For the love of Khrysos, what happened to gold?

[obama-lama]

Quote from Rearden Metal:

I do feel bad (and personally responsible) for anyone who went in long with me at $1146... It wasn't a good call.

It wasn't a good call for a trade. Review that buy when gold hits 1600 or so within the next 12 months. 1600 may not even be a good exit point.

Gold is the money of kings; silver is the money of gentlemen; barter is the money of peasants; but debt is the money of slaves. -- Norm Franz

He who has the gold makes the rules.
He who makes the rules has to produce the gold.

 

[pspr]

Quote from Rearden Metal:

Give me a break- I bought hard drugs for personal use. <b>The president did that</b>, and the one before him. You make it sound like I'm some kind of criminal or something, but the prohibition enforcement thugs are the real criminals who will go down in history as no different than all the purveyors of senseless oppression that came before them:

http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&postid=2652002

You're saying Obama and Bush II have used heroin? Can you provide a url to your source for this information?

We all know Buba Clinton smoked pot but "never inhaled".

 

[Fractal]

Quote from Rearden Metal:

I do feel bad (and personally responsible) for anyone who went in long with me at $1146... It wasn't a good call.

But there's a reason why people here are inclined to take my recommendations far more seriously than the random predictions of the average ET member- I'm usually right. A review of the archives here would make it pretty clear that blindly following anything I recommend <i>usually</i> does pay off nicely... just not this time.
For the record I'm staying long gold, even though my most recent entry point kind of sucked.

No worries at all here (speaking on my behalf only). I personally didn't act until 12/15, and only on a small amount (13% add), as 12/11's morning suddenly put me in doubt.

At the same time, I didn't sell most of my initial position until Friday. I'm kicking myself for doing so, because I acted based on the $ in the trade, not the set up itself. I've gotten shaken out of gold 2 or 3 times based on retracements like this.

We all take bad shots. Trading can never be divorced from personal development, which is why its value goes beyond the $. It takes integrity to publicly admit a wrong call, since we know they come anyway and on balance are uncannily right.

 

[cleveland45]

Trading gold can be a bitch where a 10 to 15% correction is looming overhead at any time. Or in the case of 2006, 25% in less than two months. Beware.

 

[Rearden Metal]

Quote from pspr:

You're saying Obama and Bush II have used heroin? Can you provide a url to your source for this information?

No, coke... therefore my statement was accurate.

 

[Ghost of Cutten]

Quote from Rearden Metal:

I do feel bad (and personally responsible) for anyone who went in long with me at $1146... It wasn't a good call.

But there's a reason why people here are inclined to take my recommendations far more seriously than the random predictions of the average ET member- I'm usually right. A review of the archives here would make it pretty clear that blindly following anything I recommend <i>usually</i> does pay off nicely... just not this time.
For the record I'm staying long gold, even though my most recent entry point kind of sucked.

I agree for the most part, and my comment was not trying to knock your post at all. I was just pointing out that it's hard to trade from other people's calls - even if they are profitable (which I agree yours are, I certainly pay attention to them). IMO blindly following even a very profitable trader is not really a good idea.

If you follow someone else's calls, you don't know their risk tolerance, how they would handle a pullback, under what conditions they might change their mind, what kind of size they are putting on etc. Unless the person you follow is going to hand-hold you all the way with regular updates, you are on your own for the 90% of trading that takes part after entering a position. Whereas if you trade your own ideas and methods, you know how to handle the whole trade from entry all the way through to exit & post-mortem. Perhaps more importantly, when you piggy-back someone else, you give up responsibility for the trade and are no longer in control.

"The fruits of your trading or investment success will be in direct ratio to the honesty and sincerity of your own effort in keeping your own records, doing your own thinking, and reaching your own conclusions. You cannot wisely read a book on ‘ how to keep fit’ and leave the physical exercise to another." - Jesse Livermore

 

[tmarket]

Quote from Rearden Metal:
I do feel bad (and personally responsible) for anyone who went in long with me at $1146... It wasn't a good call.

Don't worry about it. We were just messing with your head. Fewer traders were going along with your longs than you think.

Doug Kass has a target of 900 by second quarter 2010. (Chart is not his).

 

[ang_99]

Quote from Rearden Metal:

Give me a break- I bought hard drugs for personal use. <b>The president did that</b>, and the one before him. You make it sound like I'm some kind of criminal or something, but the prohibition enforcement thugs are the real criminals who will go down in history as no different than all the purveyors of senseless oppression that came before them:

http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&postid=2652002

RM, just thought I'd throw my .02 in. The reason I have trouble subscribing to the whole 'legalize drugs' school of though is this..

When idiots become addicted to drugs they break down and become a liability to society. They will break into your home for 5 dollars. They leech off the system and contribute nothing. They are no longer themselves and become a heavy burden to everyone around them.

Trust me, I've know many addicts.

 

[Ghost of Cutten]

Quote from ang_99:

RM, just thought I'd throw my .02 in. The reason I have trouble subscribing to the whole 'legalize drugs' school of though is this..

When idiots become addicted to drugs they break down and become a liability to society. They will break into your home for 5 dollars. They leech off the system and contribute nothing. They are no longer themselves and become a heavy burden to everyone around them.

Trust me, I've know many addicts.

In that case, the undesirable activity is the breaking into peoples homes, stealing, defrauding the welfare system etc i.e. genuine crime. Which is already illegal. A bit like people who like alcohol but drink and drive, or drink and beat their wives or start fights. People who take drugs and *do not* commit crime (other than taking the drug of course) should be treated the same as people who drink and don't beat their wives, people who drink but don't drink and drive.

Basically you are convicting people who can take drugs without stealing or harming other people, for the actions of those drug-takers who do resort to crime and harm. On the same logic, we should convict everyone who drinks of a crime, for the actions of those drinkers who do commit crime whilst intoxicated. And convict all smokers, for the actions of those who smoke in front of their young children and fill their growing lungs with tar and carcinogens.

I take it you want to ban alcohol and smoking too, for those identical reasons right? After all, that is the only logically consistent position. Either you do collective punishment equally across all goods and acts which have negative social consequences (so cars are banned because some people drive recklessly and kill people; booze and cigarettes are banned etc), or you convict only on an individual basis, punishing people for genuine moral crimes that *they themselves have committed*. You don't jail people who have done nothing wrong, just because other people doing similar things decided to turn criminal.

 

[joe4422]

Gold's a risky long term investment IMO. It has no true value. Some will say all the uses it has, but there is far more supply to instrinsic demand than oil for example. Gold is only valuable so long as people believe it is.

The event causing the recent sell off, is the strengthening dollar, and world banks buying so much gold. During the last gold bubble, world banks stocked up big time, and then the prices crashed. We may be seeing the same thing again.


One day, both gold and diamonds will be nearly worthless.