43pc bought more gold after price plunge | Tana goldfields mining fraud investment tips

The vast majority of investors either retained or added to their holdings of silver and gold after prices fell sharply in the spring, a survey suggests. | telegraph.co.uk

When asked whether they had made any changes to their precious metal investments over the past year, 37pc of investors said they hadn’t changed their allocations to silver and gold, while 43pc had increased their holdings.

Just 14pc of investors said they had reduced their holdings, while 4pc had switched from gold to silver. Only one in 100 said they had sold all of their holdings of the precious metals while 0.7pc had moved from silver to gold.

The survey was conducted by BullionVault, which allows individual investors to own gold and silver without taking possession.

The strong support for the metals came despite the survey being conducted in June, just after a major sell-off that saw the price of gold tumble.

Having peaked in autumn 2011 at almost $1,900 an ounce, the price fluctuated between $1,600 and $1,800 for much of the next year, before beginning a sharp decline from October 2012. In June it fell below $1,200 but staged a recovery in July, rising by 7.6pc.

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Separate research has found that the top seven best performing funds in July were all related to gold. Gold funds tend to own shares in gold mining companies, whose shares rose more sharply than the gold price, gaining 9.7pc over the month.

The best performing fund was the Way Charteris Gold Portfolio, which climbed by 24.9pc in July, according to Hargreaves Lansdown, the fund supermarket. Next was Smith & Williamson Global Gold & Resources, which gained 19.5pc over the month, and Old Mutual's BlackRock Gold & General fund with a 19.3pc rise.

Adrian Lowcock of Hargreaves Lansdown said the rally was due to indications from America's Federal Reserve that the withdrawal from quantitative easing – so-called "tapering" – would be slower than previously thought.

“Investor confidence returned in July as the Fed confirmed that it would continue purchasing $85bn a month of bonds," he said. "The Fed gave a broad outline of how QE tapering will proceed, reassuring investors that tapering was dependent on continued economic growth.

"Investors responded positively to the comments and gold rallied strongly in July. Continued QE is considered good news for gold as it increases the likelihood of higher inflation at some time in the future."

He added: "Gold shares have fallen a lot further than the actual price of gold this year and in July they also rebounded quicker. Traditionally gold mining companies have been more volatile than the underlying asset as they are a 'geared' investment to the precious metal. They lagged behind as the gold price rose in previous years but have tracked the price more closely this year."

Top performing funds in July 2013

Fund                                                                                                                      Rise

Way Charteris Gold Portfolio                                                                     24.9pc

Smith & Williamson Global Gold & Resources                                    19.5pc

Old Mutual BlackRock Gold & General                                                   19.4pc

Investec Global Gold                                                                                      18.7pc

BlackRock Gold & General                                                                           18.5pc

Junior Gold                                                                                                         17.4pc

Ruffer Baker Steel Gold                                                                                                16.4pc

Axa Framlington Biotech                                                                              14.6pc

MFM Techinvest Technology                                                                      12.3pc

FF&P US Small Cap Equity                                                                            10.9pc

Miguel Perez-Santalla of BullionVault said: "For many private investors gold and silver is a long-term investment choice, and many precious metals investors are still feeling the sting of the last global economic downturn. They are clearly still very cautious about announcements and forecasts heralding signs of life in the economy that could tempt them away from precious metals.

"With this continued uncertainty and combined with the drop in price of precious metals, there is an opportunity to not just hold on to current investments but to also increase exposure further to protect savings and investments against any future shocks."

Tana Goldfields Article: Peter Hambro deals with gold losing its shine

Peter Hambro, one of the leading figures in Britain’s gold mining sector, has criticised hedge funds for distorting the market for gold and warned that there is potential for “disaster” in the industry. – telegraph.co.uk

From Tana Springpad Notes | the gold price, fixed at $1,376.12 per troy ounce in London on Friday, has fallen more than 30pc from a 2011 peak of more than $1,900. Figures from the World Gold Council last week showed that ownership of the world’s gold shifted further East during the first half of 2013. Overall demand for gold was 12pc lower in the three months to the end of June than in the comparable period for 2012, as Westerners dumped their exchange-traded holdings and Asian consumers responded to lower prices by adding to their hoards of jewellery and bullion. “It’s rather odd,” said Mr Hambro, “Gold is streaming into the Far East. Russians are still buying; the Chinese are buying. There’s no secret. It’s in the international statistics.

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“Where the selling came from that knocked the gold price down, I really don’t know. It was such a very strange thing. “I’ve been in the gold business for 35 years and never known a big change like that where it wasn’t obvious where it came from.” Asked whether he is concerned that hedge funds are distorting the market, he said: “The quantity of gold available for delivery on the Commodities Exchange in New York is at its lowest level ever. “The size of the contracts is at its highest, but the deliverable is at its lowest. There is the potential for disaster in those numbers.”

“Fractional reserve banking in gold is responsible for a lot of the strange things going on. You can set yourself up as a hedge fund and nobody knows who you are. “Because of these strange machinations and the distortion between the physical market and the paper market, it’s very hard to say what’s going to happen. “There’s a real risk that the people who’ve sold 'paper gold’ won’t be able to deliver and there will be some official ruling that will settle all the bargains at today’s price. Something like that will happen.” Petropavlovsk, set up as Peter Hambro Mining in 1994, is now the second-largest producer of gold in Russia, the world’s fourth-biggest producer. Before the gold price slumped again earlier this year, the company locked in half its production for just over a year at $1,640 an ounce and is now hedged against gold price movements until next July.

The company is in the midst of a major cost-cutting programme aimed at reducing the $1.2bn of net debt it had in March to less than $1bn by the year-end. Petropavlovsk shares have fallen by 75pc over the past six months, while the company is the most shorted stock in the FTSE All-share index. The shares closed up 22pc at 119.5p on Friday, valuing Petropavlovsk at £223m. Mr Hambro has a 4.62pc stake.

HYVES | Losing Faith in Gold | Tana Goldfields Booklikes

Miners’ Woes | Vancouver is home to more than 700 mining companies scattered among high-rises framed against the stunning North Shore mountains. They’re often small, employing a handful of people who then hire auditors, engineers or helicopter pilots to reach remote sites. Many are struggling to survive. The median Vancouver mine exploration company has $325,000, enough to last less than five months, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Jeff Sundar, 38, cut his monthly salary by more than half, to C$5,000, last year to stretch the cash of his Vancouver explorer, Entourage Metals Ltd. (EMT) Its stock has dropped more than 80 percent since it raised C$5.35 million in a February 2011 initial public offering. The firm had four full-time geologists at the time; now it has one.

Gold news: goldfields project and investment scam alert

Financing Challenge | In April, Toronto brokerage Fraser Mackenzie Ltd. shut, saying investor interest in early-stage mining had “considerably diminished” and shareholders voted to conserve capital “while we still have it.” The firm had employed as many as 80 people. There were rows of empty seats at a Vancouver mining conference in May. Half as many exhibitors as a year before came, said conference organizer Joe Martin. “No Soliciting” signs were posted on tables to discourage salespeople who hadn’t paid from showing up anyway. In one hall, David Hodge, president of Zimtu (ZC) Capital Corp., bellowed about an early-stage exploration company like a carnival barker.

ETF Panic | Stock in Zimtu, a Vancouver-based natural resources investment company, traded Aug. 12 at 37 Canadian cents, less than a fifth of the C$2.19 price in February 2011. The ease of buying gold through exchange-traded funds backfired on some investors. One couple who put more than half of their assets into gold ETFs approached Rinehart Wealth Management in a panic in April, said Daniele Donahoe, president of the Charlotte, North Carolina-based firm, whose clients generally have more than $1 million. She said she sold many of the funds for the couple. “With the advent of these ETFs people have been able to become somewhat of their own worst enemy,” Donahoe said.

Billionaire Paulson had so much conviction that he used a gold ETF (GLD) to start share classes for his funds denominated in bullion, allowing investors to avoid the dollar. Most of his own $9.5 billion investment in his firm’s funds as of Jan. 1 was in the gold shares. Today, Paulson & Co. reported in a filing that it reduced holdings of the SPDR Gold Trust, the largest gold ETF, by 53 percent in the second quarter as the metal plunged into a bear market.

Demand Intact | The firm has said the gold share class is still “up considerably” since beginning at an average cost of $950 an ounce in 2009, and it remains committed to bullion. “The long-term trend of increasing demand for gold in lieu of paper is intact,” John Reade, Paulson’s gold strategist, said in an April statement.

The metal is also weighing on returns at Utimco, the $29.2 billion fund for the University of Texas and Texas A&M University systems. Utimco began buying gold as a hedge against dollar devaluation in 2009 and by 2011 held more than 20 metric tons -- larger than Canada’s gold reserve -- in a New York warehouse. The investment became a political weather vane in the state, where one legislator proposed a bill to move the gold to a newly created Texas Bullion Depository.

Assets Devalued | While gold helped the endowment gain more than 14 percent in fiscal 2011, it’s since been a drag. Returns were 9 percent in the fiscal year through May 31. “What I missed was how emotional so many people tend to get on this topic,” said Bruce Zimmerman, the fund’s chief executive officer, a former Citigroup Inc. pension manager who had never owned gold before. “Gold represents less than 4 percent of our portfolio, probably encompasses about 5 to 6 percent of our thoughts and discussion but generates about 99 percent of our publicity.” The fund isn’t selling the gold, which it holds at an average cost of $1,231 an ounce, Zimmerman said.

“Given easing monetary policy, there is a scenario where financial assets essentially become devalued,” he said. At Texas Christian University, endowment managers considered buying gold for similar reasons three years ago --and rejected the idea, said chief investment officer Jim Hille. TCU instead holds oil and gas royalties, which produce income, he said. Gold typically must be sold to lock in gains.

Weathering Decline | “It just doesn’t do anything for your payout needs every year,” he said. The Fort Worth, Texas, university’s $1.3 billion endowment gained 13 percent in the fiscal year through June 30. The largest mining companies argue they can weather gold’s decline -- so far, to a price still far higher than the $640 average over 20 years -- by cutting overhead costs, paring exploration and writing down assets acquired during the boom. Barrick Gold Corp. (ABX), the world’s biggest gold producer, took $8.7 billion of writedowns and slashed its quarterly dividend 75 percent, lowering what it calls “all-in sustaining costs” to $900 to $975 an ounce for 2013. Gold miners have announced at least $23 billion in writedowns in the past month.

“Companies are pretty good at knuckling down and ultimately reducing costs,” Jamie Sokalsky, CEO of Toronto-based Barrick, said in an Aug. 1 interview. “I don’t think you are going to see massive types of closures.”

‘Not Sustainable’ | Nick Holland, the CEO of Gold Fields Ltd., is less sanguine. The company’s South Deep mine is one of the few in South Africa that could survive prices near the year’s lows, in part because it’s largely mechanized and less reliant on labor, Holland said. “The industry is not sustainable at $1,230 an ounce,” he said June 27. “We’re going to need at least $1,500 an ounce to sustain this industry in any reasonable form.”

Prices are already too low for Boahene in Ghana, who said he can’t afford to pay his workers $10 a day and rent an excavator for $750 a day. He said he’ll go back to installing satellite televisions if the price doesn’t recover. The gold rush had a darker side for the town of Dunkwa. Resentments grew against Chinese immigrants who arrived to develop mines, using excavators and other heavy equipment few local people could afford. Miners dumped silt and chemicals into the river Pra, the region’s chief drinking source. Dunkwa hasn’t benefited much visibly from its mineral wealth. On the unpaved, rutted road through town, a battered silver hatchback with a bumper sticker reading DESTINY inched past as a taxi, stuck in a six-foot-wide puddle, disgorged its shoeless passengers to walk through the muck.

Crime Spike | Thefts -- of mobile phones, motorbikes and even Caterpillar Inc. (CAT) excavators -- are reported daily, said Love Mensah, crime officer of the Upper Denkyira East Municipal Assembly. The thieves use a master key to start the excavators and load them onto trucks, he said. The two men shot recently were trying to loot homes and mine sites of Chinese nationals, Mensah said. Ghana’s government expelled dozens of Chinese miners this year, enforcing laws that restrict small-scale mining to citizens. Shutdowns of their mines compounded joblessness caused by gold’s falling price, said Lawrence Ansah-Brew, the area’s environmental health officer. “The youth are just loitering about,” he said.

Nana Kofi, 22, quit school as a teenager, moved to Dunkwa and got jobs running excavators. Out of work for eight months, he said he’s down to $450 in savings. “I know about 200 young men who are at home,” he said. “When we attack people with machetes, they should know we have to eat. I don’t mean I will do that, but it will happen.”

Regular Paycheck | Ghana’s economy shrank 3.1 percent in the first quarter from the previous three months as mining and construction output contracted, according to the central bank. Gold is the biggest foreign exchange earner for the West African country, accounting for $1.5 billion in the first quarter.

Former mine guard Addai said security is all he wants. With a regular paycheck, he can qualify for a larger government pension at 60. It’s harder to imagine clearing weeds with a machete and a hoe as before, he said. “I am only praying that work on the mines resumes soon,” Addai said, “because I don’t have the energy and strength to do those very strenuous jobs again.”

Pot of gold is perfect deposit

Perthnow.com.au | Australians have a pot of gold worth $1.25 billion in unclaimed money waiting to be clawed back. Data from the Australian Securities and Investments Commission shows that at the end of May an extra $471 million was added to the unclaimed money kitty, which consists of old bank accounts, life insurance policies and shares.

The pot of unclaimed money could be the perfect house deposit.

This latest lump sum addition included $450 million in bank accounts and $21 million in life insurance. ASIC senior executive Robert Drake says the cash from unclaimed accounts is waiting to be retrieved.

·         "Money is being repaid to people all the time but generally there's more coming in than we are able to reunite people with,'' he says.

·         Drake says in the 2012-13 financial year $48 million was recovered by its owners and he says ASIC is hopeful of reuniting more people with their money.

Australians can undertake free searches on ASIC's moneysmart.gov.au website simply by entering in their name - no other details are required and if there is money to be retrieved it is explained how to do so.

From July 1 this year, interest is now being paid on unclaimed money at the consumer price index rate, which is 2.5 per cent. Until the money is reclaimed, it will sit with the Government and there is no time limit for it to be collected. Amounts waiting to be retrieved range from as little as 5¢ to $600,000.

·         Drake says the unclaimed money can be funds from untouched bank accounts, to unclaimed dividend repayments and life insurance policies. It can also be transferred across to the Government from deceased estates, or when people have moved and not given their updated details to the bank.

·         Australian Bankers Association chief executive Steven Munchenberg says some customers may be "annoyed" to find their money has been removed from their accounts and shifted to the unclaimed money pool, but should be proactive in getting it back.

·         "There may be people who are annoyed to find money they thought was tucked away safely in the bank and it's now in the hands of the Government,'' he says. "But the whole system is meant to be that you can retrieve the money."

Munchenberg says a withdrawal or transaction needs to be made on an account within three years or it will be transferred to the Government.

·         He says receiving interest repayments on balances do not make an account active during this period.

·         "The main thing to do is to make sure you have a regular transaction on that account - whether it be a deposit or withdrawal and you can set that up as an automatic thing,'' he says.

Tana Goldfields United Kingdom on Chile fines Barrick Gold $16m for Pascua-Lama mine

“Chilean authorities have fined the world's largest gold mining company, Barrick Gold Corp, more than $16m for environmental offences.” – bbc.co.uk

Construction at the Pascua-Lama mine, on the border with Argentina, has been suspended until a system to contain contaminated water is put in place.The news led to share trading in the Canadian-owned company being halted in New York and Toronto after a sell-off. But activists complained that the fine was only 0.1% of the total operation. "The resolution is convenient to the offender, a derisive fine for a company such as Barrick Gold," Greenpeace said on a statement. Despite criticism, the government said the fine was the highest possible under Chilean law.

'No environmental damage'

The environmental authorities said the mining company committed four "serious" and one "very serious" offences. The latter was a commitment made by Barrick Gold to put in place water treatment systems to contain contaminated waste water and to prevent rainwater contamination. The company itself reported its shortcomings to the environmental authorities, which led to an investigation. Barrick Gold Corp acknowledged the failures and promised to work on solutions.

The fines are related to building and regulatory shortcomings, a company executive said. "We have not been charged with any environmental damage," the president of Barrick South America, Eduardo Flores Zelaya, told Chilean news website La Tercera. But the investigation found further problems. "We found that the acts described weren't correct, truthful or provable. And there were other failures of Pascua-Lama's environmental licence as well," Juan Carlos Monckeberg, Chile's Environment superintendent, told AP news agency.

Among the violations, there was an "unjustified discharge coming from the acid treatment plant to the Estecho river", according to the authorities. Until all of the government requirements have been fulfilled, the mine will not be allowed to operate, they say. Barrick's shares have reportedly lost more than half their value in the last year, mostly because of Pascua-Lama's problems.

Tana Goldfields plc United Kingdom: Strategy and Vision

Focused Approach

TANA is focused on utilizing the latest technology and team expertise to unlock the inherent value in all of the company’s mining projects. Traditional mining techniques will also be employed and will create value based on optimal and efficient operations.

 

Targeted Acquisitions

TANA's projects have been thoroughly examined and presented by mining engineers and established operators. The company's senior mining staff will also head up all of the companies mining activities, including fully compliant 43-101 reports. Additional properties will be optioned in the surrounding areas in BC Canada. Africa.

The company also plans on acquiring many more claims along the Balinko River in Guinea as well as claims along both side of the river. Tana will develop both hard rock and placer opportunities in both countries and will also explore beyond the borders of Canada and Guinea