Diamond News Archives

The plunge in the stock market is rightly worrying for investors, but there is also something to learn.

Diversified portfolios help during times of stress.

During the bull market years, from 2009 until earlier this year, holding shares of high-flying tech stocks such as Netflix, Facebook, Amazon.com, and Google made good sense for investors.

What didn't seem to make sense over that period was owning gold. Over the last five years, the S&P 500 gained around 36% not including dividends, while over the same period the SPDR Gold Shares exchange-traded fund rose a mere 1%, and there are no dividends.

But that didn't mean you shouldn't have had some holding of the precious metal in your portfolio. You should always have some gold.

Gold is like owning life insurance. You buy life insurance to help look after your family if you expire. No one wants to die and leave their family, but most conscientious people purchase life insurance anyway.

It's the same with gold and your portfolio.

Recent Gains

Look at the recent moves in asset prices. In the month through Thursday, the SPDR S&P 500 exchange-traded fund, which tracks the S&P 500, lost almost 10% while the value of the SPDR Gold Shares ETF gold rose by 4.5%. Gold mining shares, such as those help in the Van Eck Vectors Gold Miner ETF, rose almost 9%.

"Commodity traders appear excited about gold again as stocks are on pace for their worst year since 2008," writes CEO of U.S. Global Investors Frank Holmes in a recent report.^[1]

The rise in gold prices didn't offset the entire loss in the broad stock market,...

Today – as we like to do every couple of years – we consider all the gold in China.

Next time the international money system comes under stress – and that time may not be far away – where the gold is, and who owns it, could be of great importance.

The world’s central banks have been stocking up on gold

You may think gold is an antiquated asset, irrelevant to a modern digital world. China clearly doesn’t. Since the global financial crisis, China has been accumulating gold at a staggering pace.

The implications are considerable.

There are going to be lots of numbers in this piece, so to anchor you with some kind of perspective, let me give you some of the major figures.

Total global central bank gold reserves stand at just below 34,000 tonnes, which is roughly 20% of the 175,000-or-so tonnes of total above ground supply.

The US is the world’s largest owner with 8,133 tonnes. That number works out at around an ounce per citizen. Precious metals analyst Nick Laird reckons that if you add private and institutional holdings to this official 8,133 tonnes, there are 26,000–27,000 tonnes in the US overall.

Below is table of central bank gold holdings, using World Gold Council Data data. In gold terms, these are the richest 20 nations. The UK sits proudly at 17th, two places below Kazakhstan and...

(This article first appeared May 2017)

The study, led by Robert Hazen of the Carnegie Institution for Science published by American Mineralogist bolsters the argument to officially designate a new geological time interval distinguished by the pervasive impact of human activities called the Anthropocene Epoch.

According to the paper, the 208 catalogued mineral species originating from human actions represent almost 4% of the 5,208 minerals (defined as a naturally occurring crystalline compound that has a unique combination chemical composition and crystal structure) officially recognized by the International Mineralogical Association.

The majority of the recognized minerals originated in ore dumps, through the weathering of slag, formed in tunnel walls, mine water or timbers, or through mine fires. Six were found on the walls of smelters and three formed in a geothermal piping system.

According to the authors, some minerals formed due to human actions can also occur naturally: Three in that category were discovered on corroded lead artifacts aboard a Tunisian shipwreck, two on bronze artifacts in Egypt, and two on tin artifacts in Canada. Four were discovered at prehistoric sacrificial burning sites in the Austrian mountains.

Dr. Hazen, who co-wrote the paper with Edward Grew of the University of Maine, and Marcus Origlieri and Robert Downs of the University of Arizona,...

Queen Elizabeth II is catching flak on Twitter and in the press for being "out of touch"^[1] after delivering her annual Christmas address at Buckingham Palace with a lavish gold piano behind her.

"Even with the most deeply held differences, treating the other person with respect and as a fellow human being is always a good first step towards greater understanding," the Queen said during the speech.

"Even the power of faith, which frequently inspires great generosity and self-sacrifice, can fall victim to tribalism. But through the many changes I have seen over the years: faith, family and friendship have been not only a constant for me, but a source of personal comfort and reassurance."

The 91-year-old monarch's words seem pretty benign: She doesn't actually scold viewers or tell anyone to, say, put on a sweater^[2], as President Jimmy Carter once did with disastrous results. But the juxtaposition of her speech and the piano, a symbol of her substantial wealth, seems to have been enough to unsettle citizens who are already on edge about Brexit^[3].

"Privileged wealthy hereditary monarch bunged £76m a year, sitting in front of a golden piano in the palace she's billing taxpayers £369m to tart up, kills satire by lecturing the nation to pull together," wrote Kevin Maguire, associate editor at the Daily Mirror, in a tweet that has since been liked 12,000 times.

TWEET^[4]

"Ah the Queen's message. I love getting yelled at by an old publicly-funded billionaire with a gold piano that we should all be happier and less angry," wrote a resident of New Zealand.

TWEET^[5]

Others poked fun at the outrage. "Oh no,...