GS: Will the Saudis buy gold and silver shares next?
By: Peter Cooper, Arabian Money
Saudi Arabian investors look set to emerge as the biggest buyers of gold and silver shares in the coming week as the leverage that these stocks offer to rising gold and silver prices becomes increasingly attractive.
The revelation of a $3.5 billion purchase of gold bullion by a group of Saudi investors about a month ago has stunned the precious metals community. But this came as the venerable old Perth Mint said it could no longer cope with demand and closed its doors to all new sales until January.
Both are highly significant developments in the normally quiet world of precious metals and suggest that something much bigger is afoot and that serious price increases are almost upon us. Indeed, gold leapt $50 in late trading last Friday, or almost seven per cent. What lies ahead this week?
Comex conundrum
It does not need a genius to see that physical buying of precious metals is rocketing while the price is strangely depressed. The answer to this conundrum is the importance of the Comex futures market in setting the gold price.
In this paper market hedge funds have been net sellers, and that has been keeping the price down. Now hedge funds are coming to the end of their selling, and the change in direction for precious metals is likely to be dramatic. There is no doubt about the true level of demand for the tightly supplied physical precious metals market.
Gold and silver stocks jumped sharply in late trading last Friday, with a gain of 30 per cent for a pure silver bell weather stock like Pan American Silver.
Stock rally imminent
Let us not forget that the reverse leverage to the gold and silver price - which has taken their stock prices down to 40-year lows this year, will now act in the opposite direction. Gold and silver shares are going to have their biggest rally in 40 years if the metal prices recover suddenly.
That is why the brightest investors in the Persian Gulf are loading up with these stocks, and the biggest price increases will come among the most depressed of these shares, namely the pure silver producers.
The more intelligent investors will also be looking at gold junior stocks whose knocked down share prices are an absolute steal at these levels, and will doubtless make anybody buying now extremely rich in a short time.
