Essentially, things are moving more slowly than I expected them to, but they are following the predicted pattern. The spot prices are completely fixed due to the fact that most “metal” being traded exists on paper only, but physical metal is getting scarce, especially since the central banks mopped up majority of it. Having in mind that only a small fraction of the population actually has physical metal, and the majority didn’t wake up and smell the coffee yet, you can imagine what will happen when the majority tries to convert their paper savings into gold and silver, only to find out that there isn’t any on the market.
In Germany, a small “gold rush” in the order of magnitude of 200 people daily per retail store was sufficient to completely exhaust the amount of metal available for sale.
We transferred all the bullionvault silver from the UK vault to the CH one, but it wasn’t an easy ride. First, we have losses on such transactions due to a 0.5% fee on both ends, and CH vault generally being more expensive. Second, there was that unfortunate event with the Soleimani assassination where the prices spiked just at the wrong time, after we sold everything in UK. Third, there wasn’t really much silver being sold in the CH vault, and it’s always a few EUR above the spot price. All three combined, we were lucky to have caught a 519 dip during the night, and ended up with only 300 grams of a loss. It’s a nice lesson: there might not be any metal for sale when you want to buy, and there might be nobody willing to buy metal when the price is very high and you want the money out. Also, political events can be nasty and unpredictable, for instance someone might simply confiscate everything you hold physically, or remotely, or both, like they did with Venezuela, and there’s not much you can do other than cover as many posibilities as you technically can.
Any special reason for moving from UK to CH vault? I guess it’s not about Brexit as we still don’t know when it’s going to happen and you weren’t worried much about it some time ago AFAIR?! 🤔
No, it’s not about brexit, that’s not a concern. I had a feeling about it some time ago, so that’s one reason, but they are acting very weird, even crazier than the USA, and I sometimes get the feeling that things like the hatred for Russia actually originate from the UK and they are in fact egging USA on in some cases, leading the madness, so to say. Also, they just stole Venezuelan gold, just like that, which makes me think they might simply steal everybody else’s metal when it becomes apparent they don’t have nearly as much as they’ve been trading. They might just invalidate all contracts and “revert ownership to the crown”, or something. Basically I don’t trust them, and considering how many countries have been repatriating their gold from London, I’m not alone in that assessment.
I think that seizing assets of countries that end up on The US shit lists is not something that’s common just for Britons. I think that any other Western country does that either individually or upon a friendly request coming from Murica they just jump on a bandwagon. 🤔 Besides Venezuela it happened to Libyan assets in Belgian banks AFAIR, Iranian, and so on.
Germany still didn’t recover it’s gold reserves from Fort Knox and who knows if ever will?
I guess it’s better to be on a safe side even when you are small investor without any connection to governments of the countries on US sanction list or being politically exposed person from those countries?
I’m not afraid of anyone targetting me personally or my business, I’m afraid of something that might target everybody indiscriminately. Also, I’m more afraid of the UK than I am of CH, but I guess nothing is really safe.
I’ve seen a psychic doing a reading on Brexit, just for shits and giggles, and she was consistently over and over again getting an answer that Brexit, in fact, won’t happen at all.
Admittedly, not a very scientific assessment of the situation, so take it for what it’s worth.
I guess they won’t be out of The EU as long as Croatia is presiding over it because Croatians will fuck them with every imaginable fuckery they have up theirs bureaucratic sleeves. 😂😂😂
Yeah, but besides that I don’t have an impression they’re much in a hurry to leave the party … at all! 🙄
Whatever the case might be with Brexit in the end, rest assured Croats won’t have absolutely anything to do with it. That whole “presiding over” charade is merely a ceremonial function and doesn’t assume any real power whatsoever. It’s invented for the purpose of leaving a false impression of democracy, so the local politicians can boast in front of their people and explain to them that integration wasn’t so stupid after all. Look at us now, look how far we’ve come. 🙂
Also, if you think that Croats can teach northern neighbours a thing or two about bureaucracy, the joke is on you, because it seems to me that they’ve actually found a way to brought it to a whole another level. Just take a look at that whole EU monstrosity, it looks worse than anything communists ever came up with at the peak of their regimes in the 60s and 70s. I’ve known a young woman who works at the European Parliament, we were holding a written correspondence for quite a while (I.e. she was trying to fuck me), so I’ve heard those stories how things work around there. Females spending time polishing toenails and males roaming around Bruxelles from one wine bar to another, slurping up every bottle of alcohol they could possibly find in the process.
Have in mind that referendums are not legally binding by the UK constitution. What this means is that, at least in theory, the Government can feel free to simply ignore any referendum they want, and provide for that any explanation they want.
In this case, they can simply declare at one point that people were “poorly informed”, and we need another one again with the same question. In fact, something like that already happened to Switzerland in 2016 when the Federal Supreme Court ruled to overturn the result of referendum “because of incomplete detail and a lack of transparency”.
So is this what’s going to happen in the UK? Probably not, since they haven’t done it already, but who knows.
Whoa, dude, you don’t have to go in lengths with me explaining thing when it comes to Croatia and it’s relations with EU and involve into that your romantic endeavors with EU parlament female staff. 😎👌 Unless it was for a people reading this. 😃
I just sent sarcastic pun in direction of Croatian state institutions as I’m so much in love with them so I try to have an interaction with them as less as possible. 😈
I totally believe you that EU bureaucrats can be worse than ours but the thing is that Croatia relatively has more bureaucrats than people doing something real for the money and that’s even more of a problem. In percentages Hungary is ahead of Croatia when it comes to bureaucrats, followed by Scandinavian countries. Netherlands has the least. That also tells something.
Well, both UK and EU might fall apart more quickly than they are likely to finish brexit, so yeah.
What about bullion vault, are they still able to deliver physical silver, and how safe is it to continue investing on BV?
Or is this a call to buy as much physical metal as possible?
In theory, BV always has physical silver in the vault, 100% coverage, and you contractually own the physical silver. Delivery is another matter; basically, it’s something you think about only in case of company default, but not in normal circumstances; you use BV as a savings account, where you put money in and you get money out eventually, but in the mean time it’s stored as precious metal, so it protects you against inflation and allows you to exploit metal growth against fiat currency.
I see BV as quite safe, and a good hedge against states introducing laws that restrict physical metal ownership, which is always a possibility, because that’s why the state is a no1 liability: it can introduce whatever laws it wants, and has police, courts and jails against you, and democracy doesn’t mitigate the problem in any way because most people are simply too stupid to understand what’s going on and what is the actual purpose of some law. The state propagandists will tell them it’s against some evil people and serves to protect their children and they’ll just nod and get back to their normal sheeple activities. Essentially, the state has to be treated as the no1 liability if you don’t want to get fucked over. This is why BV is a good way to have non-resident holding in case you need to GTFO and not risk carrying physical metal across fascist-controlled borders.
The worst laws currently in place are those regulating “money laundering”, because they have nothing to do with money laundering and everything to do with complete supervision of an individual’s ability to pay for and receive payment for goods and services, and use his money freely. Essentially, those things were put in place because the state doesn’t want you to be able to escape if they impose a 99% income tax, for instance; you must have no alternative to slavery. Also, it is a super-effective way of controlling political dissidents, and was in fact used to that effect much more effectively than for prevention of “money laundering”. So, basically, to call it prevention of money laundering is a misnomer, what it actually does is control everybody’s ability to function, and precondition it with utter political obedience. It ended every form of political freedom within the Western civilization. Just observe what they did with Snowden, Assange and Alex Jones. The first thing they did was to prevent them from receiving money from supporters, using all kinds of “money laundering” and “support to terrorism” laws. After their finances have been blocked, they are basically reduced to a life of cornered rats, and that’s not a side-effect of those laws, it’s their primary purpose. The same goes for other regulations within the financial industry, for instance “high risk” lists, which are basically lists of all kinds of religious and political censorships, plus economic leverage in American favour. It all came to the point where almost everything is being prohibited and it’s only a matter of time before I won’t be able to earn any money doing my job anymore, because having a merchant account for a company will not be possible for almost anyone. Of course, the problem with all those restrictions is that they completely fuck up the economy, so it’s just a matter of time before this entire fascist infrastructure completely implodes and we all end up starving.
Some time ago I was wondering which is worse, this Western combination of cryptofascism, feminism and outright lunacy, or Islam. I think we are at a point where Islam is a lesser evil, and we didn’t even hit the bottom yet.
I went on a tangent there, but let me tell you my thinking. If you have physical metal, it has the drawbacks of locally formed retail prices where a few local retailers can hold you hostage and dictate the prices which are usually much lower than what you would get for your metal in BV. Also, the local state can introduce restrictive laws, for instance banning possession of bullion for anyone that’s not a licensed financial institution, prohibiting taking bullion across the country borders etc.
On the other side, owning physical metal protects you from things such as BV suddenly vanishing into thin air along with your bullion, and some kind of institutional breakdown making it impossible to get a hold of your metal and/or money.
If it were a clear situation where one thing is obviously better in all circumstances, I wouldn’t be invested in both, as well as both gold and silver. I simply don’t know what to expect, except that it will be nasty and that all kinds of powerful players will try to completely fuck us over. That’s why I’m trying to emulate their behavior, hoping that they won’t ban/restrict/confiscate the things where they keep their own wealth. BV should be safe enough for now, and physical bullion should be safe enough for now, but at one point things will become so chaotic, I can’t tell you which of those will fail first, which is why I’m spreading my bets across several options.
This is why I was slightly surprised when you said you prefer to hold all your gold locally. If I had to guess, I would assume you have at least 50% of both metals at remote locations.
My impression is that something bad will happen (from the position of small investors), and while the logic of moving one’s savings into metals is valid, ultimate profit is questionable.
Still, even if it isn’t a perfect choice, I guess it’s the least bad one.
Gold is different. Silver is very bulky and holding it locally would basically anchor me to this place. And if I have stuff on BV, converting it from silver to gold, depending on the market conditions, is trivial. I do have a few kilos of silver locally, but that’s more to protect the gold in case I have to trade something for food; definitely not strategic quantities.
What I’m trying to tell is that there are still scenarios and combinations of factors that can leave you vulnerable if you hold totality of one asset locally.
For example, gold can become prohibited for civilians on the soil of EU, and then you go to try to convert half of your Zürich silver into gold, only to find out that their physical reserves are depleted week ago, and holdings are now fixed in place.
That’s all true, but it’s actually a minor concern. The major concern is that my business is in the financial sector which is so regulated, the entire thing might evaporate overnight and my income will be reduced to zero, and I’ll have to start spending metal before it’s time. And even greater concern is that this will all last too long and I’ll go fucking nuts.