Gold has traded between $1,270 and $1,290 so far today…as of 10:45 am Pacific, bullion is up $1 an ounce at $1,274…Silver has added a nickel to $17.13…Copper is up a penny at $2.12…Crude Oil has surged $1.30 a barrel to $47.51 while the U.S. Dollar Index is down slightly at 94.54…
The Great Gold Rush of 2016 is gathering pace…holdings in exchange-traded funds have now surged by a quarter with investors taking advantage of lower prices over the past 2 weeks to enlarge stakes on rising concerns about central bank policy making worldwide…ETF holdings have increased to 1,822.3 metric tons, according to data compiled by Bloomberg, the most since late 2013 after bottoming at a 7-year low in January…importantly, over the past 2 weeks as prices lost 1.6%, ETF’s swelled 63.2 tons, rising every day…
An interesting report from Pinnacle Digest over the weekend. “While Trump and Clinton remain tight in national polls, being prepared for a potential Donald Trump Presidency is something prudent investors are doing right now. He could transform international trade, the global monetary system and, at the very least, the American economy. These all directly impact your portfolio. Furthermore, President Trump could cause countries to dump treasuries, which will lead to a much weaker U.S. dollar…and that’s exciting for Gold.”
Lunacy In Ontario
The most incompetent and corrupt provincial government in the country, Ontario’s Liberals under Premier Justin Wynne, is about to embark on a massive “climate change” plan beyond anything it has already introduced…this is absolute lunacy and a classic example of how the political left in North America is using “climate change” to advance a Big Government, social engineering agenda (all the more reason it’s so important that Trump captures the White House in November in order to reverse this destructive ideology…while Trump scares some traditional conservatives, he could prove to be one of the most effective anti-left politicians in history)…
The Globe and Mail reported this morning that the Ontario government will spend more than $7 billion over 4 years on a sweeping climate change plan that will affect every aspect of life – from what people drive to how they heat their homes and workplaces – in a bid to slash the province’s carbon footprint (and, of course, “save the planet”)…
Ontario will begin phasing out Natural Gas for heating, provide incentives to retrofit buildings and give rebates to drivers who buy electric vehicle…it will also require that gasoline sold in the province contain less carbon, bring in building code rules requiring all new homes by 2030 to be heated with electricity or geothermal systems, and set a target for 12% of all new vehicle sales to be electric by 2025…
Yes, in Ontario, government knows best…it picks the winners and the losers (and screws up just about every time)…
Ontario Liberal governments have repeatedly stumbled from one insane policy to another while impeding the private sector and racking up one of the biggest debts of any jurisdiction in the world…taxpayers are shelving out $1 billion per month just to pay the interest on the Liberal debt…now the Liberals want to convince everyone that these ambitious new plans will actually work and won’t create mass disruption for the province’s automotive and energy sectors while putting Ontario at a competitive disadvantage, especially if Trump and Republicans sweep November’s U.S. elections?…
The 57-page Climate Change Action Plan was debated by Premier Wynne’s cabinet last Wednesday and subsequently obtained by The Globe and Mail…stamped “Cabinet Confidential,” the document lays out a strategy from 2017 to 2021…it contains about 80 different policies, grouped into 32 different “actions”…each action has a price tag attached to it (knowing the Liberals, that price tag is far greater than what they think or are prepared to tell the people)…
Trump Underestimated
More evidence that Donald Trump continues to be underestimated…according to a key group of U.S. business leaders, the Trump train will be permanently derailed come November (we believe the opposite – Establishment Hillary is a seriously flawed candidate and will be crushed)…if you’re a contrarian, though, you have to love these numbers – a staggering 83% of American CFO’s said they believe Clinton will become the next President of the U.S. according to the latest CNBC Global CFO Council survey conducted between April 29 and May 11..the CNBC Global CFO Council represents some of the largest public and private companies in the world, collectively managing nearly $4 trillion in market capitalization across a wide variety of sectors…the U.S. companies on the list have a combined market cap of more than $2 trillion…
Oil Update – Goldman Sachs Does A U-Turn
Oil prices are higher today after long-time bear Goldman Sachs said the market had ended almost 2 years of oversupply following global Oil disruptions and flipped to a deficit…supply disruptions from Nigeria, Venezuela, China and North America triggered a U-turn in the Oil outlook of Goldman Sachs, which long warned of overflowing storage and another looming crash in prices…
“The Oil market has gone from nearing storage saturation to being in deficit much earlier than we expected,” Goldman said, adding that the market “likely shifted into deficit in May…driven by both sustained strong demand as well as sharply declining production.”
In the Americas, major Oil exporter Venezuela seemed on the brink of meltdown, triggering fears of default by its national Oil company PDVSA which has to make almost $5 billion in bond payments this year…the country’s Oil production has already fallen by at least 188,000 bpd since the start of the year as PDVSA struggles to make the investment needed to keep output steady…
In China, output fell 5.6% to 4.04 million bpd in April, compared with the same time last year…
And in the United States, Crude production has fallen to 8.8 million bpd, 8.4% below 2015 peaks as the sector suffers a wave of bankruptcies…
Countering these disruptions, OPEC pumped 32.44 million bpd in April, up 188,000 bpd from March…this is the highest since at least 2008, according to a Reuters review…
In today’s Morning Musings…
1. Is Tudor Gold (TUD, TSX-V) eyeing more land (and whose?) in the “Heart of Gold” Camp?…
2. A multi-million ounce deposit gives this particular undervalued Gold stock much more upside potential…
3. A fundamental shift in the long-term chart for Silver…
4. A Venture non-resource stock with momentum on its side…
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