Hi Ctindale,You wrote: “ Gold shares are not money , they are...

Hi Ctindale,

You wrote:

“ Gold shares are not money , they are leveraged "futures contracts", investors who buy gold shares are buying a "futures contract" in gold in the ground, that one day may or may not be mined. “

Over the last few years I have changed my mind and no longer buy or hold gold mining shares preferring instead to hold physical gold outside of the formal banking system. I got tired of seeing the shares getting hit despite the gold price during general market falls.

You raise a good point on how you see gold mining shares as a futures contract. Given that none of us have a clear view of what may happen in the future, will we have runaway inflation a full system break down or some lesser combination of problems remains in the balance.

For me I find physical holding is the best way to protect my future purchasing power, it remains a store of my labour and business efforts of the last forty years.

I now hold gold that was mined back when oil was under $20.00 and to be fair I guess possibly some mined when oil reached $150.00. The point is I do hold it. If oil reached $250.00 due to some M.E. issue or miners saw their wages paid into failed Australian banks waiting for the government to make good on the banking guarantee. Would gold or any other material be mined at all.

Until someone can convince me off a better way to protect myself or we see competent governments with balanced budgets I will continue putting my faith in gold.

From my view point here in Europe I am unable to see how these constant meeting and summits held by the now so familiar characters can ever find a solution to what really is an unsolvable problem of catastrophic unrepayable debts. Here in the UK school kids can name people like Sarkozy, Merkel, Mervin King etc. the way they used to name soccer players and that’s not normal.

Good luck to all including those that have yet to get it.

Cheers: Andy