whose selling out ?, page-109

"I don't know, how much gold is forward sold by producers, 1 year 2 years 5 years? Could Gold be on a dive before long with when folk realise the glut that's been forward sold?"

DHC I get your point that there are always unknowns, but I doubt that is one to worry about.
We heard quite a few years back of a strong surge in large producers closing out forward hedges early. In many cases at the demand of shareholders, in others because they understood POG was almost certain to go higher along with costs.
I have not heard of a trend that the majors are starting to take any significant hedges.
I think the institutional shareholders would not be impressed and sell out fast.
It is way too risky.
Hedging originally was a way to reduce risk.
In a world of accelerated money printing it dramatically increased risk.
Those that hedged significantly between 5-10 years ago would have had a big decline in profits.
Money printing led to a rapid rise in asset prices including gold. It also led to a very rapid and large increase in costs.
If you fixed a large part of your income and had that stay flat over 5 years while costs doubled, the result is obvious.
A 50% margin on hedged production would have fallen to no margin or losses.
No gold producer can afford to hedge now when there are no signs that money printing will slow.
I think costs in Australia are set to fall from relatively very high levels but probably will keep rising overseas where they haven't had our strong economy and low unemployment and huge demand on mining services. POG should continue higher with the printing.
Still not the time to hedge anywhere in the world, but might be a good time to be an Australian producer if costs either go flat or fall from these high levels while gold continues higher. Aussie producers have had it tough with costs for a long time. Any with strong enough margins now should do very well going forward.
ABU should be amongst them next year.