia, and to develop ways for coping with them and hopefully avoiding them in future.

The spokesman was unable to say whether the meeting will take place at the same time as the semi-annual meeting in Washington of the International Monetary Fund, tentatively scheduled for mid-April.

The IMF is spearheading financial rescue packages for South Korea, Thailand and Indonesia.

The U.S. invitations went to: Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, Mexico, Poland, Russia, Singapore, South Africa, Thailand and the United Kingdom.

Some U.S. allies have been cool to the idea of a special meeting on Asia. French Finance Minister Dominique Strauss-Kahn said last month there was no need for such a meeting since the G7 would discuss Asia at a scheduled meeting in London later this month. Strauss-Kahn said the real concern was competition from cheap Asian imports.

Well, I guess due to working overtime on Y2K issues I missed this discussion, however, let me make just a few short points.
WetGold:
CONCLUSION: Are these Y2K folks manipulating their own market ?
Yes.

Response:
Dont reach your conclusion so fast. Yes, some Y2K companies may be blowing their horn too much, however, a lot of this is due to the fact that companies were too slow to focus on this problem and to get their attention the worst case scenario was painted to wake them up. I dont work for Y2K company, but I deal with this issue for a long time ( supporting some top companies and US gov. agencies ) . Our business was forced to make turn from 95 to 05 ratio to 60 to 40 ratio from systems modernization to solving Y2K issues in just a few last months. Mostly due to our client coming to us "gee, I know we are late, but this Y2K is the only thing we can work on right now"

You say:
I know first hand that ALL major switching networks ( ATT, MCI,
SPRINT, BA, BLS, et al ) and their vendors ( Siemens, Lucent, NTI,
etc ) have working these problem for years in unison with regulatory
agencies/organizations including Bellcore, Bell Labs, FCC, etc.

Its not so simple. I should know, as we are evaluating these systems for the US gov. Most phone companies are focusing on solving Y2K problem in their business critical area - financial aspect of phone business. Yes, most phone call will go through, however, when it comes to supporting components, the situation is not so rosy. There are many older components which wont be compliant ( and supported by these telecom. companies ) This means that your internal systems may not be in a good shape ( you dont upgrade your phone system like you do your MS office systems every few months ) , and upgrades and impact may be much greater that you would like, however telecom companies are taking approach "yes, we are OK as far as you upgrade to the latest releases".

Year2000
you could shut the entire U.S. phone system down for a
day or so, reset all of the dates back five years, and start-up again.
Voila. You have another five years to fix the problem.

Response:
Total oversimplification of the problem, something which would not work in most of the cases

Allen ( USA )
And just to throw a little conspiracy into the mix; why is it that the Euro
debutes on 01.01.1999? The commentary on this is that the code
conversion needed to deal with the Euro, at least for international
corporations accounting and inventory systems, is more involved and

Response:
Euro is getting a lot of heat for this, choice of this date is considered to be a disaster and resoyrces to solve the both issues will not be there. One or the other will not be done on time.

Straddler
However, he told us that in the Year 2000, the Jeep Cherokee will not
start. There is some sort of a date chip within the car's computer that will
become 1900 in the year 2000. It has to do with maintenance and
basically the car will think that it hasn't been serviced for over 100 years
and this is a dangerous situation. Therefore the car will not start.

Response:
there is a lot of discussion going-on on this issue, most is in a area of ''urban legends''
Car companies are responding to this mostly like this:
''While there may be date information relative to maintenance scheduling, it
is for advisory purposes to the customer, not the vehicle operation. This
may be one of the numerous speculations about the reach of theY2K problem.
..
all chips are set to day 0, year 0 when they leave the factory. They use
a relative 0 calendar, not a gregorian calendar, since they sell cars all over the world.
Most heavy duty trucks, tractors and the like works from engine operating hours not date''


However, there is a lot of mistrust, because it would not be the first time that a car design contained some flows.

As fat as some criticism of Yourdon as being one more book writer trying to get rich on Y2K issue sorry folks. Ed is in this business for a long time, trying to express his professional opinion. Its kind of silly criticizing him for that. Just like it is silly to criticize a French chef for writing a cook book based on his experiences in a kitchen.

BTW, Ill be participating as a speaker in a few SPG conferences together with Ed Yardeni, Tony Keys, Ed Yourdon, Capers Jones, .etc. If you have any question, or violent disagreement with what they have to say, let me know - Ill pass your opinion or questions directly to them.

If you want to accuse me of having a financial interest in this, sorry folks, I get reimbursed for my travel expenses, my time for participating is on me - read for free! Call me stupid, but this issue is important, and I feel it is my professional responsibility to do this. I co-authored the book on this issue for $1 - the rest of proceeds goes to finding solution for Y2K issues.

Mr. ANOTHER at 20:24, Thank you for your reply.
Your thoughts regarding oil/gold backed currency. The "trinity" of oil,gold and currency. How important is the alliance of China, Russia, Japan, Irac, Iran and the CIS Republics around the Caspian Sea and Caspian oil basin to your thoughts of the future and how will this alliance be manifested, in your view?

http://biz.yahoo.com/finance/980204/summers_se_1.html

February 4, 1998
U.S. selling more securities but thinking of buybacks

WASHINGTON ( Reuters ) - As the Treasury Department announced plans Wednesday to sell $35 billion of new securities next week, a panel of Wall Street experts said it was time to start thinking about how to buy back some existing debt.

Treasury, as manager of the national debt, is coming to grips with a projected new era of budget surpluses that means two things: it will not have to borrow as much in the future through securities sales and it should be able to reduce the multi-trillion-dollar outstanding debt.

A private-sector advisory panel urged Treasury to think about alternatives including the possibility of "reverse auctions" in which the government would bid for securities that are now in the hands of investors.
http://canoe2.canoe.ca/ReutersNews/TREASURY-DEBT.html

6pack-----

heard the same story over the radio today......first thing that
came to mind was their time frame........the snow-ball--asia--
is already rolling down the mountain-side. it grows larger by
the minute....suddenly you have a snow-ball with an intrinsic
force that basically makes it un-stoppable with-out destroying
the snow and the ball........this currency crisis has been out-of
hand ever since the bankers bought the politicians, who changed the
laws .........DE-COUPLING GOLD AND SILVER FROM CURRENCIES.......

this is why the world's currencies are where they are, today........

the DE-COUPLING OF CURRENCIES FROM GOLD AND SILVER.......simple as that..

miro----

a cheep cherokee? geeeze......!; )

RE: SPOT SILVER PRICES

PLEASE NOTE & VIEW:

http://www.kitco.ca/gold.live.html

AND READ Bart's NEW ( Please Notes )

This may clear up some of the confusion about WHAT & WHERE SPOT SILVER IS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

We thinks London Spot is about 20 cents over NY currently!!!!

Take care...Barb

gold dust,

Sonoma doesn't mine either gold or silver. They are a small exploration company.

They tried to find a large multi-metal deposit in Argentina last year, but didn't, except to come up with some zinc.

But they had raised over $6 million ( CDN ) prior to the drilling program.

The board fired the president. Right now, they have no project that they're working on. They want to go to Nevada, but haven't lined anything up yet.

Is it a buy? That depends on your time frame.

With the $4.2 million ( CDN ) Sonoma has left, it should certainly be able to put something together to raise its market cap above $5 million ( CDN ) . -- 22 million shares.

But it may take a while

The Preacher

Hope this isn't the wave of the future. Couldn't get Kitco quotes all morning due to "TOO MANY USERS" and this evening have spent the greater part of an hour and a half just trying to log onto the discussion group. Whew.

Miro, I happen to know that the major networking companies here in Silicon Valley are very much on top of the year 2000 problem, although there may be some huge holes in older systems. Look for trouble in the air traffic controllers, US Gov't. It is a top priority out here and is well under control. Why rush the end of life as we know it? It's ok.

Just had to mention this:

Avino Mines, NASDAQ symbol ASGMF, was up .44 ( US ) cents today to close
at 1.94, up 29.33%.

Hi-Ho Silver !!!!!

want to see a 'sure thing' futures play?

look here.... http://www.digisys.net/futures/chart/fstwin33.gif


...what do you see grasshopper?


buy or sell on the break-out to the up/down side.......which-ever way....

http://www.digisys.net/futures/chart/fstwin33.gif

Glad to see you're still online. Tried to post to you hours ago but the lines were clogged. You had expressed that you felt we were caught offguard by Buffett's purchases of silver, based on our "yippee" posts. Au contraire, if you went over the last couple of months, you would see several posts, a few by me, and more by the old timers, about the fact that professionals were quietly buying low, e. g. metals, and selling high noisily, e. g. the major markets. We were surely in a period of accumulation of the metals and distribution of stocks. The only questions were WHO and HOW MUCH? This question was answered yesterday, in a most unexpected fashion. Right out, not preceded by months of rumours. Most unusual, and probably due to the lawsuit that has been alluded to.

The exuberance you are seeing at the Kitco site is the expectations of many that we are entering into a new phase of the market, when the technicians and speculators will join the fray. It involved fast market conditions, but it's alot more fun!

Yours, Prometheus

But what is OK8?

may oats-----.01 = $50.00

margin is around $400. to $500. for 5k bushels..now trading in units..

i believe it will break to the down-side with rest of the grains
very soon.......

MoReGoLd - Gold had better move up soon or there is something seriously wrong with this equation!

Junior -- The Russian Bear is far from dead, never under estimate it! As far as a big decline in stocks WITH a decline in the dollar The DOLLAR will have to be hit first before stocks can fall. To see how bizarre the situation can become, look North to Canada ( whooops! Being American centric again ) where they have to RAISE interest rates to 'defend' their currency. The interest rates will have very little to do with a 'hot' or 'slowing' economy. No, to defend the 'idea' or 'concept' of money is what is at work here. This is what will challenge conventional thought.

Fidelity Select American Gold & Precious Metals Chart.
Ten market days ( seven hours / prices per day )
http://www.geocities.com/WallStreet/5969/agpm70.htm

Consolidation Over?

Like many others I am still pondering WB's reasons for announcing his SI position. The announcement would seem to me to run counter to setting a position in GC as well. Since the first would likely raise the price of the second. If he has a set position in GC, why not announce it at the same time and enhance the gain for both? ....... The possibility that WB is about to fake out the market by doing, what to him, would be a short term trade, should not be discounted entirely.

Please don't misunderstand my comment. I had noticed several posters lamenting the fact that they had missed the big move today and yesterday. Certainly they had been warned by such as yourself and others. I only meant to underscore the obvious: That there is a big difference between thinking ( or hearing ) something is going to happen and actually putting your money down on the barrelhead. Normally there are few who dare to spout a bearish line on this forum, but there is a plethora of unrealistic ( and so-far unrealized ) crash calls and overly exuberant "go gold" cheerleading, all of which tends to confuse.

In any case, for every solidly reasoned post there are dozens of purely emotional exhortations. In the end it becomes obvious that each of us has to accept responsability for his own investment actions, irrespective of what everyone ( or anyone ) else says.

For my own part, I stay here fascinated, with my own silver position staked out and have not even begun to think of selling it. May God have mercy on my soul.

TO: Year2000 @ 17:42

Your Statement: "I have "shown my hand"? Judging from your criticism of me and others here today ..."

My Response: I started the dialogue asking that we stick with facts. Sight an example of criticism not based on facts. If you felt insulted by my statement "You've shown your hand", WELL, it was meant light-hearted and not in a demeaning way. When you make statements such as: "Since these systems do not rely heavily on the age of historical data, ..." AND ".. you could shut the entire U.S. phone system down for a day or so, ..." AND "... From a Year 2000 viewpoint, air traffic controls systems, and most manufacturing systems are similiar..." ===== you are not building your case here RATHER "Showing your hand". Have your read the latest news regarding AIR TRAFFIC networks ?

Simply put -- don't be so sensitive --- AND --- have intelligent discussion and discipline yourself.


Your Statement: "So what if companies have to report network problems to the FCC? "

My Response: If you are looking for a sounding board to justify governmental agencies overlooking and micro-managing our lives --- little tip for ya' |||| you're on the WRONG site...

I've encountered Year2000 folks over the years and find that most ignore REALITY; despite the overwhelming array of statistical evidence in its favor.

I'm considering this issue dead. Let's get back to the PMs and how we MAKE MONEY.

Arden
Not only that, but Billie the Gates' OS blames third party vendors ( like me ) for software glitches in the Operating system --- Error--- see your programme vendor. I end up by supporting Win 95 which is a really crummie OS, really crummie.

Myrmidon
Thank you for your explanation re reverse splits. It is as I thought, we call same capital reconstructions. One interesting point, it appears that Companies will reverse split to increase share price, the exact opposite used to happen down here ( during the bull of the 80's which is still a dream, local index only at 52% of 87 Peak ) if before 1:10 split a share was trading at $12.00, after the split, although one would expect trading at $1.20, there would usually be an immediate premium, say $1.40. At the time it was explained that the post-split price ( $1.20 ) was perceived to be "cheaper" than the pre-split $12.00, so was increased buying pressure at $1.20. This happened so often it was considered to be a "rule" of the market.

check-out the prices of 30yr bond options....

http://router.minot.com/~bohl/history/option/Bonds_30_Year

and the put/call ratios......

puts.....112-00 and lower are cheap....june or later....

the down-side risk.......enormous.............

exact opposite of gold........

LGB -

It was I who posted that $6.00 silver is way too high, the market fundamentals don't support it, and that I would "sell it into a black hole". I didn't believe the whole COMEX draw down. I've seen it too many times before. I then proceeded to put in some shorts that got creamed on the 10th of December. Woke up the next morning to find the shorts had been stopped out. Thank you for reminding me of the most painful trades I made last year.

After the run up to 6.40, I posted hereabouts that, contrived or not, silver will run. I still think there is plenty of silver to be had. Doesn't matter, the game is afoot, and they will run it where they will. I nibbled at it ( 46,000 oz ) between 5.70 and 6.00. Sold it all yesterday and today and will wait for a dip to buy back in. I could have put in another 200,000 oz at just below $6 a couple weeks ago, but I let caution stay my hand. I have been reluctant to put in new longs until things settle down a bit. I hate chasing a market. It will give us another chance at it. Silver always gives you another chance.

I must admit the whole WB think adds some credibility to this move and adds the chances that the price can be sustained long term. The perception of WB seems to be that he is not a quick slam artist and is in it for the longer term. This bodes well for continued higher prices. I will not short this market here. I am salivating at the prospects of a fat short, but silver is a mad dog no and I will respect its snapping jaws. Remember that the 1987 rise to over $11 was in direct response to the S & L crisis. The move above $16 in 1983 was. Hell, I don't know, I was in Beirut dodging artillery in 1983, who cared about silver?

I hold no shorts in any precious metals now. Never shorted platinum and my gold was all covered at 305 - 308. As for sustained high silver prices, ask yourself one thing.. has silver ever stayed up? True we may be heading into a new era of silver, but I don't think so. I think projections of $10 silver are premature. Regardless of where it goes, it will not go there in a strait line. There will be volatility, and volatility is my friend.

Read your repost of TB's CNN interview. I know Jacques Lubin of the Platinum Guild. Haven't seen him since November, but I have dinner with him a couple times a year. He likes the fact that I sold over 6,000 one ounce platinum Maple Leafs and Eagles last year. He gave me a nice set of cuff links and tie pin made from 1/4 oz Platinum Eagles. This is the guy almost single-handedly responsible for the Platinum American Eagle coin. He lobbied for more than 2 years behind the scenes to make it happen. He is well respected in South Africa and Russia and is very level headed in his projections.

To the paranoid who thinks Bart is adding typos to you posts -

Its called proof reading, give it a try..

http://router.minot.com/~bohl/history/option/Bonds_30_Year

REPLYS:

Mr. Studio. R.,

Will several ( or many ) bullion banks fail?

when one cannot repay a loan, it is done !

Are the bullion banks bonded?...

In the real national/ world there is no such thing as bonded.

Look to Korea for proof!

Mr. Sweat,

If oil or the BIS bid for gold, you will know it ! In your terms,

 up front and personal??

RBA's 167 tonnes ? No comment.

Mr. Kuston,

Please understand, that wealth will move into all forms of real assets as the destruction of our debt/ digitial currency system continues. When the currencies move to a final resolution, it will be the marketplace for precious metals that will die first! It is well

known that gold will hold its value above everything. All other metals could lose much of the value they gained prior to this meltdown! Remember, when the currencies go to nuclear war, all paper and paper markets will burn! Many hard assets will lose in the public mind as confusion will rule. In the thoughts of many, gold will perform!

this one?

Earl:

I think it was LGB who earlier posted a news article to the effect that a large portion of the Buffet purchases would not be delivered until March 6. Since they are purely physical, doesn't that imply that they will be held at least until then?

Wetgold: I was unable to find the original source of the faulty defib units story. I have a couple more places to check so if I come across it I'll be sure to post it. It's probably been 3 months since I read this but the facts stuck in my head because the situation was so incredulous ( defib units manufactured in 1997 that won't work after Jan 1 2000 ) .

I did come across perhaps a half dozen articles that are related to medical equipment over on Gary North's board in the embedded chips area. Let me know if you'd like me to post the URL's.

Miro: Thanks for the great response to the Y2K issues today. Those who think Ed and Jennifer Yourdon are out to make a quick buck off this situation are way off track. The man has a good reputation in IT circles. He wouldn't risk that reputation on a book like Time Bomb 2000 unless he really believed what's in there. The target audience of his book are non-IT people. Get it, read it and believe it. You'll be glad you did.

APH: Please allow me to add to LGB's kudos on your silver calls. I want to be the first student to sign up for the APH Institute of Hot Damn Technical Analysis. The great thing is that this is just the beginning. We've got some great years ahead of us, or, moving back to my Y2K side, at least 23 more great months! That should be enough for wave III in silver to finish, eh!

Anyone hear that gates got hit in the face with a pie in switzerland? hahah damn those swiss sure are funny! i would love to have a home video of that incident.

Old Soldier: I guess I appreciate your reference to a phase change, just as much as you appreciate my desite for a strong, streamlined, well-trained military. I also think that you are right that the tide has turned against BC. The news media have now broken through their 'taboo' and can discuss negative topics about the president.

My guess is that the 'phase change' or the shaking off of the 'old belief system' is beginning. The new era to come will be one where truth and honesty are given more weight, I think. Paper currencies will weaken significantly, with at least one gold-backed currency rising up from the ashes. Probably Asian, as they are having their phase change first. AG knows that a gold-backed currency is possible in modern times, and the Univ of Warwick Economic conference in 1991 described how it could be done. Our leaders will be held to higher standards of honesty, and much of the hidden corruption in our government ( generated by too many cold war years of unlimited funds ) will be rooted out. People will start clamoring again for truth in government and a grass-roots approach.

Unfortunately, none of this will come to pass until after a major crisis of some kind, and economic hard times. This is apparently human nature -- that real change does not occur until the hardship begins. How often does that new streetlight get put up on the corner unless someone died in an accident there?

The perfect example of this process is what is happening to our military. Nothing will be done to repair the last few years of damage -- until we have a major mishap in the field. Perhaps a small speed boat attack force penetrates our carrier defenses. Or a peacetime nuclear accident in Japan. Or more military plane crashes.

Only after the current political leaders of our armed forces are deposed through some major public embarrassment will competent experienced leadership return. This is the human condition in a nutshell, and why we have our 'phase changes'

I wish there were another way, but contrast and change does seem to be a better educator than the status quo. But -- could we not remember the mistakes we have made before -- and at least make new ones instead of making the same old ones over and over again?

Excellent analysis! I have some minor problems with 1 or 2 issues but not worth the bandwidth.

Thanx for the concise summary.

HAGGIS: Can you tell me the symbols for Johnsons Well Mining and Legend Mining; with the exchange they trade in? Also, do you know where they are trading at today? Thankee

JOHN DISNEY: Is 1 1/2 an extraordinary price for RANGY ( ADR ) ? ( didn't it trade in the 8s last year? )

Thanx for your tenacity. I'll attempt the search myself rather than burden you with my interests.

Thanx again!

Wouldn't it be ironic that this paper silver versus physical silver and the shortage thereof pops a light into the dull heads of those who have invested and profited from the paper bull these past fifteen years ( excuse the long sentence ) , that indeed, wealth really does come to a link with a physical item -be it a manufactured product, a piece of property, a bushel of wheat? How many stocks have soared because of the "promise" of a product, or the "potential" of an idea? We have options on futures contracts -two steps removed from the physical product itself. If there is a Big News hey-where's- my -silver -I -thought -I- bought Story in the silver market, I think that some of these big time paper asset players may shift towards the real thing, namely precious metal, and companies that own metals in the ground. We will surely be rewarded!

just another thought.....

there is a court marshal currently underway in one
of the armed services for an officer having affairs
with several women.......court marshal with fines
and probable jail time.......loss of all accrued
benefits.........

what about the commander-in-chief? what about justice?

his mis-deed has miles to go before he'll sleep.........

the commander-in-dis-grace---------for all americans......o

good for gold.......bad for everything associated with the us......

RJ:

Sorry you saw paranoia in what was intended as humor. My comment did, though, wish to warn anyone trying to reach Vronsky's site via the address: www.golden-eagle.com. which is what appears when the word gold is paired ( via a hyphen ) with the word eagle.

I was trying to stir up debate, interest and comment on the Ted Butler thesis published there. Soon after, however, LGB pasted the whole article into one of his posts.

From your comments I would conclude that you do not subscribe to his ideas, right?

Mr. A. Goose,

Davos ? Watch what Mr. Munk of ABX does with his paper gold. A move to copy WB, but buying physical gold for his personal account would not be of supprise! The CBs have stopped selling/leasing and that has put the entire world of LBMA at risk. ABX is of that world.

Bill Gates Announced today the end of windows .The new operating system will be cooked and baked with toppings of whipped cream. Get ready for Nerd Cream 2000 ----Away to save Ted from himself.

hopeLESS~~~~~~~~~~~~~~nite bro**

I like the call on oats. Should break to downside. Bohl shows a good picture too. TA dream formation. Desc. Triangle, tight narrow channel, consolidation...oh my. I'm getting on board....chuga, chuga.
away...to feed the horse


go gold, go lakers

Unlocked the door to Kitco to look in----- and what do I find ----Another----- released on a weekend pass from the Institution for the cerebral ---- sure unsure ----Bart how many more basket cases can this group survive ---Away for a long wealthy holiday..

Without speaking in parable - How about informing us as to the time-frame that allows our grandest wishes ( PMs replacing paper ) to come to fruition. Describe the financial world to a 10 year old child and tell him what the future brings and what his parents should do to GREATLY benefit from coming events ( when ??? 1 year, 5 years, 10 year plans ??? )

TIA

ANOTHER
Goodevening. Do you know what Korea is planning to do with the gold collected from fervently patriotic citizens? It appears that the gold has been sold, or perhaps leased several times. Can you comment on this?

I read a report that the Government was urging the very rich to donate their gold, as the collection was currently bringing in middle and low income gold only. This seems like a deliberate policy of envy against the rich. Do you know anything of these matters?

In regard to 180 days to prepare for combat...

Sounds to me like an absolutely unbelievable thing.
What for do they need to spend so much time?

I would imagine that 7-10 days should be more than enough
to mobilize even a very large unit..

Just curious...

D.A.: Thanks for you 13:38. This is very important to know --that even an Indian currency devaluation cannot stop the rise of silver. This was the only clear roadbock I could see. Perhaps the WB news was broken only because some traders caught on, after all. How about LGB's post that WB had already sold much of his silver? Do you think that was just a lateral transfer to one of the other two or so big buyers?

We always think of WB as a long-term value type investor -- whose name, as I think you said -- will lend much credence to the long term nature of this rally. Any idea how much gold G Soros and W Buffett have bought already?

Date: Wed Feb 04 1998 23:39
ANOTHER ( THOUGHTS! ) ID#60254:

Thanks for your response, I indeed expect ABX to have major troubles under a strong gold force. I expects that is why Munk remove ABX from his holding company.

Davos?


Tuesday February 3, 7:06 am Eastern Time

Highlights from a feast of ideas at Davos forum

DAVOS, Switzerland, Feb 3 ( Reuters ) - These are highlights from what luminaries said at the world's top business summit in Davos, where Asia's
financial crisis dominated the agenda and U.S. President Bill Clinton's sex scandal dominated the gossip:

- - - -

``I think the crisis is far from over. You may have a number of aftershocks. There is a general feeling that there ought to be some re-examination but
people right now are far too busy putting out fires to do any long-term thinking.''

- George Soros, international financier, on the Asian crisis.

- - - -

``There was a global collective misjudgement of Asia's ability to sustain 10 years of growth. All of us have contributed to it.''

- Ernst-Moritz Lipp, member of the board of managing directors, Dresdner Bank ( DRSD.F )

- - - -

``There is an interesting question to ask about credit rating agencies and their techniques. Why was there quite a significant failure?''

- Howard Davies, chairman of Britain's Financial Services Authority

- - - -

``I think the worst is over -- but I've been wrong before. These Asians will work like mad, they will produce and they will export their way out.''

- Philippe Paillart, group executive director, Standard Chartered Bank, Singapore

- - - -

``Asian countries will try to export their way out of the crisis. There will be competitive pressure on emerging markets. Latin American goods will be
vulnerable to increased competitiveness from Asia. The economies of Eastern Europe must also be aware of the dangers of contagion.''

- William Rhodes, vice-chairman, Citicorp

- - - -

``Japan is the world's most mismanaged economy. ( Its measures are ) a grotesque charade of fiscal fudging. Japan is on the verge of going into a
really bad situation.''

- Rudi Dornbusch, Massachusetts Institute of Technology economist

- - - -

``We have the money and we have the ability to solve Japan's problems.''

- Eisuke Sakakibara, Japan's vice-finance minister and also known as ``Mr Yen''

- - - -

``There are a lot of crocodiles in Uganda. Crocodiles have been eating us since time immemorial. These crocodiles could be eaten and made into
handbags. But none of our people had the eyes to see that. That highlights the lack of entrepreneurs on the continent. So please, more
entrepreneurs.''

- Yoweri Museveni, Uganda's president, making an appeal to investors to come to Africa

- - - -

``Russia is in a very precarious position because the international financial conditions have changed and the policy response in Russia has been in the
wrong direction. It is very important there should be a reversal of this reversal and moving forward. If ( Anatoly ) Chubais is removed, it would have a
very negative effect on the market, ( Boris ) Nemtsov even more so.

- George Soros, international financier

- - - -

``I can tell you that they ( Chubais and Nemtsov ) are not going to quit the government. Everything is in order.''

- Viktor Chernomyrdin, Russian Prime Minister

- - - -

``The euro will be a good store of value, at least as good as the franc, mark, guilder. It will certainly be a currency that will inspire confidence...''

- Jean-Claude Trichet, Bank of France Governor

- - - -

``I am going to see ( European Commission President ) Jaqcues Santer...to talk about the European Commission as a customer. We have a
constructive relationship, both on the competition side and an excellent relationship with them as a customer. They are using electronic mail, they are
using word processing software....They have a lot of information to work with and they are always trying to be more efficient in the way they do
that.''

- Bill Gates, Microsoft ( MSFT - news ) chairman

- - - -

``Stick to an information diet -- limit your time the way you limit your lunch so you don't get swamped with information.''

- Internet expert Joel de Rosnay, head of strategy at France's Cite des Sciences et de l'Industrie science park

- - - -

``Something happened here in Davos that probably only at Davos could happen. The Iranian foreign minister at one of the very closed panels was in
my session...and he walked towards me and either one of us could have moved over or pretended we weren't there, but we both shook hands. You
may think that's a very minor step, but in diplomacy that says a lot.''

- Bill Richardson, U.N. ambassador to United Nations

- - - -

"Monica Lewinsky has hijacked the meeting."

Dominique Moisi, deputy director of the French Institute of International Relations, quoted by Newsweek magazine

Bonn in panic as unions take job protests to streets

FROM ROGER BOYES IN BONN






GERMANS plan to take to the streets today in more than 200 cities and towns in protest at rising unemployment, edging towards five million. Bonn has drawn up an emergency job creation package, but union leaders said yesterday that it was unlikely to defuse public anger.

A jobless figure of about 4.8 million is expected to be announced today, a postwar record. Until now, Germany's workers have grumbled but done little more than mount polite demonstrations. From today, said Uwe Kantelhardt, who is co-ordinating the protests, all that will change. "These unemployment figures will mobilise more people than ever before," he said. Some militants will try to occupy job centres, block motorways and blockade ministries.

Herr Kantelhardt, in his union offices in Bielefeld, emphasised that the protests would not erupt into violence. "We are not in France," he said. Nonetheless, there has been considerable consultation between French and German radicals. The mere mention of street violence has sent the Government into a panic. Police are on alert throughout the country, especially at job centres in the east. Local authorities are to be encouraged to create manual and clerical jobs for 100,000 people. Those refusing job offers would have their benefits cut. The Government also plans subsidised training places for unqualified school-leavers and extra help in setting up small businesses.

The unions were quick to dismiss the programme of Helmut Kohl, the Chancellor. Ursula Engelen-Kefer, deputy chief of the trade union federation, said yesterday: "The local councils are in no financial position to take on these new responsibilities. They are already scrambling for cash."

Certainly, the piecemeal measures mark a huge retreat from Herr Kohl's promise, only recently abandoned, to create two million new jobs by the end of the century.

Norbert Blm, the Labour Minister, suddenly presented a detailed, favourable comparison of the unemployment crises in France and Germany. His goal, plainly, was to demonstrate that Germany was still far better off than its neighbour, and so Germans had no cause to mimic the French in setting police cars on fire or throwing stones at ministries.

This doesn'nt look like a Country that should have a strong currency.
With Japan's entire banking/financial system teetering on the brink of collapse, I don't see the $U.S. being seriosly challenged any time soon.

Ph in LA: Sorry. I hadn't meant to imply that short a term. Hell, for him that would almost be a day trade. In any case, I was only trying to add to the body of thought on the matter. ..... Have to admit that it would be a wonderful time to go out of character and make pocket full of loose change in the process. ...... but he will not announce it, I'm sure.