S and P agrees with us on NZ banks

New look website

We have at last unveiled our new look website this week.  Still the same useful (we hope!) content but with a fresher look.  We’ll be making some more tweaks here and there in the coming weeks too.

Bank Downgrades

We’ll it’s been an action packed week in the world of money.  We’ve had bank downgrades worldwide affecting the 4 big Australian banks and their New Zealand subsidiaries too.  All were downgraded 1 level.

(More) Central Bank intervention

Then (conveniently we could say) the next day we had the co-ordinated Central Bank action with the Fed halving the interest rate they charge the ECB for dollar swaps (If you want a description as to how this works then check out this CNBC article, “How Does Europe Borrow Dollars From the Fed?”). So that appears to have bought some more time for Europe although who knows how much.

We were fortunate enough to attend a small gathering with Professor Fekete on Monday night and he commented he would not be surprised to see some major events take place by early in the New Year.  He also thought the Europe situation was largely engineered as a distraction from the serious debt issues the USA has.  So he felt that will come back onto everyones radar again before too long.

Professor Fekete and this weeks articles

In honour of the Professor Fekete being in Auckland last week for a Gold Symposium here we’ve published the Professor’s latest article “What Chinese Unemployment?”.  He has a different take on the impact of a China slowdown.

Also this week we’ve finally typed up our notes on the the Panel Discussion on the final day of the recent Sydney Gold Symposium. This Panel featured the big names of the event: Eric Sprott, John Embry, Egon von Greyerz, & Ben Davies.  So check that out as they answer common questions like, “How much should I have in precious metals?”.  And “What percentage should I have in gold versus silver?”

And if you’re mulling over shares in precious metals miners the final article this week has some astounding numbers in term of performance during precious bull markets in precious metals shares.  “What ‘to the moon’ will look like“.

S&P agrees with us on NZ banks!

Back on the subject of banks and following on from our article last week “Bank Failures – Could they happen in NZ? The Reserve Bank thinks so”, we stumbled across the S&P report on Asia Pacific banking after the downgrade announcement.  (And no we don’t have any inside banking connections.  It was merely coincidental that we wrote an article on bank failure 2 days before a worldwide bank downgrade!).

Anyway here’s the relevant section of the S&P report to little ole NZ… [emphasis added ours]

As we pointed out in last weeks article the “high risk” to the New Zealand bank sector is that they rely upon offshore funding for a good portion of their borrowing.  So don’t say you haven’t been warned.

Charts for NZD gold and silver

Here’s the 6 month charts for gold and silver.  At the moment it’s the NZD/USD exchange rate that seems to be the main impact on our local prices.  Gold has been holding up pretty well, although it is now down $100 on what it was a few weeks ago, sitting at about $2225.

Silver still looks pretty good value to us too.  It’s continues to consolidate within a slight down trend.  But notice how it’s had plenty of support at about $38, currently sitting at about $41.

Silly season hours

We’ll still be open for business over the holidays although 2 of our suppliers will be shut from the 24th Dec until returning on the 9th Jan.  Another supplier will still be taking orders on non stat days but won’t be dispatching any orders until the 9th January.  So there will only be limited product options over the 2 weeks of Christmas and New Year.  So just 2 and a half weeks left to get your gold and silver!

Give David a call on 0800 888 465 or emailorders@goldsurvivalguide.co.nz if you’d like a quote before then.

Have a golden week!