I am surprised at how well NCM has held up lately. Gold is...

I am surprised at how well NCM has held up lately. Gold is likely to head lower in the short term on lack of inflation, many people bought it as a inflation hedge are dissapointed. Unfortunately US is more likely to experience deflation than inflation, even with all the QEs. (reasons are too long to explain here)

Treat gold as a short/medium term play on currency risks and poor economic growth. The play on expanded money supply materialises in the very long term, it is not a short/medium term thing.

Gold has some room to fall, my feel is $1200 USD/oz support level based on industry production costs. NCM is not immune to the gold price, so it will react rationally. It is still a great play long term wise if you believe in the gold story, the smaller players will be shaken out of the tree long before NCM. Lets look at worst case scenario for NCM, it can shutdown all but Lihir and Cadia east and survive prices far below $1200USD/oz.

I actually like the prospect of gold price dropping to $1k/oz, its going to set up a great big rally. Anyhow take caution in the short term, $12 SP is really high for current price of gold.