Good afternoon
Retail sales in the States were down a touch, as expected - but revised down to negative from a little growth last month. Certainly not a reason to increase rates for Yellen...
Valeant getting smashed in the States, taking Pershing Square and Paulson down with them....Ackmann lost more than a billion bugs today!!Good work for a single day!
Oil and iron ore continue their descent....hitting big miners like BHP, which has given up all of it´s recent gains now and is down by 15% since the recent high on the 7th of March...Metals are roughly unchanged today.
Gold stocks in Australia continue to be under pressure from index-reweightings, and a lower gold price. Most of the larger producers are down another 5% or so today....Clearly, the weight of money is against Australia this week, and investors fear, that 2016 will be similar to 2015, when gold stocks got off to a flying start, only to get slammed for the rest of the year.
I personally believe, that this new "bull market" in gold is not over! Statiscially, the last 5 bull markets lasted for at least 700 days - and while this is no reason in itself to say that the current bull run is still on, I think the enviroment of politicial uncertainty, high indebtness, and negative interest rates is creating a very fair chance for gold to go higher, once this consolidation is over. This week is the week to buy Aussie gold´s, while te reweighting is testing the buyers liquidity! On the side, it´s interesting, just how willingly investors in GDXJ get repeatedly hurt by these re-weightings...you should use these to invest against them!
Berkeley Energia - have started the development of their uranium project near Salamanca. the upgrading of a local road as well as electricity line has started. Not a major story as yet, as cash reserves of 8.4 mill A$ as at 31.12. are far from being sufficient to start in earnest - but BKY are certainly showing their commitment, which might put pressure on current talks with possible off-takers and/or JV-partners. I guess the locals will also like it...I don´t want to bore you with this stock - but I really like it!
Otherwise, very little to report today! Have a nice eveing!
WS