Gold is still a bull market and we're long-term investors, AIS Group chief says

"Gold has really been in a trading range for the past year and a half, but it's done this several times in its bull market of the last decade," AIS Group chief John Hummel tells CNBC in a Dec. 20 interview. 

"There was a period back in 2006-07 where it went sideways for close to a year and a half. And then coming out of the 2008 bear market, it spent a number of months before it broke out to new highs. We really believe there was nothing about the peak back in September of 2011 that would suggest that it was a major final top. We think there's going to be much more euphoric speculation than has occurred so far. Frankly, looking at the market, we think there's a great deal of skepticism about it. ... We're long-term investors, and one of the things that we looked at was relative performance on a long-term basis. One of the keys that really led us to turn bullish on gold back at the end of 2001, early 2002 was the relative strength that gold was beginning to develop versus financial assets. And looking at that in the long term as we do, we continue to believe that it's still in its bull market. ... As long as real interest rates are as low as they are and as long as central banks are as aggressive as they are, that's typically a very bullish environment for gold."

More information can be found online at http://www.goldbullionadvisors.com

Gold bars being snapped up in Switzerland, Austria, and Germany

Private investors in Switzerland, Austria and Germany are lining up to buy gold bars the size of a credit card that can easily be broken into 1-gram pieces and used as payment in an emergency. ... 

"The rich are buying standard bars or have deposits of physical gold. People that have less money are buying up to 100 grams," said Michael Mesaric, CEO of Valcambi. ... 

Demand is particularly strong among Germans, still scarred by post-World War I hyperinflation, when money became all but worthless and it took a wheelbarrow full of notes to buy a loaf of bread.

"Above all, it's people aged between 40 and 70 that are investing in gold bars and coins," said Mesaric. "They've heard tales from their parents about wars and crises devaluing money." ...

"Sales rise according to the temperature of the crisis," said Thomas Geissler, whose firm Ex Oriente Lux operates 17 gold vending machines in Europe, the United States and the United Arab Emirates. ...

"Customers are hoarding gold mostly at home as a precaution against a crisis, just as their fathers and grandfathers did before them," Geissler said.

More information can be found online at http://www.goldbullionadvisors.com

Gold forecast from hedge-fund chief: "We'll be visiting $2,000 in 2013"

"The Fed has tied interest-rate policy to the amount of unemployment that we have -- it has to be at 6.5%," Steel Vine Investments CEO Spencer Patton tells Fox Business in a Dec. 18 interview. 

"And what that means is that you're going to get low interest rates that are very bullish for gold and will lead to inflation coming down the road. Endless money printing. ... As hedge funds bring in cash -- running one myself -- gold is an investment allocation that makes a lot of sense for hedge funds, so I think the gold theory could really benefit as money runs into the market. You'll see that from individual investors as well. Once they get more discretionary income and they are fearful of their dollar losing value, they'll start buying into things like gold and silver." 

Addressing Saxo Bank's annual end-of-the-year "outrageous" forecasts, which this year include a projected $1,200 gold price as a possible but unexpected "black swan"-type low, he says: "In order for gold to get to $1,200 an ounce, you'd have to have a deflationary collapse, which would be catastrophic. I think the lowest that I could imagine gold being is at $1,550 at the bottom. But I think we'll be visiting $2,000 in 2013."

More information can be found online at http://www.goldbullionadvisors.com

Gold bull market won't end "anytime soon," Outstanding Investments editor says

 I don't think the gold bull market will end anytime soon,Byron King tells the Gold Report. I believe that much of the recent gold exit has been a reaction to the impending tax changes on Jan. 1, when tax rates will go up unless there is congressional action. I don't think very many investors are selling physical gold or silver. I do think people are selling paper and electronic gold to lock in gains and pay capital gains at the lower 2012 tax rate. It is tax-driven selling, not a reflection that the world's monetary or economic system is getting well.

People have to make their own decisions. If investors own a physical precious metal, the last thing they ought to do is sell out. Really, never sell actual gold or silver if you can avoid it. With the paper gold, or electronic gold, or gold shares? It depends on the investor's situation. If you have large gains, perhaps you want to lock in the gains, sell and pay a 15% capital gains rate in 2012, versus selling it after Jan. 1 and paying a higher rate. If that's your case, then sell now and buy it all back next year. Everyone is different, however.

Right now, an investor ought to have cash, which is dry gunpowder, as well as physical precious metals in one's possession. I don't mean own a certificate, own a call on gold or gold in somebody else's storage locker. I mean, own the gold!

More information can be found online at http://www.goldbullionadvisors.com

BofA reiterates $2,000 gold bullion forecast for 2013

Gold, copper, silver, platinum and palladium will outperform other commodities next year on easing by the U.S. Federal Reserve and supply constraints, according to Bank of America Corp. ...

"We expect large-scale policy easing by the Fed and the ECB should push gold prices higher," the analysts wrote, forecasting gold prices at $2,000 an ounce for 2013 and $2,400 for the end of 2014. "A stronger Chinese economy will likely lend support to supply constrained metals next year, and we expect copper prices to average $7,750 a ton in the fourth quarter of 2013." 

The bank also sees a strong support level under gold because of emerging-market demand: 

Our analysis shows that investors will have to buy significant amounts of gold to push prices above $2,000/oz this year. However, with emerging markets getting richer, their budget allocation to non-essential items such as gold will likely increase in the long-run. This means that the marginal importance of investors could start to decline in the longer term, likely supporting a gold price floor above $1,500/oz over the next decade. In any case, a firm recovery in the US and global economies will remain the greatest risk to gold prices over this new phase of QE3, as a rapid and disorderly unwind of this monetary easing cycle would likely drive investors out of gold, in our view.

More information can be found online at http://www.goldbullionadvisors.com

Gold Bullion is going a lot higher," Peter Schiff says

The factors pushing down gold prices are temporary and the precious metal will ultimately rally to $3,000, $5,000 or even more per ounce in the near future, says Peter Schiff of Euro Pacific Capital in an appearance on Yahoo! Finance's "Daily Ticker" show.

In the meantime, says Schiff, gold prices are retreating because investors in the U.S. are taking profits before capital gains taxes potentially rise. European investors are unloading their gold holdings as they become more confident about their own economies. Redemptions by hedge funds and other institutional investors positioning themselves for the new year are also contributing to the selloff, Schiff notes.

"Even if you consider all those factors, the price of gold has barely gone down," Schiff said. "The uptrend is still intact and gold is going a lot higher particularly if we avoid the fiscal cliff."

(If the U.S. does not avoid the so-called fiscal cliff, massive tax hikes and spending cuts will automatically take effect and threaten to send the economy into recession, which would reduce demand for gold and other commodities. But some analysts say a stronger economy is bearish for gold because demand for gold as a safe haven declines, often as demand for the U.S. dollar rises.)

"We're asking the world to give us money indefinitely so that we can live beyond our means," Schiff adds. "When the world figures this out and decides it doesn't want to play this anymore, it's going to mean a much bigger drop in the dollar. The Fed will have to print even more money to keep interest rates artificially low and [gold] prices will skyrocket."

More information can be found online at http://www.goldbullionadvisors.com

"It's clear that the gold bullion industry is unable to grow supply to a significant degree"

A number of market analysts and gold-industry insiders are warning about a possible shortage of gold supply according to Jeff Clark of Casey Research. ... There are some clear implications for us investors:

Supply will get tighter. It's not because there's a lack of metal in the ground. It's increasingly critical to ask whether any given deposit is economically viable, politically feasible, and ecologically agreeable. Despite increased budgets on exploration (last year the gold industry spent a record $8 billion) and despite a 570%+ increase in the gold price since 2001, discovery rates are still decreasing. It's clear that the gold industry is unable to grow supply to a significant degree in spite of increased spending and increasing margins.

Chinese production won't show up at your local dealer. The country is keeping it all. When you read about growing global supply, you have to subtract what China produces and imports to determine what's really available. As Chinese appetite continues to grow, this could become a front-and-center issue.

China will likely cause an even bigger imbalance. As our research shows, China's share of supply is increasing, while the rest of the world's is decreasing. Meanwhile, there is every reason to believe it will continue to acquire gold-mining assets. We think positioning yourself in likely takeover targets is a wise speculation (whether China is the buyer or not). That's exactly what many of us at Casey Research are doing.

A public rush for metal will empty the shelves. There's no rush like a gold rush, and if we enter a mania period, bullion will be hard to come by at retail outlets. Why wait for that? A mania is when you want to sell.

Our advice is simple: make sure your personal gold reserves are in place before a gold supply crunch becomes reality. And for leverage on the likely resulting mania, build a portfolio of the best of the best gold stocks.

More information can be found online at http://www.goldbullionadvisors.com

Goldcorp founder sees gold price tripling past $5,000

Gold is heading to $5,000 or higher and silver to $200, says Goldcorp founder and McEwen Mining CEO Rob McEwen. 

"We have it tripled," McEwen tells Bloomberg in a Dec. 4 interview. "There's good reason. The debt that's going on in the world, it's accumulating very quickly, and gold seems to be tracking it. And politicians are very good at underestimating and overdelivering on their promise. When they say the debt's going to be here, it's always going to be much higher. And people are looking at it and saying, 'What's this doing to the currency I have?' And there's pressure building and looking to crush some of the major world currencies. ... There's massive amounts of debt. Right now it's at about $16 trillion; the White House said in February it's going to $26 trillion by 2022. It's just exceeding the ability of the economy to finance it, and it isn't happening just in the U.S. It's all around the world."

More information can be found online at http://www.goldbullionadvisors.com

PIMCO bond king endorses gold again in latest newsletter

Billionaire Bill Gross, the managing director of PIMCO, one of the largest fixed-income investment companies in the world, and the man charged with stewarding the world's biggest bond fund in the PIMCO Total Return Fund during these dangerous times has once again recommended that investors buy gold. 

Bill is turning into something of a real gold bug; that is, after hinting around about "real assets" for some time now and avoiding actually writing the "G-word" in his weekly commentary, something that he now does on a fairly regular basis. In his December Investment Outlook, Gross adds to the growing collection of recent commentaries that have popularized the practice of questioning rosy assumptions about economic growth.

In the case of the U.S., more and more wise men are now thinking that sustained growth rates of 3% or 4% are a thing of the past. According to Gross and others, this development has important implications for investors. ...

Along with the yellow metal, Gross also recommends other commodities, TIPS, high-quality municipal bonds, and emerging market stocks while steering clear of banking stocks and debt from developed nations (for obvious reasons). It's no coincidence that an increasing number of the world's richest and smartest men are talking about gold these days. They didn't just wake up one day and discover they were billionaires.

More information can be found online at http://www.goldbullionadvisors.com

Berkshire Hathaway unit endorses gold bullion

Gold may gain as businesses temper spending and stimulus falls short, John Gilbert, chief investment officer at General Re-New England Asset Management, a unit of Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Inc., wrote in a newsletter. 

"There is growing evidence that the rising price of gold is a statement about the discouraging prospects for returns on productive investments," Gilbert said. "We hope that this analysis is wrong. We fear that it is not. ...

"Businesses express caution by not making the investments necessary to improve productivity," Gilbert wrote. It's not "clear that activist central banks can repeal gravity by encouraging investors to take risk anyway. There will be a tendency to higher gold prices until that changes."

If you own a gold fund, you've probably heard about the big gains gold bullion has made this year. You may also be wondering why your gold fund hasn't shared in any of those gains.

The short answer: If you invested in a fund that buys the shares of gold-mining companies -- as many do -- you probably lost money this year. If you bought shares of a fund that buys the metal itself, you made money.

That's not the normal order of things. Typically, gold miners fare better than the metal itself in a bull market for gold. But these are not typical times. ...

The question now: Gold or gold stocks? "Most people are better off owning the metal," says [Tocqueville Gold fund co-manager John] Hathaway. When you own the metal, you don't have to worry about missed earnings or disappointing production results. You only have to worry about whether gold prices will go up or down.

More information can be found online at http://www.goldbullionadvisors.com