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Gold Market Update SPONSOR: Labrador Gold $LAB.ca $RIO.ca $WHM.ca $SIC.ca $NXS.ca

Posted by AGORACOM at 11:58 AM on Wednesday, January 22nd, 2020
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SPONSOR: Labrador Gold – Two successful gold explorers lead the way in the Labrador gold rush targeting the under-explored gold potential of the province. Exploration has already outlined district scale gold on two projects, including a 40km strike length of the Florence Lake greenstone belt, one of two greenstone belts covered by the Hopedale Project. Click Here for More Info

At first glance gold looks like it may be about to advance out of a bull Flag, but there are a number of factors in play that we will examine which suggest that any near-term advance won’t get far before it turns and drops again, and that a longer period of consolidation and perhaps reaction is necessary before it makes significant further progress.

On the 6-month chart we can see how gold stabbed into a zone of strong resistance on the Iran crisis around the time Iran’s General was murdered, but after a couple of bearish looking candles with high upper shadows formed, it backed off into what many are taking to be a bull Flag.


The 10-year chart makes it plain why gold is vulnerable here to reacting back over the short to medium-term, because it has advanced deep into “enemy territory” – the broad band of heavy resistance approaching the 2011 highs, with a zone of particularly strong resistance right where it is now. It would be healthier and increase gold’s chances of breaking out to new highs if it now backed off into a trading range for a while to moderate what now looks like excessive bullishness.


Thus it remains a cause for concern (or it should be for gold bulls) to see gold’s latest COTs continuing to show high Commercial short and Large Spec long positions. Is it “going to be different this time”? – the latest Hedgers charts that we are now going to look at suggest not.

Click on chart to popup a larger, clearer version.


The COT chart only goes back a year. The Hedgers charts shown below, which are a form of COT chart, go back many years, and frankly, they look pretty scary.

We’ll start by looking at the Hedger’s chart that goes back to before the 2011 sector peak. On it we see that current Hedgers positions are at extremes that way exceed even those at the peak of the 2012 sucker rally, which was followed by the bulk of the decline in the bearmarket that followed. Does this mean that we are going to see another bearmarket like that – no it doesn’t, but it does mean that these positions will probably need to moderate before we see significant further gains.

Click on chart to popup a larger, clearer version.

Chart courtesy of sentimentrader.com


Looking at the Hedgers chart going way back to before the year 2000, we see that the current readings are record readings by a significant margin and obviously increase the risks of a sizeable reaction. We can speculate about what the reasons for a decline might be, one possibility being the sector getting dragged down by a stockmarket crash after its blowoff top, which may be imminent, as happened in 2008, since it remains to be seen whether investors will rush into the sector as a safe haven in the event of a market crash.

Click on chart to popup a larger, clearer version.

Chart courtesy of sentimentrader.com


Turning now to Precious Metals stocks, we see on its latest 10-year chart that GDX still looks like it is completing a giant Head-and-Shoulders bottom pattern. However, it is currently dithering just beneath resistance at the top of this base pattern, which means that it is vulnerable to backing off.


So, how then does gold stock sentiment look right now? As we can see on the 5-year chart for the Gold Miners’ Bullish Percent Index, bullishness towards the sector is now at a very high level, 84.6%, which makes it more likely that stocks will drop soon rather than rally, and what they could do of course is rally some to increase this level of bullishness still further, and then drop.


Does all this mean that investors in the sector should suddenly rush for the exits? No, it doesn’t, especially as the charts for many individual stocks across the sector look very bullish, and it may be that all that is needed is a cooling period of consolidation. However it does make sense to use Hedges at extremes, such as leveraged inverse ETFs and better still options as insurance, which have the advantage of providing protection for a very small capital outlay, a fine example being GLD Puts which are liquid with narrow spreads. We did this just ahead of the recent peak when Iran lobbed a volley of missiles at Iraq. We will not be selling our strongest gold and silver stocks, but instead look to buy more on dips.

SOURCE: https://www.clivemaund.com/gmu.php?art_id=68&date=2020-01-19

It’s Now Time To Look At Junior Gold Developers And Explorers – Red Cloud SPONSOR: Affinity Metals $AAF.ca $SII.ca $TUD.ca $GTT.ca $AMK.ca $OSK.ca $RKR.ca

Posted by AGORACOM at 2:54 PM on Tuesday, January 21st, 2020

Sponsor: Affinity Metals (TSX-V: AFF) a Canadian mineral exploration company building a strong portfolio of mineral projects in North America. The Corporation’s flagship property is the Drill ready Regal Property near Revelstoke, BC. Recent sampling encountered bonanza grade silver, zinc, and lead with many samples reaching assay over-limits. Click Here for More Info

(Kitco News) – The merger and acquisition activity that swept through the mining sector in 2019 is only going to pick up momentum this year as mine developers and junior explorers are next on the auction block, according to one financing company.

In a recent webinar, Derek Macpherson, vice president of research at Red Cloud, said that with gold in the early inning of a new bull market, he expects to see more M&A activity in the mining sector.

However, he added that sentiment is a little different than it was in 2019.

“The M&A activity we saw last year focused on production assets,” he said. “As we see fewer of those assets become available companies will have to look further down cap. I think we are getting a lot closer to seeing junior explorers benefit from M&A activity.”

The comments come as junior explorers continue to struggle to attract investor attention. The sector was still largely ignored in 2019 as the M&A activity focused on creating mega-gold companies and larger producers.

Macpherson said that although some companies are struggling to attract attention, investors should focus on the companies that are activity developing and de-risking their projects.

“In this environment and with the potential for more M&A activity, the drill bit is the key to value,” he said.

Macpherson added because of solid production and higher prices in 2019 many mid-tier mining companies are in good shape to go shopping in the market again. Further divestitures from the major gold producers also means more opportunities to buy.

Not only are miners in a hurry to replace dwindling reserves, but Macpherson noted that a strong gold price will add to growing confidence in the marketplace. He noted that there are growing calls for $2,000 gold.

“I think gold at $1,600 is in the mix but I also don’t think $2,000 is out of the realm of possibilities,” he said.
Looking at the gold market, the financial firm sees strong investment demand for the yellow metal as central banks around the world maintain ultra-loose monetary policy.

“More money printing and negative yielding debt make gold a very attractive asset class,” he said.

Macpherson also noted that with equity markets at record valuations, it wouldn’t take much for investors jump out off the S&P and into more safe-haven assets.

SOURCE: https://www.kitco.com/commentaries/mining/2020-01-20/It-s-now-time-to-look-at-junior-gold-developers-and-explorers-Red-Cloud.html

Gold at $1,600 Is The ‘Bare Minimum’ for 2020 SPONSOR: Loncor Resources $LN.ca $ABX.ca $TECK.ca $RSG $NGT.to

Posted by AGORACOM at 11:37 AM on Tuesday, January 21st, 2020
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Sponsor: Loncor is a Canadian gold exploration company that controls over 2,400,000 high grade ounces outside of a Barrick JV. Exploration is currently being conducted by Barrick. The Ngayu property is 200km southwest of the Kibali gold mine, operated by Barrick, which produced 800,000 ounces of gold in 2018. Barrick manages and funds exploration at the Ngayu project until the completion of a pre-feasibility study on any gold discovery meeting the investment criteria of Barrick. Click Here for More Info

  • Gold is a hedge against inflation that is being used more and more
  • Goldex CEO pointed to a recent Goldman Sachs report that pointed to gold as being a better hedge than oil.
  • This view is the new consensus that will increase demand for gold.

(Kitco News) What can take the gold market from $1,550 to $1,600 and higher? Goldex CEO and founder Sylvia Carrasco told Kitco News that she is not ruling out the $1,900 an ounce level this year if geopolitical and trade tensions escalate in the current economic climate.

There are a number of strong drivers supporting gold prices this year, including geopolitical and trade tensions, global debt, dovish central banks, weakening U.S. dollar as well as the political situation in the U.S., Carrasco said on Thursday.

“Last year, I said that the perfect storm was forming and I think I would use this phrase again. The perfect storm is now happening,” Carrasco noted. “Gold should be around $1,600 if nothing else crazy happens. At this moment in time, I can see gold between the $1,500 and the $2,000 mark during 2020.”

If the market sees a further increase in geopolitical tensions or additional trade concerns this year, gold will surge towards $1,900, Goldex CEO pointed out. And if things do calm down, Carrasco does not see gold falling much below $1,500 an ounce.

“It is going to be another record year,” she said, referring to gold hitting record-highs in many currencies last year. “And it will be mainly due to geopolitical tensions raising prices higher.”

“With the current economic climate, gold should be between $1,500 and $1,600. If on top of that bare minimum, you add very strong geopolitical tensions or commercial trade issues, then you take it from $1,600 up to $1,900,” she added.

At the time of writing, the spot gold price was trading at $1,560.40, up 0.24% on the day and up 2.8% since the start of the year.

Gold is a hedge against inflation that is being used more and more by investors who are realizing the benefits of the yellow metal, Carrasco said.

“Gold is the hedge that people should be using. I wouldn’t build my personal wealth portfolio just on gold. But gold is more and more clearly overtaking oil and any other hedging mechanisms … Gold will be a good trade whether for speculative reasons or for trading,” she noted.

Goldex CEO pointed to a recent Goldman Sachs report that pointed to gold as being a better hedge than oil. Carrasco added that this view is the new consensus that will increase demand for gold.

Gold began the year with a bang as U.S.-Iran tensions flared up and surprised the markets in the first two weeks of January.

“The rally we’ve seen is based on geopolitical tensions between the U.S. and Iran. We need to see also the reasons behind Trump’s approach when it comes to Iran … In September, the U.S. ended up a positive net exporter of oil for the first time in history. That gives you a reason why Trump thinks he is not affected by the tensions even though the rest of the world is affected,” Carrasco described.

Also, U.S. President Donald Trump was driven by the goal to distract the market from the impeachment proceedings against him, she added.

Going forward, gold prices are likely to rise further, especially considering that most of the major central banks around the world are not planning to start raising rates any time soon.

“Central banks using unconventional ways … Is there going to be an increase in interest rates in Europe or in the U.S.? The answer is no. And if interest rates are not going to increase, gold is the first one that is affected,” Carrasco said.

On top of that, the central banks will remain significant gold buyers in 2020. “That’s another reason why gold prices will increase this year,” she said.

Growing debt also supports higher gold prices this year, the CEO added. “We’ve been talking about debt for years — how corporate debt and government debt continues to increase. More debt effectively means a potentially weaker U.S. dollar. The moment the U.S. dollar is weak, where do you go? The only safe place is gold. And I think we are going to be seeing a weakening dollar as the year continues,” Carrasco described.

Source: https://www.kitco.com/news/2020-01-20/Gold-at-1-600-is-the-bare-minimum-for-2020-Goldex-CEO.html

American Creek Announces Acquisition of Glacier Creek Claims $AMK.ca $SII.ca $TUD.ca $GTT.ca $AMK.ca $OSK.ca $RKR.ca

Posted by AGORACOM at 8:23 AM on Monday, January 20th, 2020

Cardston, Alberta–(Newsfile Corp. – January 20, 2020) – American Creek Resources Ltd. (TSXV: AMK) (the “Company” or “American Creek”) is pleased to announce that it has entered into a property purchase agreement pursuant to which it will acquire the precious and base mineral undersurface rights relating to 45 Crown Grant claims commonly referred to as the “Glacier Creek Claims” located in the Stewart area, British Columbia, from a subsidiary of Strikepoint Gold Inc. (TSXV:SKP)(“Strikepoint“). In consideration for the Glacier Creek Claims, the Company will pay Strikepoint $50,000, issue 3,000,000 common shares to Strikepoint, and grant Strikepoint a 0.5% NSR royalty over the Glacier Creek Claims which NSR royalty may be purchased by the Company at any time for $500,000 cash.

The Glacier Creek Crown Grant claim package consists of claims that overlap a portion of the
Company’s present Dunwell property as well as extending beyond the current Dunwell property boundaries. The net effect being a significant expansion of the Dunwell project and associated mineral rights.

Darren Blaney, President & CEO of the Company stated: “We are very pleased to be able to acquire this package of Crown Grants as it makes sense to amalgamate the claims into one property. This acquisition expands our Dunwell property considerably and provides for increased exploration potential as work is done in the immediate area hosting the historic Dunwell Mine as well as in the surrounding region. We believe that the Dunwell Mine and the multiple bonanza grade gold and silver showings within several kilometers of the mine are all related geologically and are part of a large underlying system”.

Completion of this acquisition is conditional upon, among other things, receipt of all necessary regulatory approvals, including approval of the TSX Venture Exchange.

Any shares issued pursuant to this transaction will be subject to a 4 month hold period pursuant to applicable securities laws.

About American Creek

American Creek is a Canadian junior mineral exploration company with a strong portfolio of gold and silver properties in British Columbia.

Three of those properties are located in the prolific “Golden Triangle”; the Treaty Creek and Electrum joint venture projects with Tudor Gold/Walter Storm as well as the 100% owned past producing Dunwell Mine.

A major drill program was conducted in 2019 at Treaty Creek by JV partner and operator Tudor Gold. The focus of the program was on the Goldstorm zone where drilling has produced very wide intercepts of gold including a 780 meter intercept of 0.683 g/t gold including a higher grade upper portion of 1.095 g/t over 370.5 meters.

The Treaty Creek Project is a Joint Venture with Tudor Gold owning 60% and acting as operator. American Creek and Teuton Resources each have 20% interests in the project. American Creek and Teuton are both fully carried until such time as a Production Notice is issued, at which time they are required to contribute their respective 20% share of development costs. Until such time, Tudor is required to fund all exploration and development costs while both American Creek and Teuton have “free rides”.

A drill program was also recently concluded on the 100% owned Dunwell Mine property located near Stewart. Assay results are pending.

The Corporation also holds the Gold Hill, Austruck-Bonanza, Ample Goldmax, Silver Side, and Glitter King properties located in other prospective areas of the province.

For further information please contact Kelvin Burton at: Phone: 403 752-4040 or Email: [email protected]. Information relating to the Company is available on its website at www.americancreek.com

Gold’s Big Picture SPONSOR: American Creek Resources $AMK.ca $TUD.ca $SII.ca $GTT.ca $AFF.ca $SEA.ca $SA $PVG.ca $AOT.ca

Posted by AGORACOM at 2:44 PM on Saturday, January 18th, 2020

SPONSOR: American Creek owns a 20% Carried Interest to Production at the Treaty Creek Project in the Golden Triangle. 2019’s first hole averaged of 0.683 g/t Au over 780m in a vertical intercept. The Treaty Creek property is located in the same hydrothermal system as the Pretivm and Seabridge’s KSM deposits. Click Here for More Info

From the HRA Journal: Issue 314

The fun doesn’t stop. Waves of liquidity continue to wash traders cares away. Even assassinations and war mongering generate little more than half day dips on Wall St. It seems nothing can get in the way of the bull rally that’s carrying all risk assets higher.

It feels like it could go on for a while, though I think the liquidity will have to keep coming to sustain it. By most readings, bullishness on Wall St is at levels that are rarely sustained for more than a few weeks. Some sort of correction on Wall St seems highly likely, and soon. Whether its substantial or just another blip on the way higher remains to be seen.

The resource sector, especially gold and silver stocks, have had their own rally. Our Santa Claus market was as good or better than Wall St’s for a change. And I don’t think its over yet. I think we’re in for the best Q1 we’ve seen for a few years. And we could be in for something better than that even. I increasingly see signs of a major rally developing in the gold space. It’s already been pretty good but I think a multi-quarter, or longer, move may be starting to take shape.

I usually spend time on all the metals in the first issue of the year. But, because the makings of this gold rally are complex and long in coming I decided to detail my reasoning. That ended up taking several pages so I’ll save talk on base metals and other markets for the next issue.

Eric Coffin
January 7, 2020

Gold’s Big Picture

“Après moi, le déluge“

No, I’m not writing about Louis IV, though there might be some appropriateness to the analogy, now that I think about it. The quote is famous, even though there’s no agreement on what it was supposed to mean. Most figure Louis was referring to the biblical flood, that all would be chaos once his reign ended.

The deluge I’m referring to isn’t water. It’s the flood of money the US Fed, and other central banks, continue to unleash to keep markets stable. Markets, especially stock markets, love liquidity. You can see the impact of the latest deluge, particularly the US Fed’s in the chart below that traces both the SPX index value and the level of a “Global Liquidity Proxy” (“GLP”) measuring fiscal/monetary tightness and weakness.

You can see the GLP moved lower in late 2018 as the Fed tightened and the impact that had on Wall St. Conversely, you can see the SPX running higher in the past couple of months as the US backed off rate increases, increased fiscal deficit expansion, and grew the Fed balance sheet through, mainly, repo market operations.

Wall St, and most other bourses, are loving these money flows. The Santa Claus rally discussed in the last issue continued to strengthen all the way to and through year end. As it turned out, the Fed either provided enough backstop in advance or the yearend repo issues were overstated. The repo market itself was calm going through year end and a lot of the short-term money offered by the Fed during that week wasn’t taken down.

Everything may have changed in the past couple of days with the dramatic increase in US-Iran tensions. I don’t know how big an issue that will be, since no one knows what form Iran’s retaliation will be or how much things will escalate. I DO think it’s potentially a big deal with very negative connotations, but it may take time to unfold. Someone at the Fed thought so too, as the past couple of days saw a return to large scale Fed lending in the repo market.

I’ve no doubt Iran will try and take revenge for the assassination of its most famous military commander by the US. But I don’t know what form it will take and if this means the US has drawn itself into the Mideast quagmire even more. I fear it has though. The US is already talking about adding 3,000 troops to its Mideast presence and they’re just warming up. Even larger scale attacks, if they happen, may not derail Wall St, but they’re certainly not a positive development at any level.

We know how stretched both market valuations and sentiment were before the Suleimani drone strike. The chart below shows a three-year trace of the “fear/greed index”. You can see that its hardly a stable reading. It flip flops often and extreme readings rarely hold for long. At last check, the reading was 94% bullish.

Sentiment almost never gets that bullish and, when it does, nothing good comes of it for bulls. A reading that close to 100% tells you we’re just about out of buyers. Whatever happens in and around Iran, I think a near term correction is inevitable. The only question is whether it’s a large one or not.

A rapid escalation in US-Iran tensions could certainly make a near term correction larger. If the flood of liquidity continues though, a correction could just be another waystation on the road to higher highs. There are a couple of other dangers Wall St still faces that I’ll touch on briefly at the end of this article. First however, lets move on to the main event for us-the gold market.

It wasn’t just the SPX enjoying a Santa rally this year. Gold experienced the rally we were hoping for that gold miner stocks seemed to be foretelling early last month. Gold’s been doing well since it bottomed at $1275 in June, but it didn’t feel that way during the long hiatus between the early September high and the current move. The gold price currently sits above September’s multi-year high, after breaching that high in the wake of the Baghdad drone strike. And the first retaliatory strike by Iran. Volatility will be very high for a while going forward.

I think we’ll see more multi-year highs going forward. I hate that the latest move higher is driven by geopolitics. Scary geopolitics and military confrontations mean people are dying. We don’t want to profit from misery. And we won’t anyway, if things get ugly enough in the Mideast to scare traders out of the market.

Geopolitical price moves almost always unwind quickly. I’d much prefer to see gold moving higher for macro reasons, not as a political safety trade. I expect more political/military inspired moves. As the Iran conflict unfolds. Make no mistake, Iran is NOT Iraq. Its army is far larger, better trained and better equipped than Iraq. This could get ugly.

The balance of this piece will deal with my macro argument for higher gold prices over an extended period. The geopolitical stuff will be layered on top of that for the next while and could strengthen both gold prices and the $US in risk-off trading. It should be viewed as a separate event from the argument laid out below.

What else is driving gold higher? In part, it was gold’s inverse relationship with the US Dollar. As you already know, I’m not a believer that “its all about the USD, all the time” when it comes to the gold market. That’s an over-simplification of a more complex relationship. It also discounts the idea of gold as its own asset class that trades for its own reasons.

If you look at the gold chart above, and the USD chart below it, its immediately apparent that there isn’t a constant negative correlation at play. Gold rallied during the summer at the same time the USD did and for the same reason; the world-wide explosion of negative real yields. Gold weakened a bit when yields reversed to the upside and the USD got a bit of traction, but things changed again at the start of December.

The USD turned lower and lost two percent during December. US bond yields were generally rising during the month and the market (right or wrong) was assuming economic growth was accelerating. So, neither of those items explains the USD weakness.

If gold was a “risk off” trade, you sure couldn’t see it in the way any other market was trading. So, is there another explanation for recent strength in the gold price, and what does it tell us about 2020 and, perhaps, beyond?

Well, I’ve got a theory. If I’m right, it could mean a bull run for gold has a long way to go.

Some of this theory will be no surprise to you because it does partially hinge on further USD weakness. There are long term structural reasons why the US currency should weaken. But there are also fluctuating sources of demand for USDs, particularly from offshore buyers and borrowers that transact in US currency. That can create enough demand to strengthen the US over long periods. We just went though one such period, but it looks like that may have come to an end, with more bearish forces to the USD reasserting themselves.

How did we get here? Let’s start with the big picture, displayed on the top chart on the next page. It gives a long-term view of US Federal deficits and the unemployment rate. Normally, these travel in tandem. Higher unemployment means more social spending and higher deficits. Government spending expands during recessions and contracts-or should- (as a percentage of GDP) during expansions. Classic Keynesian stuff.

You rarely see these two measures diverge. The two times they did significantly before, on the left side of the chart, was due to “wartime deficits” which acted (along with conscription) to stimulate the economy and drive down unemployment.

You can see the Korean and Vietnam war periods pointed out on the chart.

The current period stands out for the extreme size of the divergence. US unemployment rates are at multi decade lows and yet the fiscal deficit as a percentage of GDP keeps rising. There has never been a divergence this large and its due to get larger.

We know why this is. Big tax cuts combined with a budget that is mostly non-discretionary. And the US is 10 years into an economic expansion, however weak. Just think what this graph will look like the next time the US goes into recession.

We can assume US government deficits aren’t going to shrink any time soon (and I think we can, pun intended, take that to the bank). That leaves trade in goods to act as a counterbalance to the funding demand created by fiscal deficits.

The chart above makes it clear the US won’t get much help from international trade. The US trade balance has been getting increasingly negative for decades. It’s better recently, but unlikely to turn positive soon, and maybe not ever.

To be clear, this is not a bad thing in itself, notwithstanding the view from the White House. The relative strength of the US economy and the US Dollar and cheaper offshore production costs have driven the trade balance. It’s grown because Americans found they got more value buying abroad and the world was happy to help finance it. It’s not a bad thing, but not a US Dollar support either.

The more complete picture of currency/investment flows is given by changes in the Current Account. In simplified terms, the Current Account measures the difference between what a country produces and what it consumes. For example, if a country’s trade deficit increases, so does its current account deficit. If there are funds flowing in from overseas investments on the other hand, this decrease the Current Account deficit or increase the surplus.

The graph below summarizes quarterly changes in the US current account. You can see how the balance got increasingly negative in the mid 2000’s as both imports and foreign investment by US companies increased.

Not coincidentally, this same period leading up to the Financial Crisis included a sustained downtrend in the US Dollar Index. The USD index chart on the bottom of the next page shows the scale of that decline, from an index value of 120 at the start of 2002 all the way down to 73 in early 2008.

The current account deficit (and value of the USD) improved markedly up to the end of the Financial Crisis as money poured into the US as a safe haven and consumers cut back on imports. The current account deficit bas been relatively stable since then, running at about $100bn/quarter until it dipped a bit again last year.

Trade, funds flows and changes in money supply have the largest long-term impacts on currency values. When the US Fed ended QE and started tightening monetary conditions in 2014, the USD enjoyed a strong rally. The USD Index was back to 100 by early 2015 and stayed there until loosening monetary conditions-and lots of jawboning from Washington-led to pullback. Things reversed again and the USD maintained a mild uptrend from early 2018 until now.

There are still plenty of US Dollar bulls around, and their arguments have short-term merit. Yes, the US has higher real interest rates and somewhat higher growth. Both are important to relative currency valuations as I’ve said in the past. Longer term however, the “twin deficits” -fiscal and current account-should underpin the fundamental value of the currency.

Movements don’t happen overnight, especially when you’re talking about the worlds reserve currency that has the deepest and largest market supporting it. Changing the overall trend for the USD is like turning a supertanker. I think it’s happening though, and it has big potential implications for commodities, especially gold.

Dollar bulls will tell you the USD is the “cleanest shirt in the laundry hamper”, referring to the relative strength of the growth rate and interest rates compared to other major currencies. That’s true if we just look at those measures but definitely not true when we look at the longer term-fiscal and current account deficits.

In fact, the US has about the worst combined fiscal/current account deficit in the G7. The chart at the bottom of this page, from lynalden.com shows the 2018 values for Current Account and Trade balances for a number of major economies, as a percentage of their GDP. It’s not a handsome group.

Both the trade and current account deficits are negative for most of them. In terms of G7 economies, the US has the worst combined Current/Trade deficit at 6% of GDP annually. You may be surprised to note that the Current/Trade balance for the Euro zone is much better than the US, thanks to a large Trade surplus. Much of that is generated by Germany. Indeed, this chart explains Germanys defense of the Euro. It’s combined Trade/Current Account surplus is so large it’s currency would be skyrocketing if it still used the Deutschmark.

Because the current account deficit is cumulative, the overall international investment position of the US has continued to worsen. The US has gone from being an international creditor to an international debtor, and the scale if its debt keeps increasing. That means it’s getting harder every year to reverse the current account position as the US borrows ever more abroad to cover its trade and fiscal deficits. Interest outflows keep growing and investment inflows shrinking. Something has to give.

The US has to borrow overseas, as private domestic demand for Treasury bonds isn’t high enough to fund the twin deficits. In the past, whenever the US Dollar got too high, offshore demand for US government debt diminished. It’s not clear why. Maybe the higher dollar made raising enough foreign funds difficult, or perhaps buyers started worrying about the USD dropping after they bought when it got too expensive. Whatever the reason, foreign holdings of US Treasuries have been declining, forcing the US to find new, domestic, buyers.

Last year, the US Fed stopped its quantitative tightening program, due to concerns about Dollar liquidity. Then came the repo market. Since September, the Fed’s balance sheet has expanded by over $400 billion, mainly due to repo market transactions.

The Fed maintains this “isn’t QE” because these are very short duration transactions but, cumulatively, the total Fed balance sheet keeps expanding. The “QE/no QE” debate is just semantics.

What do these transactions look like? Mostly, its Primary Dealers, banks that also take part in Treasury auctions, in the repo market. The Fed buys bonds, usually Treasuries, from these banks and pays for them in newly printed Dollars. That injects money into the system, helps hold down interest rates in the repo market and, not coincidentally, effectively helps fund the US fiscal deficit. To put the series of transactions in their simplest form, the US is effectively monetizing its deficit with a lot of these transactions.

The chart below illustrates the problem for the Primary Dealer US banks. They’ve got to buy Treasuries when they’re auctioned-that is their commitment as Primary Dealers. They also need to hold minimum cash balances as a percentage of assets under Basel II bank regulations. Cash balances fell to the minimum mandated level by late 2019- the horizontal black line on the chart. That’s when the trouble started.

These banks are so stuffed with Treasuries that they didn’t have excess cash reserves to lend into the repo market. Hence the blow up back in September and the need for the Fed to inject cash by buying Treasuries. The point, however, is that this isn’t really a “repo market issue”, that’s just where it reared its head. It’s a “too many Treasuries and not enough buyers” problem.

It will be tough for the Treasury to attract more offshore buyers unless the USD weakens, or interest rates rise enough to make them irresistible. Or a big drop in the federal deficit reduces the supply of Treasuries itself.

I doubt we’ll see interest rates move up significantly. I don’t think the economy could handle it and it would be self-defeating anyway, as the government deficit would explode because of interest expenses. And that’s not even taking into account the fact that President Trump would be freaking out daily.

Based on recent history and political expediency, I’d say the odds of significant budget deficit reductions are slim and none. That’s especially true going into an election year. There’s just no way we’re going to see spending restraint or tax increases in the next couple of years. Indeed, the supply of Treasuries will keep growing even if the US economy grows too. If there is any sort of significant slowdown or recession the Federal deficit will explode and so will the new supply of Treasures. Not an easy fix.

Barring new haven demand for US Treasuries, odds are the Fed will have to keep sopping up excess supply. That means expanding its balance sheet and, in so doing, effectively increasing the US money supply.

That brings us (finally!) to the “money shot” chart that appears above. It compares changes in the size of the Fed balance sheet and the US Dollar Index. To make it readable and allow me to match the scales, I generated a chart that tracks annual percentage changes.

The chart shows a strong inverse correlation between changes in the size of the Fed balance sheet and the value of the USD. This is unsurprising as most transactions that expand the Fed balance sheet also expand the money supply.

It’s impossible to tell how long the repo market transactions will continue but, after three months, they aren’t feeling very “temporary”. To me, it increasingly looks like these market operations are “debt monetization in drag”.

I don’t know if that’s the Fed’s real intent or just a side effect. It doesn’t really matter if the funding and money printing continues at scale. Even if the repo market calms completely, the odds are good we see some sort of “new QE” start up. Whatever official reason is given for it; I think it will happen mainly to soak up the excess supply of Treasuries fiscal deficits are creating.

I don’t blame the FOMC if they’re being disingenuous about it. That’s their job after all. If you’re a central banker, the LAST thing you’re going to say is “our government is having trouble finding buyers for its debt”, especially if its true.

With no prospect of lower deficits and apparent continued reduction in offshore Treasury holdings, this could develop into long-term sustained trend. I don’t expect it to move in a straight line, markets never do. A severe escalation in Mideast tensions or the start of a serious recession could both generate safe-haven Treasury buying. Money flows from that would take the pressure off the Fed and would be US Dollar supportive too.

That said, it seems the US has reached the point where a substantial increase in its central bank’s balance sheet is inevitable. Both Japan and the Eurozone have gotten there before the Fed, but it looks like it won’t be immune.

The Eurozone at least has a “Twin surplus” to help cushion things. And Japan, considered a basket case economically, had an extremely deep pool of domestic savings (far deeper than the US) to draw on. Until very recently, Japan also ran massive Current Account surpluses thanks to decades of heavy investments overseas by Japanese entities. Those advantages allowed the ECB and especially the BoJ to massively expand their balance sheets without generating a huge run up in interest rates or currency collapse.

I don’t know how far the US Fed can expand its balance sheet before bond yields start getting away from it. I think pretty far though. Having the world’s reserve currency is a massive advantage. There is huge built in demand for US Dollars and US denominated debt. That gives the Fed some runway if it must keep buying US Treasuries.

Assuming a run on yields doesn’t spoil the party, continued balance sheet and money supply expansion should put increasing downward pressure on the US Dollar. I don’t know if we’ll see a move as large as the mid-2000s but a move down to the low 80s for the USD Index over the course of two or three years wouldn’t be surprising.

It won’t be a straight-line move. A recession could derail things, though the bear market on Wall St that would generate would support bullion. Currency markets tend to be self-correcting over extended periods. If the USD Index falls enough and there is a bump in US real interest rates offshore demand for Treasuries should increase again.

The bottom line is that this is, and will continue to be, a very dynamic system. Even so, I think we’ve reached a major inflection point for the US currency. The 2000s were pretty good for the gold market and gold stocks. We started from a much lower base of $300/oz on the gold price. Starting at a $1200-1300 base this time, I think a price above $2000/oz is a real possibility over the next year or two.

It’s not hard to extrapolate prices higher than that, but I’m not looking or hoping for those. I prefer to see a longer, steadier move that brings traders along rather than freaking them out.

This prediction isn’t a sure thing. Predictions never are. But I think the probabilities now favor an extended bull run in the gold price. Assuming stock markets don’t blow up (though I still expect that correction), gold stocks should put in a leveraged performance much more impressive than the bullion price itself.

There will be consolidations and corrections along the way, but I think there will be many gold explorers and developers that rack up share price gains in the hundreds of percent. That doesn’t mean buying blindly and never trading. We still need to adjust when a stock gets overweight and manage risk around major exploration campaigns. The last few weeks has been a lot more fun in the resource space. I don’t think the fun’s over yet. Enjoy the ride.

Like any good contrarian, a 10-year bull market makes me alert of signs of potential trouble. As noted at the start of this editorial, I’m expecting continues floods of liquidity. That may simply overwhelm everything else for a while and allow Wall St to keep rallying, come what may.

That said, a couple of data points recently got my attention. One is more of a sentiment indicator, seen in the chart below. More than one wag has joked that the Fed need only worry about Wall St, since the stock market is the economy now. Turns out there is more than a bit of truth to that.

The chart shows the US Leading Indicator reading with the level of the stock market (which is a component of the official Leading Indicator) removed. As you can see, without Wall St, the indicator implies zero growth going forward. I’m mainly showing it as evidence of just how surreal things have become.

The chart above is something to keep an eye on going forward. It shows weekly State unemployment claims for several major sectors of the economy. What’s interesting about this chart is that claims have been climbing rapidly over the past few weeks. Doubly interesting is that the increase in claims is broad, both within and across several sectors of the economy.

I take the monthly Non-Farm Payroll number less seriously than most, because it’s a backward-looking indicator. This move in unemployment claims looks increasingly like a trend though. It’s now at its highest level since the Financial Crisis.

It’s not in the danger zone-yet. But its climbing fast. We may need to start paying more attention to those payroll numbers. If the chart below isn’t a statistical fluke, we may start seeing negative surprises in the NFP soon. That won’t hurt the gold price either.

Source and Thanks: https://www.hraadvisory.com/golds-big-picture

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From the HRA Journal: Issue 314

The fun doesn’t stop. Waves of liquidity continue to wash traders cares away. Even assassinations and war mongering generate little more than half day dips on Wall St. It seems nothing can get in the way of the bull rally that’s carrying all risk assets higher.

It feels like it could go on for a while, though I think the liquidity will have to keep coming to sustain it. By most readings, bullishness on Wall St is at levels that are rarely sustained for more than a few weeks. Some sort of correction on Wall St seems highly likely, and soon. Whether its substantial or just another blip on the way higher remains to be seen.

The resource sector, especially gold and silver stocks, have had their own rally. Our Santa Claus market was as good or better than Wall St’s for a change. And I don’t think its over yet. I think we’re in for the best Q1 we’ve seen for a few years. And we could be in for something better than that even. I increasingly see signs of a major rally developing in the gold space. It’s already been pretty good but I think a multi-quarter, or longer, move may be starting to take shape.

I usually spend time on all the metals in the first issue of the year. But, because the makings of this gold rally are complex and long in coming I decided to detail my reasoning. That ended up taking several pages so I’ll save talk on base metals and other markets for the next issue.

Eric Coffin
January 7, 2020

Gold’s Big Picture

“Après moi, le déluge“

No, I’m not writing about Louis IV, though there might be some appropriateness to the analogy, now that I think about it. The quote is famous, even though there’s no agreement on what it was supposed to mean. Most figure Louis was referring to the biblical flood, that all would be chaos once his reign ended.

The deluge I’m referring to isn’t water. It’s the flood of money the US Fed, and other central banks, continue to unleash to keep markets stable. Markets, especially stock markets, love liquidity. You can see the impact of the latest deluge, particularly the US Fed’s in the chart below that traces both the SPX index value and the level of a “Global Liquidity Proxy” (“GLP”) measuring fiscal/monetary tightness and weakness.

You can see the GLP moved lower in late 2018 as the Fed tightened and the impact that had on Wall St. Conversely, you can see the SPX running higher in the past couple of months as the US backed off rate increases, increased fiscal deficit expansion, and grew the Fed balance sheet through, mainly, repo market operations.

Wall St, and most other bourses, are loving these money flows. The Santa Claus rally discussed in the last issue continued to strengthen all the way to and through year end. As it turned out, the Fed either provided enough backstop in advance or the yearend repo issues were overstated. The repo market itself was calm going through year end and a lot of the short-term money offered by the Fed during that week wasn’t taken down.

Everything may have changed in the past couple of days with the dramatic increase in US-Iran tensions. I don’t know how big an issue that will be, since no one knows what form Iran’s retaliation will be or how much things will escalate. I DO think it’s potentially a big deal with very negative connotations, but it may take time to unfold. Someone at the Fed thought so too, as the past couple of days saw a return to large scale Fed lending in the repo market.

I’ve no doubt Iran will try and take revenge for the assassination of its most famous military commander by the US. But I don’t know what form it will take and if this means the US has drawn itself into the Mideast quagmire even more. I fear it has though. The US is already talking about adding 3,000 troops to its Mideast presence and they’re just warming up. Even larger scale attacks, if they happen, may not derail Wall St, but they’re certainly not a positive development at any level.

We know how stretched both market valuations and sentiment were before the Suleimani drone strike. The chart below shows a three-year trace of the “fear/greed index”. You can see that its hardly a stable reading. It flip flops often and extreme readings rarely hold for long. At last check, the reading was 94% bullish.

Sentiment almost never gets that bullish and, when it does, nothing good comes of it for bulls. A reading that close to 100% tells you we’re just about out of buyers. Whatever happens in and around Iran, I think a near term correction is inevitable. The only question is whether it’s a large one or not.

A rapid escalation in US-Iran tensions could certainly make a near term correction larger. If the flood of liquidity continues though, a correction could just be another waystation on the road to higher highs. There are a couple of other dangers Wall St still faces that I’ll touch on briefly at the end of this article. First however, lets move on to the main event for us-the gold market.

It wasn’t just the SPX enjoying a Santa rally this year. Gold experienced the rally we were hoping for that gold miner stocks seemed to be foretelling early last month. Gold’s been doing well since it bottomed at $1275 in June, but it didn’t feel that way during the long hiatus between the early September high and the current move. The gold price currently sits above September’s multi-year high, after breaching that high in the wake of the Baghdad drone strike. And the first retaliatory strike by Iran. Volatility will be very high for a while going forward.

I think we’ll see more multi-year highs going forward. I hate that the latest move higher is driven by geopolitics. Scary geopolitics and military confrontations mean people are dying. We don’t want to profit from misery. And we won’t anyway, if things get ugly enough in the Mideast to scare traders out of the market.

Geopolitical price moves almost always unwind quickly. I’d much prefer to see gold moving higher for macro reasons, not as a political safety trade. I expect more political/military inspired moves. As the Iran conflict unfolds. Make no mistake, Iran is NOT Iraq. Its army is far larger, better trained and better equipped than Iraq. This could get ugly.

The balance of this piece will deal with my macro argument for higher gold prices over an extended period. The geopolitical stuff will be layered on top of that for the next while and could strengthen both gold prices and the $US in risk-off trading. It should be viewed as a separate event from the argument laid out below.

What else is driving gold higher? In part, it was gold’s inverse relationship with the US Dollar. As you already know, I’m not a believer that “its all about the USD, all the time” when it comes to the gold market. That’s an over-simplification of a more complex relationship. It also discounts the idea of gold as its own asset class that trades for its own reasons.

If you look at the gold chart above, and the USD chart below it, its immediately apparent that there isn’t a constant negative correlation at play. Gold rallied during the summer at the same time the USD did and for the same reason; the world-wide explosion of negative real yields. Gold weakened a bit when yields reversed to the upside and the USD got a bit of traction, but things changed again at the start of December.

The USD turned lower and lost two percent during December. US bond yields were generally rising during the month and the market (right or wrong) was assuming economic growth was accelerating. So, neither of those items explains the USD weakness.

If gold was a “risk off” trade, you sure couldn’t see it in the way any other market was trading. So, is there another explanation for recent strength in the gold price, and what does it tell us about 2020 and, perhaps, beyond?

Well, I’ve got a theory. If I’m right, it could mean a bull run for gold has a long way to go.

Some of this theory will be no surprise to you because it does partially hinge on further USD weakness. There are long term structural reasons why the US currency should weaken. But there are also fluctuating sources of demand for USDs, particularly from offshore buyers and borrowers that transact in US currency. That can create enough demand to strengthen the US over long periods. We just went though one such period, but it looks like that may have come to an end, with more bearish forces to the USD reasserting themselves.

How did we get here? Let’s start with the big picture, displayed on the top chart on the next page. It gives a long-term view of US Federal deficits and the unemployment rate. Normally, these travel in tandem. Higher unemployment means more social spending and higher deficits. Government spending expands during recessions and contracts-or should- (as a percentage of GDP) during expansions. Classic Keynesian stuff.

You rarely see these two measures diverge. The two times they did significantly before, on the left side of the chart, was due to “wartime deficits” which acted (along with conscription) to stimulate the economy and drive down unemployment.

You can see the Korean and Vietnam war periods pointed out on the chart.

The current period stands out for the extreme size of the divergence. US unemployment rates are at multi decade lows and yet the fiscal deficit as a percentage of GDP keeps rising. There has never been a divergence this large and its due to get larger.

We know why this is. Big tax cuts combined with a budget that is mostly non-discretionary. And the US is 10 years into an economic expansion, however weak. Just think what this graph will look like the next time the US goes into recession.

We can assume US government deficits aren’t going to shrink any time soon (and I think we can, pun intended, take that to the bank). That leaves trade in goods to act as a counterbalance to the funding demand created by fiscal deficits.

The chart above makes it clear the US won’t get much help from international trade. The US trade balance has been getting increasingly negative for decades. It’s better recently, but unlikely to turn positive soon, and maybe not ever.

To be clear, this is not a bad thing in itself, notwithstanding the view from the White House. The relative strength of the US economy and the US Dollar and cheaper offshore production costs have driven the trade balance. It’s grown because Americans found they got more value buying abroad and the world was happy to help finance it. It’s not a bad thing, but not a US Dollar support either.

The more complete picture of currency/investment flows is given by changes in the Current Account. In simplified terms, the Current Account measures the difference between what a country produces and what it consumes. For example, if a country’s trade deficit increases, so does its current account deficit. If there are funds flowing in from overseas investments on the other hand, this decrease the Current Account deficit or increase the surplus.

The graph below summarizes quarterly changes in the US current account. You can see how the balance got increasingly negative in the mid 2000’s as both imports and foreign investment by US companies increased.

Not coincidentally, this same period leading up to the Financial Crisis included a sustained downtrend in the US Dollar Index. The USD index chart on the bottom of the next page shows the scale of that decline, from an index value of 120 at the start of 2002 all the way down to 73 in early 2008.

The current account deficit (and value of the USD) improved markedly up to the end of the Financial Crisis as money poured into the US as a safe haven and consumers cut back on imports. The current account deficit bas been relatively stable since then, running at about $100bn/quarter until it dipped a bit again last year.

Trade, funds flows and changes in money supply have the largest long-term impacts on currency values. When the US Fed ended QE and started tightening monetary conditions in 2014, the USD enjoyed a strong rally. The USD Index was back to 100 by early 2015 and stayed there until loosening monetary conditions-and lots of jawboning from Washington-led to pullback. Things reversed again and the USD maintained a mild uptrend from early 2018 until now.

There are still plenty of US Dollar bulls around, and their arguments have short-term merit. Yes, the US has higher real interest rates and somewhat higher growth. Both are important to relative currency valuations as I’ve said in the past. Longer term however, the “twin deficits” -fiscal and current account-should underpin the fundamental value of the currency.

Movements don’t happen overnight, especially when you’re talking about the worlds reserve currency that has the deepest and largest market supporting it. Changing the overall trend for the USD is like turning a supertanker. I think it’s happening though, and it has big potential implications for commodities, especially gold.

Dollar bulls will tell you the USD is the “cleanest shirt in the laundry hamper”, referring to the relative strength of the growth rate and interest rates compared to other major currencies. That’s true if we just look at those measures but definitely not true when we look at the longer term-fiscal and current account deficits.

In fact, the US has about the worst combined fiscal/current account deficit in the G7. The chart at the bottom of this page, from lynalden.com shows the 2018 values for Current Account and Trade balances for a number of major economies, as a percentage of their GDP. It’s not a handsome group.

Both the trade and current account deficits are negative for most of them. In terms of G7 economies, the US has the worst combined Current/Trade deficit at 6% of GDP annually. You may be surprised to note that the Current/Trade balance for the Euro zone is much better than the US, thanks to a large Trade surplus. Much of that is generated by Germany. Indeed, this chart explains Germanys defense of the Euro. It’s combined Trade/Current Account surplus is so large it’s currency would be skyrocketing if it still used the Deutschmark.

Because the current account deficit is cumulative, the overall international investment position of the US has continued to worsen. The US has gone from being an international creditor to an international debtor, and the scale if its debt keeps increasing. That means it’s getting harder every year to reverse the current account position as the US borrows ever more abroad to cover its trade and fiscal deficits. Interest outflows keep growing and investment inflows shrinking. Something has to give.

The US has to borrow overseas, as private domestic demand for Treasury bonds isn’t high enough to fund the twin deficits. In the past, whenever the US Dollar got too high, offshore demand for US government debt diminished. It’s not clear why. Maybe the higher dollar made raising enough foreign funds difficult, or perhaps buyers started worrying about the USD dropping after they bought when it got too expensive. Whatever the reason, foreign holdings of US Treasuries have been declining, forcing the US to find new, domestic, buyers.

Last year, the US Fed stopped its quantitative tightening program, due to concerns about Dollar liquidity. Then came the repo market. Since September, the Fed’s balance sheet has expanded by over $400 billion, mainly due to repo market transactions.

The Fed maintains this “isn’t QE” because these are very short duration transactions but, cumulatively, the total Fed balance sheet keeps expanding. The “QE/no QE” debate is just semantics.

What do these transactions look like? Mostly, its Primary Dealers, banks that also take part in Treasury auctions, in the repo market. The Fed buys bonds, usually Treasuries, from these banks and pays for them in newly printed Dollars. That injects money into the system, helps hold down interest rates in the repo market and, not coincidentally, effectively helps fund the US fiscal deficit. To put the series of transactions in their simplest form, the US is effectively monetizing its deficit with a lot of these transactions.

The chart below illustrates the problem for the Primary Dealer US banks. They’ve got to buy Treasuries when they’re auctioned-that is their commitment as Primary Dealers. They also need to hold minimum cash balances as a percentage of assets under Basel II bank regulations. Cash balances fell to the minimum mandated level by late 2019- the horizontal black line on the chart. That’s when the trouble started.

These banks are so stuffed with Treasuries that they didn’t have excess cash reserves to lend into the repo market. Hence the blow up back in September and the need for the Fed to inject cash by buying Treasuries. The point, however, is that this isn’t really a “repo market issue”, that’s just where it reared its head. It’s a “too many Treasuries and not enough buyers” problem.

It will be tough for the Treasury to attract more offshore buyers unless the USD weakens, or interest rates rise enough to make them irresistible. Or a big drop in the federal deficit reduces the supply of Treasuries itself.

I doubt we’ll see interest rates move up significantly. I don’t think the economy could handle it and it would be self-defeating anyway, as the government deficit would explode because of interest expenses. And that’s not even taking into account the fact that President Trump would be freaking out daily.

Based on recent history and political expediency, I’d say the odds of significant budget deficit reductions are slim and none. That’s especially true going into an election year. There’s just no way we’re going to see spending restraint or tax increases in the next couple of years. Indeed, the supply of Treasuries will keep growing even if the US economy grows too. If there is any sort of significant slowdown or recession the Federal deficit will explode and so will the new supply of Treasures. Not an easy fix.

Barring new haven demand for US Treasuries, odds are the Fed will have to keep sopping up excess supply. That means expanding its balance sheet and, in so doing, effectively increasing the US money supply.

That brings us (finally!) to the “money shot” chart that appears above. It compares changes in the size of the Fed balance sheet and the US Dollar Index. To make it readable and allow me to match the scales, I generated a chart that tracks annual percentage changes.

The chart shows a strong inverse correlation between changes in the size of the Fed balance sheet and the value of the USD. This is unsurprising as most transactions that expand the Fed balance sheet also expand the money supply.

It’s impossible to tell how long the repo market transactions will continue but, after three months, they aren’t feeling very “temporary”. To me, it increasingly looks like these market operations are “debt monetization in drag”.

I don’t know if that’s the Fed’s real intent or just a side effect. It doesn’t really matter if the funding and money printing continues at scale. Even if the repo market calms completely, the odds are good we see some sort of “new QE” start up. Whatever official reason is given for it; I think it will happen mainly to soak up the excess supply of Treasuries fiscal deficits are creating.

I don’t blame the FOMC if they’re being disingenuous about it. That’s their job after all. If you’re a central banker, the LAST thing you’re going to say is “our government is having trouble finding buyers for its debt”, especially if its true.

With no prospect of lower deficits and apparent continued reduction in offshore Treasury holdings, this could develop into long-term sustained trend. I don’t expect it to move in a straight line, markets never do. A severe escalation in Mideast tensions or the start of a serious recession could both generate safe-haven Treasury buying. Money flows from that would take the pressure off the Fed and would be US Dollar supportive too.

That said, it seems the US has reached the point where a substantial increase in its central bank’s balance sheet is inevitable. Both Japan and the Eurozone have gotten there before the Fed, but it looks like it won’t be immune.

The Eurozone at least has a “Twin surplus” to help cushion things. And Japan, considered a basket case economically, had an extremely deep pool of domestic savings (far deeper than the US) to draw on. Until very recently, Japan also ran massive Current Account surpluses thanks to decades of heavy investments overseas by Japanese entities. Those advantages allowed the ECB and especially the BoJ to massively expand their balance sheets without generating a huge run up in interest rates or currency collapse.

I don’t know how far the US Fed can expand its balance sheet before bond yields start getting away from it. I think pretty far though. Having the world’s reserve currency is a massive advantage. There is huge built in demand for US Dollars and US denominated debt. That gives the Fed some runway if it must keep buying US Treasuries.

Assuming a run on yields doesn’t spoil the party, continued balance sheet and money supply expansion should put increasing downward pressure on the US Dollar. I don’t know if we’ll see a move as large as the mid-2000s but a move down to the low 80s for the USD Index over the course of two or three years wouldn’t be surprising.

It won’t be a straight-line move. A recession could derail things, though the bear market on Wall St that would generate would support bullion. Currency markets tend to be self-correcting over extended periods. If the USD Index falls enough and there is a bump in US real interest rates offshore demand for Treasuries should increase again.

The bottom line is that this is, and will continue to be, a very dynamic system. Even so, I think we’ve reached a major inflection point for the US currency. The 2000s were pretty good for the gold market and gold stocks. We started from a much lower base of $300/oz on the gold price. Starting at a $1200-1300 base this time, I think a price above $2000/oz is a real possibility over the next year or two.

It’s not hard to extrapolate prices higher than that, but I’m not looking or hoping for those. I prefer to see a longer, steadier move that brings traders along rather than freaking them out.

This prediction isn’t a sure thing. Predictions never are. But I think the probabilities now favor an extended bull run in the gold price. Assuming stock markets don’t blow up (though I still expect that correction), gold stocks should put in a leveraged performance much more impressive than the bullion price itself.

There will be consolidations and corrections along the way, but I think there will be many gold explorers and developers that rack up share price gains in the hundreds of percent. That doesn’t mean buying blindly and never trading. We still need to adjust when a stock gets overweight and manage risk around major exploration campaigns. The last few weeks has been a lot more fun in the resource space. I don’t think the fun’s over yet. Enjoy the ride.

Like any good contrarian, a 10-year bull market makes me alert of signs of potential trouble. As noted at the start of this editorial, I’m expecting continues floods of liquidity. That may simply overwhelm everything else for a while and allow Wall St to keep rallying, come what may.

That said, a couple of data points recently got my attention. One is more of a sentiment indicator, seen in the chart below. More than one wag has joked that the Fed need only worry about Wall St, since the stock market is the economy now. Turns out there is more than a bit of truth to that.

The chart shows the US Leading Indicator reading with the level of the stock market (which is a component of the official Leading Indicator) removed. As you can see, without Wall St, the indicator implies zero growth going forward. I’m mainly showing it as evidence of just how surreal things have become.

The chart above is something to keep an eye on going forward. It shows weekly State unemployment claims for several major sectors of the economy. What’s interesting about this chart is that claims have been climbing rapidly over the past few weeks. Doubly interesting is that the increase in claims is broad, both within and across several sectors of the economy.

I take the monthly Non-Farm Payroll number less seriously than most, because it’s a backward-looking indicator. This move in unemployment claims looks increasingly like a trend though. It’s now at its highest level since the Financial Crisis.

It’s not in the danger zone-yet. But its climbing fast. We may need to start paying more attention to those payroll numbers. If the chart below isn’t a statistical fluke, we may start seeing negative surprises in the NFP soon. That won’t hurt the gold price either.

Source and Thanks: https://www.hraadvisory.com/golds-big-picture

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From the HRA Journal: Issue 314

The fun doesn’t stop. Waves of liquidity continue to wash traders cares away. Even assassinations and war mongering generate little more than half day dips on Wall St. It seems nothing can get in the way of the bull rally that’s carrying all risk assets higher.

It feels like it could go on for a while, though I think the liquidity will have to keep coming to sustain it. By most readings, bullishness on Wall St is at levels that are rarely sustained for more than a few weeks. Some sort of correction on Wall St seems highly likely, and soon. Whether its substantial or just another blip on the way higher remains to be seen.

The resource sector, especially gold and silver stocks, have had their own rally. Our Santa Claus market was as good or better than Wall St’s for a change. And I don’t think its over yet. I think we’re in for the best Q1 we’ve seen for a few years. And we could be in for something better than that even. I increasingly see signs of a major rally developing in the gold space. It’s already been pretty good but I think a multi-quarter, or longer, move may be starting to take shape.

I usually spend time on all the metals in the first issue of the year. But, because the makings of this gold rally are complex and long in coming I decided to detail my reasoning. That ended up taking several pages so I’ll save talk on base metals and other markets for the next issue.

Eric Coffin
January 7, 2020

Gold’s Big Picture

Après moi, le déluge

No, I’m not writing about Louis IV, though there might be some appropriateness to the analogy, now that I think about it. The quote is famous, even though there’s no agreement on what it was supposed to mean. Most figure Louis was referring to the biblical flood, that all would be chaos once his reign ended.

The deluge I’m referring to isn’t water. It’s the flood of money the US Fed, and other central banks, continue to unleash to keep markets stable. Markets, especially stock markets, love liquidity. You can see the impact of the latest deluge, particularly the US Fed’s in the chart below that traces both the SPX index value and the level of a “Global Liquidity Proxy” (“GLP”) measuring fiscal/monetary tightness and weakness.

You can see the GLP moved lower in late 2018 as the Fed tightened and the impact that had on Wall St. Conversely, you can see the SPX running higher in the past couple of months as the US backed off rate increases, increased fiscal deficit expansion, and grew the Fed balance sheet through, mainly, repo market operations.

Wall St, and most other bourses, are loving these money flows. The Santa Claus rally discussed in the last issue continued to strengthen all the way to and through year end. As it turned out, the Fed either provided enough backstop in advance or the yearend repo issues were overstated. The repo market itself was calm going through year end and a lot of the short-term money offered by the Fed during that week wasn’t taken down.

Everything may have changed in the past couple of days with the dramatic increase in US-Iran tensions. I don’t know how big an issue that will be, since no one knows what form Iran’s retaliation will be or how much things will escalate. I DO think it’s potentially a big deal with very negative connotations, but it may take time to unfold. Someone at the Fed thought so too, as the past couple of days saw a return to large scale Fed lending in the repo market.

I’ve no doubt Iran will try and take revenge for the assassination of its most famous military commander by the US. But I don’t know what form it will take and if this means the US has drawn itself into the Mideast quagmire even more. I fear it has though. The US is already talking about adding 3,000 troops to its Mideast presence and they’re just warming up. Even larger scale attacks, if they happen, may not derail Wall St, but they’re certainly not a positive development at any level.

We know how stretched both market valuations and sentiment were before the Suleimani drone strike. The chart below shows a three-year trace of the “fear/greed index”. You can see that its hardly a stable reading. It flip flops often and extreme readings rarely hold for long. At last check, the reading was 94% bullish.

Sentiment almost never gets that bullish and, when it does, nothing good comes of it for bulls. A reading that close to 100% tells you we’re just about out of buyers. Whatever happens in and around Iran, I think a near term correction is inevitable. The only question is whether it’s a large one or not.

A rapid escalation in US-Iran tensions could certainly make a near term correction larger. If the flood of liquidity continues though, a correction could just be another waystation on the road to higher highs. There are a couple of other dangers Wall St still faces that I’ll touch on briefly at the end of this article. First however, lets move on to the main event for us-the gold market.

It wasn’t just the SPX enjoying a Santa rally this year. Gold experienced the rally we were hoping for that gold miner stocks seemed to be foretelling early last month. Gold’s been doing well since it bottomed at $1275 in June, but it didn’t feel that way during the long hiatus between the early September high and the current move. The gold price currently sits above September’s multi-year high, after breaching that high in the wake of the Baghdad drone strike. And the first retaliatory strike by Iran. Volatility will be very high for a while going forward.

I think we’ll see more multi-year highs going forward. I hate that the latest move higher is driven by geopolitics. Scary geopolitics and military confrontations mean people are dying. We don’t want to profit from misery. And we won’t anyway, if things get ugly enough in the Mideast to scare traders out of the market.

Geopolitical price moves almost always unwind quickly. I’d much prefer to see gold moving higher for macro reasons, not as a political safety trade. I expect more political/military inspired moves. As the Iran conflict unfolds. Make no mistake, Iran is NOT Iraq. Its army is far larger, better trained and better equipped than Iraq. This could get ugly.

The balance of this piece will deal with my macro argument for higher gold prices over an extended period. The geopolitical stuff will be layered on top of that for the next while and could strengthen both gold prices and the $US in risk-off trading. It should be viewed as a separate event from the argument laid out below.

What else is driving gold higher? In part, it was gold’s inverse relationship with the US Dollar. As you already know, I’m not a believer that “its all about the USD, all the time” when it comes to the gold market. That’s an over-simplification of a more complex relationship. It also discounts the idea of gold as its own asset class that trades for its own reasons.

If you look at the gold chart above, and the USD chart below it, its immediately apparent that there isn’t a constant negative correlation at play. Gold rallied during the summer at the same time the USD did and for the same reason; the world-wide explosion of negative real yields. Gold weakened a bit when yields reversed to the upside and the USD got a bit of traction, but things changed again at the start of December.

The USD turned lower and lost two percent during December. US bond yields were generally rising during the month and the market (right or wrong) was assuming economic growth was accelerating. So, neither of those items explains the USD weakness.

If gold was a “risk off” trade, you sure couldn’t see it in the way any other market was trading. So, is there another explanation for recent strength in the gold price, and what does it tell us about 2020 and, perhaps, beyond?

Well, I’ve got a theory. If I’m right, it could mean a bull run for gold has a long way to go.

Some of this theory will be no surprise to you because it does partially hinge on further USD weakness. There are long term structural reasons why the US currency should weaken. But there are also fluctuating sources of demand for USDs, particularly from offshore buyers and borrowers that transact in US currency. That can create enough demand to strengthen the US over long periods. We just went though one such period, but it looks like that may have come to an end, with more bearish forces to the USD reasserting themselves.

How did we get here? Let’s start with the big picture, displayed on the top chart on the next page. It gives a long-term view of US Federal deficits and the unemployment rate. Normally, these travel in tandem. Higher unemployment means more social spending and higher deficits. Government spending expands during recessions and contracts-or should- (as a percentage of GDP) during expansions. Classic Keynesian stuff.

You rarely see these two measures diverge. The two times they did significantly before, on the left side of the chart, was due to “wartime deficits” which acted (along with conscription) to stimulate the economy and drive down unemployment.

You can see the Korean and Vietnam war periods pointed out on the chart.

The current period stands out for the extreme size of the divergence. US unemployment rates are at multi decade lows and yet the fiscal deficit as a percentage of GDP keeps rising. There has never been a divergence this large and its due to get larger.

We know why this is. Big tax cuts combined with a budget that is mostly non-discretionary. And the US is 10 years into an economic expansion, however weak. Just think what this graph will look like the next time the US goes into recession.

We can assume US government deficits aren’t going to shrink any time soon (and I think we can, pun intended, take that to the bank). That leaves trade in goods to act as a counterbalance to the funding demand created by fiscal deficits.

The chart above makes it clear the US won’t get much help from international trade. The US trade balance has been getting increasingly negative for decades. It’s better recently, but unlikely to turn positive soon, and maybe not ever.

To be clear, this is not a bad thing in itself, notwithstanding the view from the White House. The relative strength of the US economy and the US Dollar and cheaper offshore production costs have driven the trade balance. It’s grown because Americans found they got more value buying abroad and the world was happy to help finance it. It’s not a bad thing, but not a US Dollar support either.

The more complete picture of currency/investment flows is given by changes in the Current Account. In simplified terms, the Current Account measures the difference between what a country produces and what it consumes. For example, if a country’s trade deficit increases, so does its current account deficit. If there are funds flowing in from overseas investments on the other hand, this decrease the Current Account deficit or increase the surplus.

The graph below summarizes quarterly changes in the US current account. You can see how the balance got increasingly negative in the mid 2000’s as both imports and foreign investment by US companies increased.

Not coincidentally, this same period leading up to the Financial Crisis included a sustained downtrend in the US Dollar Index. The USD index chart on the bottom of the next page shows the scale of that decline, from an index value of 120 at the start of 2002 all the way down to 73 in early 2008.

The current account deficit (and value of the USD) improved markedly up to the end of the Financial Crisis as money poured into the US as a safe haven and consumers cut back on imports. The current account deficit bas been relatively stable since then, running at about $100bn/quarter until it dipped a bit again last year.

Trade, funds flows and changes in money supply have the largest long-term impacts on currency values. When the US Fed ended QE and started tightening monetary conditions in 2014, the USD enjoyed a strong rally. The USD Index was back to 100 by early 2015 and stayed there until loosening monetary conditions-and lots of jawboning from Washington-led to pullback. Things reversed again and the USD maintained a mild uptrend from early 2018 until now.

There are still plenty of US Dollar bulls around, and their arguments have short-term merit. Yes, the US has higher real interest rates and somewhat higher growth. Both are important to relative currency valuations as I’ve said in the past. Longer term however, the “twin deficits” -fiscal and current account-should underpin the fundamental value of the currency.

Movements don’t happen overnight, especially when you’re talking about the worlds reserve currency that has the deepest and largest market supporting it. Changing the overall trend for the USD is like turning a supertanker. I think it’s happening though, and it has big potential implications for commodities, especially gold.

Dollar bulls will tell you the USD is the “cleanest shirt in the laundry hamper”, referring to the relative strength of the growth rate and interest rates compared to other major currencies. That’s true if we just look at those measures but definitely not true when we look at the longer term-fiscal and current account deficits.

In fact, the US has about the worst combined fiscal/current account deficit in the G7. The chart at the bottom of this page, from lynalden.com shows the 2018 values for Current Account and Trade balances for a number of major economies, as a percentage of their GDP. It’s not a handsome group.

Both the trade and current account deficits are negative for most of them. In terms of G7 economies, the US has the worst combined Current/Trade deficit at 6% of GDP annually. You may be surprised to note that the Current/Trade balance for the Euro zone is much better than the US, thanks to a large Trade surplus. Much of that is generated by Germany. Indeed, this chart explains Germanys defense of the Euro. It’s combined Trade/Current Account surplus is so large it’s currency would be skyrocketing if it still used the Deutschmark.

Because the current account deficit is cumulative, the overall international investment position of the US has continued to worsen. The US has gone from being an international creditor to an international debtor, and the scale if its debt keeps increasing. That means it’s getting harder every year to reverse the current account position as the US borrows ever more abroad to cover its trade and fiscal deficits. Interest outflows keep growing and investment inflows shrinking. Something has to give.

The US has to borrow overseas, as private domestic demand for Treasury bonds isn’t high enough to fund the twin deficits. In the past, whenever the US Dollar got too high, offshore demand for US government debt diminished. It’s not clear why. Maybe the higher dollar made raising enough foreign funds difficult, or perhaps buyers started worrying about the USD dropping after they bought when it got too expensive. Whatever the reason, foreign holdings of US Treasuries have been declining, forcing the US to find new, domestic, buyers.

Last year, the US Fed stopped its quantitative tightening program, due to concerns about Dollar liquidity. Then came the repo market. Since September, the Fed’s balance sheet has expanded by over $400 billion, mainly due to repo market transactions.

The Fed maintains this “isn’t QE” because these are very short duration transactions but, cumulatively, the total Fed balance sheet keeps expanding. The “QE/no QE” debate is just semantics.

What do these transactions look like? Mostly, its Primary Dealers, banks that also take part in Treasury auctions, in the repo market. The Fed buys bonds, usually Treasuries, from these banks and pays for them in newly printed Dollars. That injects money into the system, helps hold down interest rates in the repo market and, not coincidentally, effectively helps fund the US fiscal deficit. To put the series of transactions in their simplest form, the US is effectively monetizing its deficit with a lot of these transactions.

The chart below illustrates the problem for the Primary Dealer US banks. They’ve got to buy Treasuries when they’re auctioned-that is their commitment as Primary Dealers. They also need to hold minimum cash balances as a percentage of assets under Basel II bank regulations. Cash balances fell to the minimum mandated level by late 2019- the horizontal black line on the chart. That’s when the trouble started.

These banks are so stuffed with Treasuries that they didn’t have excess cash reserves to lend into the repo market. Hence the blow up back in September and the need for the Fed to inject cash by buying Treasuries. The point, however, is that this isn’t really a “repo market issue”, that’s just where it reared its head. It’s a “too many Treasuries and not enough buyers” problem.

It will be tough for the Treasury to attract more offshore buyers unless the USD weakens, or interest rates rise enough to make them irresistible. Or a big drop in the federal deficit reduces the supply of Treasuries itself.

I doubt we’ll see interest rates move up significantly. I don’t think the economy could handle it and it would be self-defeating anyway, as the government deficit would explode because of interest expenses. And that’s not even taking into account the fact that President Trump would be freaking out daily.

Based on recent history and political expediency, I’d say the odds of significant budget deficit reductions are slim and none. That’s especially true going into an election year. There’s just no way we’re going to see spending restraint or tax increases in the next couple of years. Indeed, the supply of Treasuries will keep growing even if the US economy grows too. If there is any sort of significant slowdown or recession the Federal deficit will explode and so will the new supply of Treasures. Not an easy fix.

Barring new haven demand for US Treasuries, odds are the Fed will have to keep sopping up excess supply. That means expanding its balance sheet and, in so doing, effectively increasing the US money supply.

That brings us (finally!) to the “money shot” chart that appears above. It compares changes in the size of the Fed balance sheet and the US Dollar Index. To make it readable and allow me to match the scales, I generated a chart that tracks annual percentage changes.

The chart shows a strong inverse correlation between changes in the size of the Fed balance sheet and the value of the USD. This is unsurprising as most transactions that expand the Fed balance sheet also expand the money supply.

It’s impossible to tell how long the repo market transactions will continue but, after three months, they aren’t feeling very “temporary”. To me, it increasingly looks like these market operations are “debt monetization in drag”.

I don’t know if that’s the Fed’s real intent or just a side effect. It doesn’t really matter if the funding and money printing continues at scale. Even if the repo market calms completely, the odds are good we see some sort of “new QE” start up. Whatever official reason is given for it; I think it will happen mainly to soak up the excess supply of Treasuries fiscal deficits are creating.

I don’t blame the FOMC if they’re being disingenuous about it. That’s their job after all. If you’re a central banker, the LAST thing you’re going to say is “our government is having trouble finding buyers for its debt”, especially if its true.

With no prospect of lower deficits and apparent continued reduction in offshore Treasury holdings, this could develop into long-term sustained trend. I don’t expect it to move in a straight line, markets never do. A severe escalation in Mideast tensions or the start of a serious recession could both generate safe-haven Treasury buying. Money flows from that would take the pressure off the Fed and would be US Dollar supportive too.

That said, it seems the US has reached the point where a substantial increase in its central bank’s balance sheet is inevitable. Both Japan and the Eurozone have gotten there before the Fed, but it looks like it won’t be immune.

The Eurozone at least has a “Twin surplus” to help cushion things. And Japan, considered a basket case economically, had an extremely deep pool of domestic savings (far deeper than the US) to draw on. Until very recently, Japan also ran massive Current Account surpluses thanks to decades of heavy investments overseas by Japanese entities. Those advantages allowed the ECB and especially the BoJ to massively expand their balance sheets without generating a huge run up in interest rates or currency collapse.

I don’t know how far the US Fed can expand its balance sheet before bond yields start getting away from it. I think pretty far though. Having the world’s reserve currency is a massive advantage. There is huge built in demand for US Dollars and US denominated debt. That gives the Fed some runway if it must keep buying US Treasuries.

Assuming a run on yields doesn’t spoil the party, continued balance sheet and money supply expansion should put increasing downward pressure on the US Dollar. I don’t know if we’ll see a move as large as the mid-2000s but a move down to the low 80s for the USD Index over the course of two or three years wouldn’t be surprising.

It won’t be a straight-line move. A recession could derail things, though the bear market on Wall St that would generate would support bullion. Currency markets tend to be self-correcting over extended periods. If the USD Index falls enough and there is a bump in US real interest rates offshore demand for Treasuries should increase again.

The bottom line is that this is, and will continue to be, a very dynamic system. Even so, I think we’ve reached a major inflection point for the US currency. The 2000s were pretty good for the gold market and gold stocks. We started from a much lower base of $300/oz on the gold price. Starting at a $1200-1300 base this time, I think a price above $2000/oz is a real possibility over the next year or two.

It’s not hard to extrapolate prices higher than that, but I’m not looking or hoping for those. I prefer to see a longer, steadier move that brings traders along rather than freaking them out.

This prediction isn’t a sure thing. Predictions never are. But I think the probabilities now favor an extended bull run in the gold price. Assuming stock markets don’t blow up (though I still expect that correction), gold stocks should put in a leveraged performance much more impressive than the bullion price itself.

There will be consolidations and corrections along the way, but I think there will be many gold explorers and developers that rack up share price gains in the hundreds of percent. That doesn’t mean buying blindly and never trading. We still need to adjust when a stock gets overweight and manage risk around major exploration campaigns. The last few weeks has been a lot more fun in the resource space. I don’t think the fun’s over yet. Enjoy the ride.

Like any good contrarian, a 10-year bull market makes me alert of signs of potential trouble. As noted at the start of this editorial, I’m expecting continues floods of liquidity. That may simply overwhelm everything else for a while and allow Wall St to keep rallying, come what may.

That said, a couple of data points recently got my attention. One is more of a sentiment indicator, seen in the chart below. More than one wag has joked that the Fed need only worry about Wall St, since the stock market is the economy now. Turns out there is more than a bit of truth to that.

The chart shows the US Leading Indicator reading with the level of the stock market (which is a component of the official Leading Indicator) removed. As you can see, without Wall St, the indicator implies zero growth going forward. I’m mainly showing it as evidence of just how surreal things have become.

The chart above is something to keep an eye on going forward. It shows weekly State unemployment claims for several major sectors of the economy. What’s interesting about this chart is that claims have been climbing rapidly over the past few weeks. Doubly interesting is that the increase in claims is broad, both within and across several sectors of the economy.

I take the monthly Non-Farm Payroll number less seriously than most, because it’s a backward-looking indicator. This move in unemployment claims looks increasingly like a trend though. It’s now at its highest level since the Financial Crisis.

It’s not in the danger zone-yet. But its climbing fast. We may need to start paying more attention to those payroll numbers. If the chart below isn’t a statistical fluke, we may start seeing negative surprises in the NFP soon. That won’t hurt the gold price either.

Source and Thanks: https://www.hraadvisory.com/golds-big-picture

American Creek Resources $AMK.ca: Invitation to Vancouver Resource Investment Conference and AME Roundup in Vancouver $TUD.ca $SII.ca $GTT.ca $AFF.ca $SEA.ca $SA $PVG.ca $AOT.ca

Posted by AGORACOM at 9:37 AM on Friday, January 17th, 2020

Cardston, Alberta–(January 17, 2020) – American Creek Resources Ltd. (TSXV: AMK) (OTC Pink: ACKRF) (“American Creek”) (“the Corporation”) would like to cordially invite you to visit us at Booth #435 at the Vancouver Resource Investment Conference (VRIC) to be held at the Vancouver Convention Centre West (1055 Canada Place, Vancouver) on Sunday January 19th – Monday January 20th, 2020.

The Vancouver Resource Investment Conference has been the bellwether of the junior mining market for the last twenty-five years. It is the number one source of information for investment trends and ideas, covering all aspects of the natural resource industry. Each year, the VRIC hosts over 60 keynote speakers, 350 exhibiting companies and 9000 investors.



Roundup held in Convention Center with sails and VRIC held in Convention Center with grass.

To view an enhanced version of this graphic, please visit:
https://orders.newsfilecorp.com/files/682/51600_35b68eb1546ea859_001full.jpg

We also invite you to visit us on Wednesday January 22nd and Thursday January 23rd at Booth #1024, in the Core Shack at the Association for Mineral Exploration (AME) Roundup’s 37th annual conference held at the Vancouver Convention Centre East, under the sails of Canada Place.

With this year’s theme “Lens on Discovery” American Creek was selected to display core from the past producing high-grade Dunwell Mine. A maiden drill program was started in late 2019 with assays pending. The company will also be discussing advancements on its JV Treaty Creek project along with the Gold Hill project located in SE British Columbia.

AME is the lead association for the mineral exploration and development industry based in British Columbia. Established in 1912, AME represents, advocates, protects and promotes the interests of thousands of members who are engaged in mineral exploration and development in B.C. and throughout the world.

AME’s annual Mineral Exploration Roundup conference brings together more than 6,500 people annually to share innovative ideas, generate new connections and create collaborative solutions related to mineral exploration and development. It is a space where mineral explorers, industry professionals and leaders go to network and is a driving force for mineral exploration in Western Canada and the North and South American Cordillera.

For further information please contact Kelvin Burton at: Phone: 403 752-4040 or Email: [email protected]. Information relating to the Corporation is available on its website at www.americancreek.com

Affinity Metals $AAF.ca Affinity Metals Corp. Invites You to Join Us at the Vancouver Resource Investment Conference $SII.ca $TUD.ca $GTT.ca $AMK.ca $OSK.ca RKR.ca

Posted by AGORACOM at 9:32 AM on Friday, January 17th, 2020

Affinity Metals Corp. (TSXV: AFF) would like to cordially invite you to visit us at Booth #437 at the Vancouver Resource Investment Conference (VRIC) to be held at the Vancouver Convention Centre West (1055 Canada Place, Vancouver) on Sunday January 19 – Monday January 20, 2020.

The Vancouver Resource Investment Conference has been the bellwether of the junior mining market for the last twenty-five years. It is the number one source of information for investment trends and ideas, covering all aspects of the natural resource industry.

Each year, the VRIC hosts over 60 keynote speakers, 350 exhibiting companies and 9000 investors.

Investment thought leaders and wealth influencers provide our audiences with valuable insights. C-suite company executives covering every corner of the mineral exploration sector as well as metals, oil & gas, renewable energy, media and financial services companies are available to speak one on one. This is a must-attend for investors and stakeholders in the global mining industry.

For more information and/or to register for the conference please visit: https://cambridgehouse.com/vancouver-resource-investment-conference.

We look forward to seeing you there.

For further information:

Affinity Metals Corp.
Robert Edwards
4037950791
[email protected]
www.affinity-metals.com

Historic Gold Bull Market Cycles Chart SPONSOR: American Creek Resources $AMK.ca $TUD.ca $SII.ca $GTT.ca $AFF.ca $SEA.ca $SA $PVG.ca $AOT.ca

Posted by AGORACOM at 11:47 AM on Thursday, January 16th, 2020

SPONSOR: American Creek owns a 20% Carried Interest to Production at the Treaty Creek Project in the Golden Triangle. 2019’s first hole averaged of 0.683 g/t Au over 780m in a vertical intercept. The Treaty Creek property is located in the same hydrothermal system as the Pretivm and Seabridge’s KSM deposits. Click Here for More Info

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EOU-2brX4AEhgL8?format=jpg&name=small

About American Creek

American Creek is a Canadian mineral exploration company with a strong portfolio of gold and silver properties in British Columbia. Three of those properties are located in the prolific “Golden Triangle”; the Treaty Creek and Electrum joint venture projects with Tudor Gold/Walter Storm as well as the 100% owned past producing Dunwell Mine.

More information about the Treaty Creek Project can be found here: https://americancreek.com/index.php/projects/treaty-creek/home

An exploration program is ongoing on American Creek’s 100% owned Dunwell Mine property located near Stewart. More information can be found here: https://americancreek.com/index.php/projects/dunwell-mine

The Corporation also holds the Gold Hill, Austruck-Bonanza, Ample Goldmax, Silver Side, and Glitter King properties located in other prospective areas of the province.

For further information please contact Kelvin Burton at: Phone: 403 752-4040 or Email: [email protected]. Information relating to the Corporation is available on its website at www.americancreek.com

Source: https://twitter.com/CEOTechnician/s/1217448382580563968?s=20