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Peter Brimelow: Gold bugs' unmerry Christmas
But Radical Bugs Say They Know Why
By Peter Brimelow
MarketWatch.com
Monday, January 2, 2012
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/gold-bugs-unmerry-christmas-2012-01-02
NEW YORK -- Santa brought the gold bugs quite a present last week. It was very big and extremely nasty. But maybe they can send it back.
From the previous Friday’s close to the low on Thursday, the CME February gold contract plunged $82.10 or 5.1%. The gold shares, as tracked by the NYSE Arca Gold Bugs Index (HUI), were down 6.6% at their worst.
Recoveries into the week's end enabled gold to finish down only 2.44% and the HUI down 2.54%. But by then, no doubt, most gold bulls were disgustedly drowning their sorrows.
... Dispatch continues below ...
Prophecy Drills 384.9 Meters Grading 0.623 g/t PGM+Au,
0.3% Ni, 0.15% Cu (0.45% NiEq) From Surface At Yukon Wellgreen Project
Company Press Release
Thursday, December 8, 2011
VANCOUVER, British Columbia -- Prophecy Platinum Corp. (TSX-V: NKL, OTC-QX: PNIKF, Frankfurt: P94P) has announced the final drill results from 2011 drilling at the company's fully owned Wellgreen platinum group metals, nickel, and copper project in the Yukon Territory.
Borehole WS11-192 intercepted 384.9 meters of 0.45 percent nickel equivalent starting from 9.45 meters depth. Included in this greater interval of continuous mineralization is a platinum group metals-rich zone with a combined platinum-palladium-gold grade of 1.358 grams per ton over 19.23 meters (nickel equivalent 0.74%).
The final drilling results for 2011 have shown the Wellgreen Central-East and Central-West deposits to be one contiguous body, whereby there is good potential to broaden significantly the Central-West resource base, which currently contributes only about a quarter of the current 43-101 compliant resource at Wellgreen. Overall the drilling program met with good success in expanding the resource to the east and south. The long drill intercepts suggest the deposit remains very much open in those directions.
For the complete drilling results and the full company statement, please visit:
http://prophecyplat.com/news_2011_dec08_prophecy_platinum_wellgreen_dril...
This was the reverse of what was supposed to happen. Thus, on the Friday before Christmas, the Japanese bullion dealer Mitsui remarked: "The gold price has gone up during the period between Christmas and New Year in eight of the last nine years (2004 being the exception), by just over 2% on average. If this trend continues, gold would stand around $1,650 by the year's end."
Gold had in fact staged a nice $70 rally from the beating it took earlier in the month -- a possibility that veteran gold bugs anticipated.
What happened? The group I like to call the "radical gold bugs" (because they make not merely the traditional inflation argument, but also claim gold's price has long been artificially repressed by public and private interests) cried foul, of course.
For example, Thursday's remarks at the website Jesse's Cafe Americain referred to "this obvious bear raid on the paper precious-metals market over past four weeks. ... One has to be a bit naive or disingenuous to ignore the blatant bombing of the market with large numbers of contracts for sale during thinly traded markets. This is the not the sort of trading that a profit-seeking trader would do."
What now? The technical damage, of course, is tremendous. Chartist Martin Pring says in his weekly: "Gold has now completed this upward sloping head-and-shoulders top and re-confirmed the break by tracing out a new low." Momentum measures "are getting oversold, and we may see a bounce. However, I think precious metals are in a primary bear market, and that is probably where we should keep our focus."
Pring may be right about gold's being oversold. On Thursday, MarketVane's Bullish Consensus for gold fell to 56%, the lowest since Dec. 5, 2008. The lowest reading in that tumultuous year was 49% a couple of weeks earlier, so this really is extreme.
An influential observer noted this. On Friday, The Gartman Letter (TGL) said: "We did not expect to see gold hold as well as it has or did in the past 24 hours, and we were not prepared yesterday to issue buying orders as soon as we shall be doing so. ... We've been neutral of since mid-November. We are about to become bullish once again. ... This is a warning."
TGL sold its large gold holdings earlier this month in its perhaps best-timed gold exit ever. Although widely denigrated by gold bugs (it's mutual), TGL actually has a pretty good gold purchase record.
Another equally surprising bullish voice was raised on Friday by analyst Frank Veneroso, reporting on Lemetropolecafe.com.
He said: "I think what we may be seeing right now is a bunch of traders trying to break a multi-year trend line in gold during the thinnest trading of the year in order to hit stops. I have a hunch that some big central banks who are under-positioned in gold are buying into this break."
Veneroso has an important place in gold history for conceptualizing, in the 1990s, the importance of Eastern physical demand to the gold price, then a new factor. But for several years he has dismayed gold enthusiasts by ignoring the metal.
On Friday, however, he concluded forcefully: "If my hunch is right, after the current year-end chart-manipulation games, and with the turn of the year, gold will rise sharply in price."
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Sona Discovers Potential High-Grade Gold Mineralization
at Blackdome in British Columbia -- 13.6g over 1.5 Meters
From a Company Press Release
November 22, 2011
VANCOUVER, British Columbia -- With its latest surface diamond drilling program at its 100-percent-owned, formerly producing Blackdome gold mine in southern British Columbia, Sona Resources Corp. has discovered a potentially high-grade gold-mineralized area, with one hole intersecting 13.6 grams of gold in 1.5 meters of core drilling.
"We intersected a promising new mineralized zone, and we feel optimistic about the assay results," says Sona's president and CEO, John P. Thompson. "We have undertaken an aggressive exploration program that has tested a number of target zones. Our discovery of this new gold-bearing structure is significant, and it represents a positive development for the company."
Sona aims to bring its permitted Blackdome mill back into production over the next year and a half, at a rate of 200 tonnes per day, with feed from the formerly producing Blackdome mine and the nearby Elizabeth gold deposit property. A positive preliminary economic assessment by Micon International Ltd., based on a gold price of $950 per ounce over eight years, has estimated a cash cost of $208 per tonne milled, or $686 per gold ounce recovered.
For the company's complete press release, please visit:
http://www.sonaresources.com/_resources/news/SONA_NR18_2011-opt.pdf
