Friday 21 March 2008

Silver shortages

There are rumours these past few days, partly thanks to Jason Hommels Silver Stock Report, of a silver shortage in the USA and Canada. Interestingly, for all the conspiracy theorists out there, Silver has dropped approx 10% these past few days alone. Now, if that doesn't fit the description of a conspiracy theory, what does? Desperate short-sellers trying to flush out a few naive sellers?

No such problems in Europe, where the mainstream are not at all onto this story thanks to a strong Euro and the disappointing rule where VAT of between 15-25% is added to the price of Silver bullion. They may regret missing their chance though, and there are in fact many ways to buy silver and avoid paying the VAT even in if you live in the EU.

You can find out what they are in the new book on How to Invest in Gold and Silver. It will repay its purchase price many times over.

Wednesday 19 March 2008

CHEAP LAPTOP OFFER

3 of my favourite things in the entire world are :-

1) Shopping online at reputable net stores
2) Getting a bargain
3) paying NO Sales Taxes to Greedy Goverments

And thanks to my contacts in the industry, Play.com, one of the stars of tax-free shopping, have allowed me to pass on this discount code ACER40, which enables you to claim an amazing EXTRA £40 off when you buy an Acer Laptop from them here.

The laptops are available here on the Play.com site and the code to enable the discount on the laptops is ACER40.

The laptop code is only valid against the four products listed and will expire at midnight on Wednesday 26/3/08.

Saturday 15 March 2008

Why Silver is on the up too

Gold is a purer representative of true wealth than silver. Although both metals have been heavily used throughout history as currency and to represent wealth, Gold has few uses apart from as money, whereas Silver is a heavily used industrial commodity and that can affect its price and desirability outside of any investment considerations. For example, some commentators are convinced that the rise of digital photography and the resultant downturn in traditional photography will result in a massive decrease in demand for silver, affecting the price as a result. This may or may not turn out to be true.

As a much used industrial commodity, it is in the best interests of many to keep the price as low as possible for as long as possible. It is thought by many commentators that the price has been manipulated for many years to be artificially low, and is in no way representative of how much Silver exists in physical form. For example, on COMEX, the main New York USA exchange for trading silver, there may be more short sales than there is silver to back them up. If this is true, then imagine what would happen if those sellers were all forced to buy silver on the open market to meet their promises? And more importantly, would they even be able to? In the USA, there is even a Silver Users Association, representing the viewpoint of businesses that consume silver, and lobbying government when necessary to protect those interests. They successfully managed to delay, but not stop, the introduction of the first ever Silver investment fund, the Barclays iShares Silver ETF in 2006 (for an explanation of ETFs, see the Exchange-Traded Funds chapter).

You can read more about this, and other gold and silver government conspiracies, in the new book on How to Invest in Gold and Silver. It will repay its purchase price many times over.

BullionVault Explained

Founded by Paul Tustain, Bullionvault is UK-based, although an additionally interesting feature is the ability to store your gold in their New York, London or Zurich gold vaults. Dependent on which country you are a citizen of, you will probably feel most comfortable placing your gold outside of that country so that is not subject to your local government jurisdiction, so top marks for considering that feature.

BullionVault allows you to buy and sell Gold on their impressive looking trading platform, where buyers and sellers of gold from each vault can meet and state their required selling/buying prices, so if you are more inclined to hold gold, occasionally sell on a dip, then buy in again later, then this could well be the best service for you.

Their fees for transactions and monthly storage are really low too, so they are very worthy of investigation. The storage fee is currently $4 per month fixed, regardless of holding size, and only payable for the months in which you held Gold.

Again, Bullionvault has proved popular with Gold Bugs accumulating gold for the future financial crisis they believe is in the offing.

Payment in to BullionVault is by bank transfer. Payment out is by bank wire transfer to your chosen bank account. A fee of approximately $30 is charged for this transfer, although there may be possibilities for UK residents to request a BACs transfer instead, which can take a few days but will not attract a fee.

BullionVault are currently offering a free gram of gold to all new account openings, which you can then use to experiment with trading in their system. Even if you open an account, you are not committed in any way, so well worth trying out to see if it’s for you. Visit http://www.investgold.co.uk to learn more.

Overall, Bullionvault is an excellent service. Both they and E-gold seem like decent operations, with much security behind them.

E-Gold explained

E-Gold was one of the first organisations to offer internet, or electronic gold. It was started up by a Dr Jackson who strongly believes in the gold story, and that gold is due a comeback as the trusted medium of exchange. E-gold started out in the USA and have since moved their jurisdiction to Nevis in the West Indies.

They offer deposit facilities and also heavily promote the use of e-gold for payments.

People conducting business on the internet may find an e-gold account especially useful because of its slant towards being used as a medium of exchange, and even traditional businesses in countries with high inflation could use it in future to agree prices with customers in terms of gold regardless of what happens to their national currency.

E-Gold have had such success with Gold, that they are now offering e-Silver, e-Platinum and e-Palladium too.

The process for transferring money into and out of E-Gold involves the use of separate payment providers. Authorised and recommended organisations are listed on their website. There is a fee of approximately 2% for transfer of funds in and transfer of funds out, plus you may also be liable to local bank fees. Different payment providers seem to have different fees, so it is well worth finding the best one for you. This system is quite flexible in that you can use a variety of payment systems to transfer money in or out, such as a credit card or Paypal account.

E-Gold also charge a storage fee for the days in which you own precious metals within their system. This is currently 1% per annum. This system of charging could work well for smaller amounts, or where your metal is used as a medium for exchange and thus many days your account holding is zero.

Overall, E-gold is an excellent service, with excellent levels of confidentiality you'll never find with a bank these days. Both they and Bullionvault seem like decent operations, with much security behind them.

Saturday 8 March 2008

More Gold Investing Scammers

I couldn't help but visit this GoogleAd, Gold investing classic

http://pinvest.biz/index.html

Which offers an amazing 1800% in 48 hours! Wow! With that kind of return I could own all the e-gold in the entire world within about 3 months.

I'll leave it up to you to decide if it's genuine or a scam, but with no address, telephone number or contact other than admin@ email address, I have already drawn my own conclusions.

Please don't do it...