Why the rush to buy gold coins shows the way the gold price will go and not the futures market
By Peter Cooper
GoldSeek.com
Sunday, 5 October 2014
There’s a rush to buy gold coins and bars all over the world this autumn. Last week coin sales at the US Mint were running at the highest this year with September sales double the August tally. There was a similar surge in sales of coins and minted bars at the Perth Mint to 68,781 ounces last month with Chinese buyers accounting for 80 per cent of business. The super-rich are stocking up on gold.
In Perth the biggest seller is the one-kilogram bars, which are worth about $45,000 each at current prices. Buyers tell dealers they are buying gold as an insurance against a market collapse. But the other reason that they are buying gold now is the drop in the price to around $1,200 an ounce.
Investment logic
Is this logical? In investment markets most investors are only comfortable about investing after a long uptrend when they can feel really sure about future performance. Sadly that is the madness of crowds speaking and being among the last to invest in an asset class going up is a fatal error.
Could those investing in gold now also be a mad crowd? Well to be fair the amounts of money going into gold coins and bars in Perth and the US Mint are absolutely tiny in comparison to the amount tied up in global stock markets or bonds. It is the rising trend that is interesting, not the amount being invested.
If gold coin and bar sales are up why are prices falling? That’s a good question. It’s because the price of gold is set in a paper market known as the futures exchange or rather exchanges as they are multiplying particularly in China.
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