investment tips

Invest in gold or gold stocks?

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David Berman of the Globe and Mail writes about the pros and cons of owning gold versus gold stocks.  Sometimes I wonder how much experience financial journalists have in investing.  Usually, I think that they don’t really invest much besides perhaps their own RRSP’s.  I would guess that many of them, particularly the full-time staff writers, have very little hands-on experience, though they do watch the industry closely and this makes them knowledgable.  But there is no substitute for experience and competence.

One thing Berman doesn’t discuss is commissions.  I’ve had some experience trading gold mining stocks but very little with physical gold; the reason for that is the expense and risk that is involved in buying and owning gold.  If you visit the Kitco site, you will see that gold sells at a premium of about $60 or more per ounce, plus shipping and handling of $30 plus $4 per $1000. So if I were to purchase about $10,000 of physical gold, my expenses equal 10 x 4 = $40 + $30 (for shipping) and 8.33 oz *60 = $500 premium on the gold itself = $570 total costs. That’s roughly 5.7% commission. Then one has to consider storage costs. I would leave it in my house, which could be broken in and the gold stolen. Thus, I find that gold mining stocks are much more attractive than physical gold, since the discount brokerage fee of $9.99 per transaction means that I can take possession of $10,000 worth of stock at a commission of 0.1%. Thus, commissions are an important factor when deciding what to invest in.

But I think there will come a time when I will want to own physical gold.  If I lived in the US, I would consider storing a few thousand in gold, but I’ve more confidence today that the Loonie will maintain a semblance of its value, probably losing no more than 2-7% per annum. That’s why I am shorting the US dollar in favor of the Loonie.  But if I were an American, I would consider having some gold on hand, because paper money becomes worthless when hyperinflation hits, and then people resort to alternative currencies.  At that point, silver and gold coins may come back into circulation.  These will not necessarily be government approved currency, but coins with intrinsic value minted by third parties.  Once the Federal Reserve has discredited the US dollar completely, people will have no choice but to barter or do transactions in other currencies.  In Austria after WW I, the Swiss Franc was a sought after currency.  For us in Canada, it will be a very funny irony if the Loonie ever becomes a currency of preference in the US.

Staying clear of certain countries

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News that First Quantum’s mineral rights in Congo have been overturned is hardly surprising.  Personally, in my investments I try to steer clear of highly volatile regions where war, bribery and theft are more common than sound business practices.  The other day I sold my shares of Centerra Gold because the coup in the Krygyz Republic, where CG has a huge percentage of its NAV, created too much volatility for my liking.   Nor would I ever invest in Venezuela with its kleptocratic dictator, Chavez.

First Quantum’s mistake was taking on too big a risk–as long as the governments in Africa remain corrupt and violent, investors need to be wary and not stick their necks out no matter how lucrative the deal may seem to be.  Africa’s riches, gold, uranium, diamonds, and oil, are indeed tempting and lucrative.  Indeed, the more lucrative, the more you have to be worried that the corrupt government will want to rescind their contract, so that they can get a bigger piece of the action–or in the case of Chavez, all of the action!   This is what happened to Kosmos Energy in Ghana. If it happens in “safe” places to invest like Australia and Alberta, how much more is it going to happen in volatile regions like Congo.  Australia recently announced a 40 per cent “profit” tax on mining companies (the latest is that the government may relent on that plan).  Alberta has repented of its increased royalty structure on oil and gas in order to try to get things back the way they were before when oil companies found the province attractive for new investment.

When in Chad, I stayed in an “air conditioned” house of a Exxon employee.  The air conditioning worked about 2/3s of my stay. The rest of the time you bake because Ndjamena is in the desert.  My friend said that he was in charge of a 24 hour plan, planned to the minute, to evacuate all Exxon employees in case of an outbreak of violence in the country.  A few short months after my visit, rebels stormed the city of Ndjamena and thousands of refugees fled across the river into Cameroon.  The rebels later fled, even though they were on the brink of successful coup, and the refugees returned a few days later to pick up the pieces of their lives.  Why, for heaven’s sake, would you want to send your employees to a country like that?  The Chinese and Koreans are finding that there are still plenty of places to invest their billions of dollar right here in “safe” Canada.  I say “safe” because no place is immune to kleptocracy and war.  It is just that some regions present far less risk than others.

The April USA deficit and buying gold

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The Obama administration borrowed $82.69 billion in April, 2010.  That’s about $8.90 per day per every man, woman and child in the USA.  In my humble conservative opinion, such deficits have led and will lead to the devaluing of the US dollar, particularly because the Federal Reserve is keeping interest rates at artificially low levels.

What is the investor to do?

Gold hit a new high $1241.25 yesterday.  Gold may decline in the short term but it is experiencing a secular bull market because of the inflation of all paper currencies.  I don’t buy gold because I don’t have a safe place to store it and I don’t want to pay an army to guard it.  I’ve instead traded gold mining stocks.  At my discount brokerage, the commissions are lower than for buying and selling gold bullion or coins.   I’ve had a lot of success averaging down and selling off a little at a time as the prices improve.  My best buy was WGI (Western Goldfields), which later became NGD (New Gold), on October 23, 2008, at 88 cents; my ngd is up 183% over my average cost price.

In the last few weeks, since I learned about trading options, I’ve been selling near the money put options of abx and gg (Oct, Jan’11, Jan’12 contracts). If current trends continue, these contracts will all expire worthless (even the ABX put Jan’12 at $45) and I will simply keep the premiums.  When doing this, it is important to reserve sufficient cash or credit to buy the stock at the strike price.  But even if assigned, the purchase of the shares becomes part of the averaging down strategy.  So for example, the $45 January 2012 put on Barrick Gold paid me $8.90 premium.  The average cost price (after commissions) of the shares if assigned then is $36.29–a 22% discount off the current $46 market price.

A HELOC Strategy: How to use a home equity line of credit to create investment income

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Jonathan Chevreau of the National Post is one of the best financial columnists in Canada and I admire him because of the practical information that he provides to Canadians wanting to know how to invest their retirements savings.  He now has a column about HELOCs — home equity lines of credit:  Be wary of home-equity lines of credit.  Chevreau writes:

Veteran mortgage broker Michael Maguire has seen too many clients with balances at or close to the limit. Lenders portray HELOCs as assets, but they are debt products, making them potentially dangerous for those not disciplined in handling money. “Most seem to find it too easy to borrow and end up living at their limit,” says Mr. Maguire, of London, Ont.-based Mortgage Wise Financial.

I agree.  One should never use a HELOC to create consumer debt or bad debt (see my post, “Is debt sin?“).  But it is an excellent product for the small business owner.  I know a local businessman  in my neighborhood who bought the commercial unit in which he has his store with a HELOC.  He has a low interest rate (it was prime) and he can pay it off or draw from it depending on the cash flow of his business.  It is has been an extremely useful debt product for his business.

When the credit crisis hit in earnest in the Fall of 2008, we opened up a line of credit, and it has been a major boost to our investments.  I was able to pick up some serious value on the TSX in stocks whose distributions were many percentage points above the interest rate.  This helped me to formulate a strategy for investing.  As a conservative investor, I try to keep my line of credit low, at no more than about one-fifth of the credit limit so that  if the market goes down, there is still sufficient credit to “average down” by picking up larger positions of the same stocks as the prices plummet during a bear market.  Thanks to the HELOC, I’ve now been able to establish a steady income based on these distribution paying stocks (mostly in the Canadian oil and gas sector).

There are some serious risks:  (1) Most of these distribution paying stocks began to lower their payouts almost the moment I started using the HELOC because of the drop in commodity prices.  But then their share prices plummeted too as direct result.  Consequently, I was able to pick up even more shares at unbelievably low prices and to keep the income well above the interest payments.   (2) The interest rates could climb.  But from the time I started this strategy until today, interest rates have gone down and stayed at historical lows.  In anticipation of interest rate hikes, I regularly pay down the line of credit as fast as possible.  When it’s at zero for a while, then my risk appetite increases again.  (3) The share prices of my stocks could plummet.  But by using only a fraction of the HELOC, I pick up more positions as the market goes down.  So when the prices went down it actually helped me even though it created initial unrealized losses.   Eventually, from March 2009 until today, we’ve been in a relentless bull market–so that with a couple of exceptions, everything has gone up, up, up.  (4) Since your home is the collateral for this debt product, one has to be restrained in using it for fear of becoming homeless as result of bankruptcy.  This is another reason for using only a fraction of the credit limit.  (5) My stock portfolio is not diversified.  It is therefore highly susceptible to the volatility in the commodities market.  This choice is made because some Canadian equities in the oil and gas sector pay well, especially in the income trust sector.  Many of these will convert to dividend paying stocks in January 2011 because of rule changes and this may result in a lower yield.

Since this strategy aims at establishing an income, I’ve only done a very minimal amount of trading (i.e., “buy low, sell high”).  It is therefore a strategy of investing which is much closer to what is called “value investing” than “day trading”.  Here is a list of companies that I’ve established long positions:  erf.un, cpg, nae.un, pmt.un, day.un, bnp.un.  Those which are weighted heavily in natural gas have done less well than those which concentrate on oil.  But fortunately, the gas-weighted companies like pmt.un and erf.un have hedges that have made it possible for them to maintain their distributions at a high rate in proportion to their share price.

If there is a lesson in this for those who aspire to be righteous investors, it is to first establish equity:  the bank will not lend at the lowest interests rate without the security of some form of collateral, which usually means home equity.  This means for many years making the sacrifice of not spending money on every whim in order to pay down the house mortgage as soon as possible.

Here are some numbers to give an example of how the above strategy can work:

Using a HELOC, $31,200 spent on CPG (TSX) would buy 800 shares $39.00 per share.  The interest in the first month at 3.25% (current TD Canada Trust HELOC rate) would be $84.50; the dividend from 800 shares of CPG at .23 per share is $184:  Thus, the net in the first month is $99.50 or .32 % of the total capital put at risk.