Gold Conference 2009

We were invited to the Gold Conference 2009 extremely well organized by Investors Chronicle. The conference was held today at The London Stock Exchange. This amazing event has been something different in the investment community mainly due to the fact we could chat in person with names such as Paul Tustain, Founder and CEO of the worldly known BullionVault, and Daniel Fisher, CEO of Physical Gold.

Let´s summarize the conference:

1. Everyone is bullish in gold in the short term. They have different views in the mid term and long term. Most of them expect gold to end up its climbing around 1500-1600 USD/on. Some of them consider gold should always be part of a diversified portfolio (from 5 to 20%).
2. It´s not clear that gold performs as a hedge against inflation or war times. However, it´s surprisingly the best hedge against deflation (currencies were tight to gold by then, though).
3. Contrarian investors should be worried if they long on gold now. The ratio bullish/bearish is at its maximum.
4. The key question: are Central Banks switching sides from net sellers to net buyers? All of them or only China, Russia and India?
   
5. Gold is VAT free, but the spread of owning physical gold goes from 6 to 10%.

23/11/2009