Silicon Palms

Tag: gold speculation

  • Doré bars from the Gold Coast

    Doré bars from the Gold Coast

    An 1850 map showing the Akan Kingdom of Ashanti within the Guinea region and surrounding regions in West Africa

    When Portuguese mariners first dropped anchor in the mouth of the river Pra in what is now Ghana, they heard of goldfields so rich that for the following five centuries the entire region became known as the Gold Coast. The promise of wealth sparked a rush to grab land, build forts, trade slaves and secure bullion, which poured into treasuries in Europe.

    Early European contact by the Portuguese people, who came to the region in the 15th century to trade and then established the Portuguese Gold Coast (Costa do Ouro), focused on the extensive availability of gold. The Portuguese built a trading lodge at a coastal settlement called Anomansah (the perpetual drink) which they renamed São Jorge da Mina.

    Elmina Castle was erected by the Portuguese in 1482 as Castelo de São Jorge da Mina (St. George of the Mine Castle), also known as Castelo da Mina or simply Mina (or Feitoria da Mina), in present-day Elmina, Ghana

    The coat of arms depicts two animals: the tawny eagle (Aquila rapax, a very large bird that lives in the savannas and deserts; 35% of Ghana’s landmass is desert, 35% is forest, 30% is savanna) and the lion (Panthera leo, a big cat); a ceremonial sword, a heraldic castle on a heraldic sea, a cocoa tree and a mine shaft representing the industrial mineral wealth of Ghana, and a five-pointed black star rimmed with gold representing the mineral gold wealth of Ghana and the lodestar of the Ghanaian people. It also has the legend Freedom and Justice.

    Africa’s biggest gold producer, in 2018 Ghana shipped almost $6bn of the shiny stuff, its single biggest export. 

    A doré bar is a semi-pure alloy of gold and silver. It is usually created at the site of a mine and then transported to a refinery for further purification.

    The proportions of silver and gold can vary widely. Doré bars weigh as much as 25 kg.

    During the nineteenth-century gold rushes, gold nuggets and dust would be melted into crude gold bars mistakenly called “bullion” by miners. They were, more accurately, doré bars with higher contents of silver and other adulterants than mints of the world would accept. Mint and private assayers would then refine the doré bars to an acceptable purity, 999 fine, gold bullion, the silver and base metals removed.

    By the time of the California gold rush, mints were moving away from the age-old process of cupellation to “part” bullion and moving toward the acid refining process developed by chemist Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac for the French mint. By the time of the Klondike gold rush, mints were replacing Gay-Lussac’s acid process and introducing electrolysis to refine doré bars into 999.9 purity gold bullion.

    Ghana produces gold into doré bar for export and this presents the opportunity for fortune hunters, to buy gold in doré bar and transport to the refinery for the profit found in the price spread. Rewards are golden to those that beat the odds of the risk of speculating and transporting the gold from it’s source to it’s end use as refined 24 carrot gold bullion.

    Doré bars from the Gold Coast are something worth knowing and I am learning by doing and have embarked upon, perhaps the greatest, but certainly the most interesting, adventure of my life. Yes, I caught gold-fever, like millions before me, I’ve invested in a gold mining operation in Africa.

    I have a plan to help the people who work on the ground to mine the gold and I have a dream to help Africa and the people of the promised land. Gold is as fundamental as bread, everyone understands it and wants it because it represents life and living. There’s enough to go around, provided people don’t hoard more than they need, therein lies the problem.

    Stay tuned as we witness the Quantum Financial System monetize assets wherever they are stored in a participating bullion bank. In the future you’ll be able to store your gold and spend it when you need it.

  • The Art of Speculation

    The Art of Speculation

    That title belongs to a book written by a man I met online and by telephone, for the first time, over ten years ago. His “pen name” is Arthur Fixed and the full title of the book is “The Art of Speculation During Civil War” with the byline; “Sun Tsu meets Jesse Livermore” but I know the old man (he’s 72) as Alex.

    Alex graduated from Harvard in 1964, with a PhD in Law. It’s important to note that he was an immigrant to the U.S, so English was a new language for him as well, added to that, back in those days the policy was that 33% of Harvard students (each year) did NOT pass (nowadays almost everyone makes the grade). Getting a Harvard degree is still a major accomplishment, but in 1964 to come-out, while in your mid-twenties, with a PhD, is a monumental achievement. Alex would prove again and again that he was an over-achiever. This is an excellent guide I’ve read so far.

    Harvard was just the start of what would become an illustrious and highly successful, albeit very diverse career, spanning over five decades. At one point in his journey Alex developed an interest in economics and the stock market. Like everything else with Alex, if there was a point to doing something, then there was a point to over-doing-it, he immersed himself in the academics of money, finance, and stock market trading. What made his approach slightly different was his strict belief in the teachings of the Austrian school of economics by Ludwig Von Mises and even more influenced in his thinking by Mises protégé Murray Rothbard with his famous tome called “Man, Economy and State”.

    For sure Alex was not the first trader to have a penchant for Mises and Rothbard, truly it’s probably more the norm, for anyone involved with the stock market to have a strong belief in the Austrian economic doctrine, but not like Alex. This ideology was much more than just ideas to Alex, this was the code for economic law. As clear as physics and as predictable as chemistry. According to him, the way to understand the stock market scientifically is to apply the principles of economic law, create multiple methods of observation and analysis. Then using reason and logic, based on having enough data from observation, to then formulate assumptions, that which when acted upon in the correct manner, will create the same results (in similar market situations), over and over again.

    Alex’s hypothesis is that when economic law is applied to the markets, the end-result is as obvious as gravity.

    In 1987 Alex had the opportunity to apply his theory and methods, against a market that suffered a full year of decline. Starting with a trading account of $10,000 USD he began his speculation, one year later he had grown the account to $5.5M. The critical factor was the size of the correction in the market because that is the crux of understanding the economic law as it relates to stock prices. See, according to Rothbard, in the aspects of his book that refer to “man”, that all value is subjective and prices of everything will rise and fall, knowing what to do about it and when is the key and that’s where Alex embellished upon Mises and Rothbard to push the science beyond where it stopped.

    The year 2016, according to Alex and personified by Arthur Fixed in the “Art of Speculation During Civil War”, has all the hallmarks of a market cycle where the subjective value of the stock market changes (or corrects), as well as the subjective values of all currencies and commodities. To set-up the circumstance, where economic law mimics gravity and when specific option trading methods are applied, a very predictable outcome is recreated, again and again, until the correction is over.

    Alex invited me to join him and learn how to make a fortune on speculation by trading options. The account was opened months ago but we had to wait until the science (observation and measurement) told us to start. We’re on!