Oil hit a milestone this week, with Brent crude briefly touching $50 per barrel on May 26, 2016 before falling back again. Supply outages continue to tighten the market in Canada and Nigeria. But the catalyst for price gains this week came from the EIA, which reported a surprisingly strong drawdown in crude oil stocks – down 4.2 million barrels – which beat estimates. Also, U.S. oil production fell by another 24,000 barrels last week as the contraction continues. Oil prices appear to be on sound footing more than at any time during the nearly two-year downturn. 

More production? 

​Of course, higher prices raise the specter of a resumption in drilling. Short-cycle shale drilling allows for quicker response times than, say, offshore projects that have long lead times. Shale was the first to go offline because of low oil prices, but drillers could once again open up the taps if they feel that they can turn a profit. The jury is out on whether $50 oil is enough to do the trick, but oil slipped back on May 26 as traders grew concerned that drilling could pick up again. Also, the major supply disruptions, particularly in Canada, are temporary. There are still trap doors for the oil price rally to fall through. 
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​One company is thinking of stepping up drilling. Pioneer Natural Resources (NYSE: PXD) said in in its earnings release in April that it would consider adding five to ten rigs this year if oil prices rebound to $50. "I think it is fair to say we're more optimistic than we were last month and even the month before that. We're cautiously optimistic that we're going to see improvement here in the second half of the year," Frank Hopkins, Pioneer’s senior vice president of investment relations, said in an interview. Now that oil is back at $50, will Pioneer add rigs? "It's not so much getting to $50 at a particular point in time. It's having a view that oil at $50 will stay at $50. The industry supply/demand fundamentals have to improve. We have to have a view that it's a positive price environment," Hopkins said. And there is at least one other metric that will convince Pioneer that the market has turned. "What's really going to convince us is that inventory levels continue to come down," he said. The EIA just reported a strong 4.2 million barrel drawdown in inventories. A few more weeks of numbers like that, and Pioneer could be set to resume drilling. 

Natural gas prices fall on higher inventory. Natural gas prices fell to their lowest levels in a month on Thursday after the EIA reported a stronger-than-expected uptick in storage levels. Inventories rose by 71 billion cubic feet, putting total storage levels at 2,825 Bcf, well above the five-year average. Natural gas prices dipped back below $2/MMBtu on May 26 and are likely to remain a little above or below that level for quite a while.

U.S. restrictions on banks limit Iran’s return to oil markets. Lingering sanctions on Iran from the U.S. government are hindering the Islamic Republic’s ability to ramp up oil exports, according to the WSJ. For example, Total (NYSE: TOT) had to work with some small European banks that do very little business in the U.S. to arrange financing for the purchase of Iranian oil. Banks that do business in the U.S. are in danger of running afoul of U.S. sanctions if they do business with Iran. The sanctions are related to Iran’s support for terrorism. 

Trump to approve Keystone XL. Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump gave a much anticipated speech on energy policy in North Dakota on Thursday, at which he said that he would reduce government regulations on the oil, gas, and coal industries. He said market forces should rule the day but also made some comments that contradict that sentiment. Trump vowed to approve the Keystone XL pipeline if elected but added a caveat: he would renegotiate a “better deal” to get the U.S. government “a piece of the profits because we’re making it happen.” 

Three straight years of spending declines. According to Statoil (NYSE: STO), global oil supplies will begin to decline this year, and post several consecutive years of declines as new sources of supply fail to offset natural depletion. That will largely be due to a severe cutback in exploration spending. The world is about to see three consecutive years of spending declines through 2017. “For the first time in history, we’ve seen cutting of capex two years in a row and potentially we risk a third year as well for 2017,” Statoil’s CFO Hans Jakob Hegge said in an interview with Bloomberg. “It might be that we see quite a dramatic reduction in replacing the capacity and of course that will have an impact, eventually, on price.”

ExxonMobil and Chevron defeat shareholder push on climate. Activist shareholders forced a series of votes on whether or not to require ExxonMobil (NYSE: XOM) and Chevron (NYSE: CVX) to disclose their risks to climate change. The logic is that the oil majors’ assets could lose significant value in a carbon-constrained world, posing financial risks to shareholders. The votes fell short, but posted relatively strong support – 41 percent of Chevron investors supported the climate resolutions and 38 percent of Exxon shareholders supported the moves. The financial risks to climate change are heating up as a point of concern and controversy in the industry. 

OPEC to choose new Secretary-General. Changes are afoot in OPEC. The secretary-general, Abdalla Salem el-Badri is set to depart and the cartel is expected to choose a replacement at its meeting next week. El-Badri has been in the position for years, and was expected to retire in 2013 but stayed in the position because OPEC members could not agree on who would replace him. The choice of a new secretary-general at the upcoming meeting might be the only thing that member states agree on. 

Fuel shortages and protests in France. The large strike that French unions have initiated to oppose a change in labor laws has led to fuel shortages. French riot police were deployed at a fuel distribution depot to break up the protest. 



Source:  EIA and Oil Price

​You can create a list of your financial goals on your own or by working with us. We will show you how to get started.  Please sign-up for our 30-minute confidential consultation.

​You can figure out how much you have (or don't have) to invest by calculating your net worth, the difference between your assets and liabilities. Our worksheet below can help.

​Paying down your debt is one of the best ways to increase your positive cash flow and save money that you then can invest.

It's important to know what you want to accomplish with your investments before you actually invest. For example, you might want to purchase a home, a rental property, a commercial real estate net lease, fund a child's college education, build a precious metal portfolio or build an adequate retirement nest egg. If you set financial goals at the outset—you are more likely to reach them.

You also want to get a handle on basic finances such as how much money is coming in (taxable incomes) and going out (non-deductible expenses). This will help you control spending and manage debt. Most importantly, it will help you methodically save and invest, which is essential to building your net worth (liabilities minus assets).

The information below helping you to establish and to meet your financial goals.  Also, additional resources for business, finance, investment, real estate and entrepreneur are available at our Amazon Corner.
​

Just as in other aspects of your life, setting financial goals (in writing) is a first step to reach those goals.

You can create a list of your financial goals on your own or you can work with us who has experience in this area. To make the most of this exercise, assign each of your financial goals a price tag and a time frame. Then, identify the kinds of savings and investing strategies that may be appropriate for meeting your goals. 
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One advantage of working with us that we may provide the encouragement you need to move from thinking about your goals to actually listing them out, and taking steps to achieve them.

While everyone's circumstances are a little bit different, there are essentially four steps to creating a strategy for meeting your goals that will work for just about every person and situation:

1. Identify your most important short-, medium- and long-term financial goals.
2. Estimate how much each of your goals will likely cost.
3. Set up separate savings or investment accounts for each of your major goals.
4. Choose investments suited to meeting each of your goals based on your time frame and your tolerance for risk.

Before you can choose investments to meet a particular goal, you need to have an idea of what the goal will a) cost and b) your time frame for meeting the goal. 

It's relatively easy to anticipate the costs of short-term goals, since they probably won't be significantly different from what they are today. Estimating the costs of goals that are further in the future, especially major ones like the cost of college or retirement, can be a bit challenging.
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For goals that are more than a few years away, you also need to consider the impact of inflation on your assets. Historically, inflation has averaged about 3 percent per year. In addition, the costs of tuition at both public and private colleges typically rise even faster. That means you'll have to earn enough on your investments to offset these rising costs.

Set a Time Frame for Your Financial Goals

It's important to know the "when" of your financial goals, because investing for short-term goals differs from investing for long-term goals: Your investment strategy will vary depending on how long you can keep your money invested. Most goals fit into one of the three categories below--short-term, medium-term and long-term.

• Short-Term Goals, (less than three years). The closer you get to your goal, the less risk you generally want to take with the money you've already accumulated to pay for it. Because you plan to spend the money you set aside for short-term goals relatively quickly, you'll want to focus on safety and liquidity rather than growth in your short-term portfolio. This means you'll be more inclined to put your money into federally insured bank or credit union accounts or cash equivalent investments, which aren't likely to lose much value in six months or a year. Liquid investments are those you can sell easily with little or no loss of value, such as precious metal, Treasury bills, money market accounts and funds, and other low-risk investments that pay interest. If those investments have maturity dates, the terms are very short. For example, T-bills have maturity dates of 13 or 26 weeks.

Learn more of precious metal and how bullion pricing works

You may also want to consider alternatives that don't impose potential penalties or fees for accessing your money before a maturity date. For example, a five-year CD might be safe, but the early withdrawal penalty is likely to cut into the money you are counting on for a short-term goal such as a down payment on a home you want to buy next year or a tuition payment that's due next January.

Cash investments typically pay lower interest rates than longer-term bonds—sometimes not enough to outpace inflation over the long term. But since you plan to use the money relatively quickly, inflation shouldn't have much of an impact on your purchasing power. And keep in mind that some cash investments offer the added security of government insurance, such as bank money market accounts and CDs, which are both insured by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation.

• Mid-Term Goals (three to ten years).Choosing the right investments for mid-term goals can be more complex than choosing them for short- or long-term goals. That's because you need to strike an effective balance between protecting the assets you've worked hard to accumulate while achieving the growth that can help you build your assets and offset inflation.
  
  Mid-term goals are typically those for which you need time to accumulate the money. Or they may be things you're not yet ready for but are looking forward to. The more time you have, or the more flexible the timing, the more risk you can probably afford to take with your money. For example, you might want to invest some of your assets in commercial real estate net lease, stocks, either directly or through mutual funds or exchange-traded funds, because of the potential for a higher return that would allow you to reach your goals sooner. As the time frame for those goals gets shorter, you can gradually move some of those assets into more price-stable investments.
  
  

Learn more of commercial real estate net lease

Here are possible strategies for managing a portfolio of investments for goals that are three to ten years in the future:

• Balance your mid-term portfolio with a mix of high-quality fixed-income investments—such as a mid-term government bond fund or high-yield CD—with modest growth investments, such as a diversified large-company stock fund. Then monitor the stock investments closely and be prepared to sell to limit your losses if there's a major market downturn.
• Establish limits for gains and losses in your mid-term stock portfolio. For instance, you may decide ahead of time that you'll sell an investment if it increases in value 20 percent or decreases 15 percent—or whatever percentage you're comfortable with. As your goal approaches, you can reinvest your assets in less volatile investments.
• Balanced funds, which usually invest in a mix of about 60 percent stock to 40 percent bonds, growth and income funds, or equity income funds that invest in well-established companies that pay high dividends, might be appropriate choices for a mid-term portfolio. Ultimately, the key to achieving modest growth while minimizing risk is to keep a close eye on performance and gradually shift to more stable, income-producing investments as the date of your goal approaches.
• Long-Term Goals (more than ten years). For many people, the number one long-term goal is a financially secure retirement. But it's also a goal with a long time horizon. When your goal is paying for college, for example, you think in terms of paying costs for four years—or perhaps a few more for a post-graduate or professional degree. But when you think about retirement, you have to think in terms of managing expenses for 15, 20, 30, or maybe even 40 years that you'll be living after retirement. Since you'll need income for that entire period, it is important to make your money work for you, and this means earning a rate of return that outpaces inflation and allows your principal investment to grow over time.
  
  The general rule is that the more time you have to reach a financial goal, the more investment risk you can afford to take. For many investors, that can mean allocating most of the principal you set aside for long-term goals to growth investments, such as commercial real estate net lease, individual stock, stock mutual funds, and stock exchange traded funds (ETFs). Over time, you can gradually shift a greater percentage of your accumulated account value into income-producing investments such as commercial real estate net lease or bonds.

​While past performance is no guarantee of future results, historical returns consistently show that a well-diversified stock portfolio can be the most rewarding over the long term. It's true that over shorter periods—say less than 10 years—investing heavily in stock can lead to portfolio volatility and even to losses. But when you have 15 years or more to meet your goals, you have a good chance of being able to ride out market downturns and watch short-term losses eventually be offset by future gains.

In addition, some investors successfully build the value of their long-term portfolios buying and selling bonds to take advantage of increases in market value that may result from investor demand. Others diversify into commercial real estate net lease or real estate investment trusts (REITs). The larger your portfolio and the more comfortable you are making investment decisions, the more flexible you can be. As you begin thinking seriously about what your goals are, you'll want to be specific about your time frame for meeting them.
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Learn more of commercial real estate net lease

​You may find it helpful to put your ideas down in writing, perhaps in a chart form like this:

Types of Investments 

Think of the various types of investments as tools that can help you achieve your financial goals. Each broad investment type—from bank products to stocks and bonds—has its own general set of features, risk factors and ways in which they can be used by investors.
Learn more about the various types of investments below.
 
Commercial real estate net lease
Income producing, lowest risk, appreciation and secured by real estate.
 
Bank Products
Banks and credit unions can provide a safe and convenient way to accumulate savings—and some banks offer services that can help you manage your money. Checking and savings accounts offer liquidity and flexibility.

Bonds
A bond is a loan an investor makes to an organization in exchange for interest payments over a specified term plus repayment of principal at the bond’s maturity date. Learn how corporate, muni, agency, Treasury and other types of bonds work.

Stocks
When you buy shares of a company’s stock, you own a piece of that company. Stocks come in a wide variety, and they often are described based the company’s size, type, performance during market cycles and potential for short- and long-term growth. Learn more about your choices—from penny-stocks to large caps and more.

Investment Funds
Funds—such as mutual funds, closed-end funds and exchange-traded funds—pool money from many investors and invest it according to a specific investment strategy. Funds can offer diversification, professional management and a wide variety of investment strategies and styles. But not all funds are the same. Understand how they work, and research fund fees and expenses.

Annuities
An annuity is a contract between you and an insurance company, in which the company promises to make periodic payments, either starting immediately—called an immediate annuity—or at some future time—a deferred annuity.

Saving for College
Funding college begins with savings, starting with how much to save. Learn the many, smart ways to save for college, including 529 College Savings Plans and Coverdell Education Savings Accounts.

Retirement
Numerous types of investments come into play when saving for retirement and managing income once you retire. For saving, tax-advantaged retirement options such as a 401(k) or an IRA can be a smart choice. Managing retirement income may require moving out of certain investments and into ones that are better suited to a retirement lifestyle.

Options
Options are contracts that give the purchaser the right, but not the obligation, to buy or sell a security, such as a stock or exchange-traded fund, at a fixed price within a specific period of time. It pays to learn about different types of options, trading strategies and the risks involved.

Commodity Futures
Commodity futures contracts are agreements to buy or sell a specific quantity of a commodity at a specified price on a particular date in the future. Commodities include precious metals, oil, grains and animal products, as well as financial instruments and currencies. With limited exceptions, trading in futures contracts must be executed on the floor of a commodity exchange.

Security Futures
Federal regulations permit trading in futures contracts on single stocks, also known as single stock futures, and certain security indices. Learn more about security futures, how they differ from stock options and the risks they can pose.

Alternative and Complex Products
These products include notes with principal protection and high-yield bonds that have lower credit ratings and higher risk of default than traditional investments, but offer more attractive rates of return. Learn about their features, risks and potential advantages.

Insurance
Life insurance products come in various forms, including term life, whole life and universal life policies. There also are variations on these—variable life insurance and variable universal life—which are considered securities. See how insurance products may fit into an overall financial plan.
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​When it comes to risk, here’s a reality check: All investments carry some degree of risk. Stocks, bonds, mutual funds and exchange-traded funds can lose value, even all their value, if market conditions sour. Even conservative, insured investments, such as certificates of deposit (CDs) issued by a bank or credit union, come with inflation risk. They may not earn enough over time to keep pace with the increasing cost of living.

What Is Risk?

When you invest, you make choices about what to do with your financial assets. Risk is any uncertainty with respect to your investments that has the potential to negatively affect your financial welfare.

For example, your investment value might rise or fall because of market conditions (market risk). Corporate decisions, such as whether to expand into a new area of business or merge with another company, can affect the value of your investments (business risk). If you own an international investment, events within that country can affect your investment (political risk and currency risk, to name two).

There are other types of risk. How easy or hard it is to cash out of an investment when you need to is called liquidity risk. Another risk factor is tied to how many or how few investments you hold. Generally speaking, the more financial eggs you have in one basket, say all your money in a single stock, the greater risk you take (concentration risk).

In short, risk is the possibility that a negative financial outcome that matters to you might occur.

There are several key concepts you should understand when it comes to investment risk.

Risk and Reward. 

The level of risk associated with a particular investment or asset class typically correlates with the level of return the investment might achieve. The rationale behind this relationship is that investors willing to take on risky investments and potentially lose money should be rewarded for their risk.

In the context of investing, reward is the possibility of higher returns. Historically, stocks have enjoyed the most robust average annual returns over the long term (just over 10 percent per year), followed by corporate bonds (around 6 percent annually), Treasury bonds (5.5 percent per year) and cash/cash equivalents such as short-term Treasury bills (3.5 percent per year). The trade-off is that with this higher return comes greater risk: as an asset class, stocks are riskier than corporate bonds, and corporate bonds are riskier than Treasury bonds or bank savings products.

Exceptions Abound

Although stocks have historically provided a higher return than bonds and cash investments (albeit, at a higher level of risk), it is not always the case that stocks outperform bonds or that bonds are lower risk than stocks. Both stocks and bonds involve risk, and their returns and risk levels can vary depending on the prevailing market and economic conditions and the manner in which they are used. So, even though target-date funds are generally designed to become more conservative as the target date approaches, investment risk exists throughout the lifespan of the fund.

Averages and Volatility. 

While historic averages over long periods can guide decision-making about risk, it can be difficult to predict (and impossible to know) whether, given your specific circumstances and with your particular goals and needs, the historical averages will play in your favor. Even if you hold a broad, diversified portfolio of stocks such as the S&P 500 for an extended period of time, there is no guarantee that they will earn a rate of return equal to the long-term historical average.

The timing of both the purchase and sale of an investment are key determinants of your investment return (along with fees). But while we have all heard the adage, “buy low and sell high,” the reality is that many investors do just the opposite. If you buy a stock or stock mutual fund when the market is hot and prices are high, you will have greater losses if the price drops for any reason compared with an investor who bought at a lower price. That means your average annualized returns will be less than theirs, and it will take you longer to recover.

Investors should also understand that holding a portfolio of stocks even for an extended period of time can result in negative returns. For example, on March 10, 2000, the NASDAQ composite closed at all-time high of 5,048.62. It has only been recently that the closing price has approached this record level, and for well over a decade the NASDAQ Composite was well off its historic high. In short, if you bought at or near the market’s peak, you may still not be seeing a positive return on your investment. Investors holding individual stocks for an extended period of time also face the risk that the company they are invested in could enter a state of permanent decline or go bankrupt.

Time Can Be Your Friend or Foe

Based on historical data, holding a broad portfolio of stocks over an extended period of time (for instance a large-cap portfolio like the S&P 500 over a 20-year period) significantly reduces your chances of losing your principal. However, the historical data should not mislead investors into thinking that there is no risk in investing in stocks over a long period of time.

For example, suppose an investor invests $10,000 in a broadly diversified stock portfolio and 19 years later sees that portfolio grow to $20,000. The following year, the investor’s portfolio loses 20 percent of its value, or $4,000, during a market downturn. As a result, at the end of the 20-year period, the investor ends up with a $16,000 portfolio, rather than the $20,000 portfolio she held after 19 years. Money was made—but not as much as if shares were sold the previous year. That’s why stocks are always risky investments, even over the long-term. They don’t get safer the longer you hold them.

This is not a hypothetical risk. If you had planned to retire in the 2008 to 2009 time frame—when stock prices dropped by 57 percent—and had the bulk of your retirement savings in stocks or stock mutual funds, you might have had to reconsider your retirement plan.

Investors should also consider how realistic it will be for them to ride out the ups and downs of the market over the long-term. Will you have to sell stocks during an economic downturn to fill the gap caused by a job loss? Will you sell investments to pay for medical care or a child’s college education? Predictable and unpredictable life events might make it difficult for some investors to stay invested in stocks over an extended period of time.

Managing Risk

You cannot eliminate investment risk. But two basic investment strategies can help manage both systemic risk (risk affecting the economy as a whole) and non-systemic risk (risks that affect a small part of the economy, or even a single company).

• Asset Allocation. By including different asset classes in your portfolio (for example stocks, bonds, real estate and cash), you increase the probability that some of your investments will provide satisfactory returns even if others are flat or losing value. Put another way, you're reducing the risk of major losses that can result from over-emphasizing a single asset class, however resilient you might expect that class to be.
• Diversification. When you diversify, you divide the money you've allocated to a particular asset class, such as stocks, among various categories of investments that belong to that asset class. Diversification, with its emphasis on variety, allows you to spread you assets around. In short, you don’t put all your investment eggs in one basket.

Hedging (buying a security to offset a potential loss on another investment) and insurance can provide additional ways to manage risk. However, both strategies typically add (often significantly) to the costs of your investment, which eats away any returns. In addition, hedging typically involves speculative, higher risk activity such as short selling (buying or selling securities you do not own) or investing in illiquid securities.
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The bottom line is all investments carry some degree of risk. By better understanding the nature of risk, and taking steps to manage those risks, you put yourself in a better position to meet your financial goals.

As you prepare to invest, you'll need to assess your net worth. It's not hard: add up what you own and subtract what you owe. Creating a net worth statement, and updating it each year, will help you monitor your financial progress and meet financial goals. It will also enable you to calculate how much you have (or don't have) to invest.
The first step in this process is to determine the total amount of your assets. Assets are your possessions that have value—for example, money in bank accounts, stocks and bonds, personal property, your home or other income producing real estate. Once you've calculated your assets, determine the total amount of your liabilities. Liabilities are financial obligations, or debts. Examples include credit card balances, personal or auto loans and mortgages.

Once you've calculated the total amount of your assets and liabilities, subtract the total amount of liabilities from the total amount of assets. Ideally, you'll want to have a greater amount in assets than liabilities. If your assets are more than your liabilities, you have a "positive" net worth. If your liabilities are greater than your assets, you have a "negative" net worth. If you have a negative net worth, it's probably not the right time to start investing. You should re-evaluate your finances and determine how you can decrease liabilities—for example, by reducing your credit card debt. If you have a positive net worth and cash flow, you're probably ready to start an investment plan.

Here's a simple net worth worksheet that can help you get started. It’s a good practice to calculate your net worth on a yearly basis.  Net Worth Sample Worksheet
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​Most people carry debt in one form or another, and you are probably one of them. Your debts, also called liabilities, can include the mortgage on your home, loans for automobiles or education expenses and, of course, credit card balances. Virtually all of these debts come with an obligation to pay monthly interest on the balance you still owe. As you prepare to invest, take stock of your current debts and try to pay them down. The less money you put towards paying off outstanding debts and interest charges, the more you will have to save and invest for your future. 

If you use a credit card to make purchases, you should know that they have advantages and disadvantages. If you spend within your means and pay off your balance on time—and in full—each month, credit cards can serve as a safe and convenient substitute for cash. And there is the added bonus that they can help you establish and maintain a solid credit history. But if you use them to purchase items you couldn't otherwise afford—or max out your cards to cover routine monthly expenses—credit cards can quickly compound your debt and hurt your credit score.

Few money-management strategies pay off as well as, or with less risk than, paying off all high interest debt you may have. Let's say you have a $3,000 balance on a credit card that charges 18 percent APR and requires a minimum payment of 2.5 percent each month. Assuming you charge nothing else, it will take you 263 months—nearly 22 years—to pay off your debt! In addition, the total amount you pay for that $3,000 charge will be $4,115.44—an amount that you could have saved or invested. If you can't pay off credit card debt immediately, work out a structured plan to pay off the balance as quickly as possible. You'll save money in the long run.
 
Additional resources for business, finance, investment, real estate and entrepreneur are available at our Amazon Corner.

​Should you have further questions how to get started, please sign-up for our 30-minute confidential consultation.
​

So, you’ve made the decision that it’s time to add gold and/or silver bullion to your investment portfolio. Now it’s time to understand how the price of your coins and bars is calculated.

Spot Price & Futures Price

​There are two benchmarks for precious metals – spot prices and futures prices. These prices are determined by ‘over-the-counter’ markets and ‘futures exchanges’. 

There are two key markets in which the prices of gold and silver are determined.

1. Over-the-Counter (OTC)
The OTC market consists of traders dealing with other traders on a one-on-one basis. It operates much like the internet – it is just a network of traders independently dealing with each other 24 hours a day. OTC is generally meant to refer to professional/corporate entities trading 400oz gold bars (and 1000oz silver bars), usually for settlement in London. However, when you buy a coin from a bullion dealer, you are also doing an OTC deal.

OTC trading is done on the telephone or via a dealer's proprietary trading platform software. Just like your transaction with a coin dealer, the amount dealt and the spot price agreed is not public.

To facilitate price discovery in what is an otherwise opaque market, precious metal dealers often use a service like Reuters or Bloomberg as an indicator of where the spot price is. This spot price is updated by the bullion desks of the big banks and is, in effect, a bulletin board or forum where these banks can publish their prices. However, unlike a stock market, it is not a commitment to deal at those prices (but generally one can).

It is therefore hard to "pin down" the OTC spot price, compared to a public exchange.

2. Futures Exchanges
Futures markets are public, regulated exchanges where the price for delivery of gold or silver at various dates into the future is traded. The largest and most influential market is the US COMEX market.

Often the current (or nearest) future prices quoted as a spot price of physical gold. Technically this is not correct as it is a price for gold or silver to settle in the future whereas the "spot price" is the price for immediate settlement. However, in countries with futures exchanges dealers often base their price for immediate delivery of gold or silver off their local futures market, so from a retail customer's point of view a futures prices is effectively the spot price.

It is important to note that futures and spot prices are related to each other and as such are kept in alignment by arbitrage traders who look at the relative costs of borrowing cash and gold (and other factors) and will sell futures and buy OTC spot (or vice versa) if they see too much divergence between the prices.

There has been some debate as to whether US futures markets or the London OTC spot markets drive the price. The analysis concludes that it is not fixed and changes over time, even though the London OTC market is much larger than COMEX in terms of ounces traded.

A Bullion Dealer's Spot Price

So how do bullion dealers selling to customer set their spot price? They do so by considering the following factors into account:

• The spot/futures price may change in the time between committing to a price with their customer and executing a deal with their OTC counterparty or futures market broker.
• OTC and futures markets are wholesale markets (trading in "lots" of 1,000oz and 100oz of gold, respectively) whereas a dealer's retail customers will be buying in much smaller amounts. This means it may take some time before they have accumulated enough ounces to execute a deal, during which the OTC/futures price will change.
• The dealer may not be quoted the Reuters or Bloomberg screen price when trying to lock in a price in the OTC market, especially when the market is moving quickly and bullion banks are not updating their prices into those information services quickly enough.
• For futures trading, the dealer will be charged brokerage fees. For both futures and OTC trading there is also general costs of employing dealers and settling trades.

The way bullion dealers manage the above factors is to add a margin (or buffer) to the spot or futures price they see quoted. How much they add and how often they will change their spot prices depends on how volatile the wholesale price is and how much buying or selling their clients are doing. This changes dynamically during the day and will also vary between each bullion dealer. Note that this spot price margin is in addition to any fabrication premium.

The result is that you will find each bullion dealer quoting different spot prices. This can be confusing to first time investors who are used to, for example, a single price for a company's stock on a single exchange. It often leads to questions about whether they are being quoted a "fair" price.
​
The only way to know if you are getting a fair price is to do what bullion dealers themselves have to do, which is to shop around and see who is offering the best price at that time and take it. In doing so, you become part of the huge, opaque precious metal market “network” of over-the-counter traders

Even though Spot Price & Futures Price tend to be reported on TV and radio news, spot and futures prices are unavailable to retail buyers of gold and silver bullion coins and bars.

Retail price

​When setting the price of bullion for retail investors, the seller takes into account these international benchmarks. Our calculations include a ‘premium’ over the metal price to cover the cost of fabrication of raw gold into coins and bars. To ensure we have a viable business, the Mint’s premium also includes a profit margin.

There are a couple of general rules worth knowing about premiums.

They are lower on bullion cast bars because the fabrication process is fairly straightforward. Bullion coins, which offer a number of important benefits including legal tender status, greater divisibility, rarity and detailed designs, are more complex to fabricate. As a result, the premium paid is slightly higher.

Notice, however, that premiums per ounce are usually lower on larger coins. You’ll also be able to discount the premium per ounce by taking advantage of volume breaks.

Live price

Taking their lead from international benchmarks, retail prices of gold and silver bullion fluctuate during the course of the day. To reflect this, our advertised prices are constantly updated.
   
When placing an order for bullion on the Mint’s bullion website, you have one minute to lock-in the ‘live’ price of gold or silver before it is automatically revised – either up, down or no change.

Local currency

The price of gold and silver bullion is also directly affected by the relationship between the U.S. and Australian dollars.

This is because precious metals are U.S. dollar denominated commodities. But for the convenience of local customers, The Australia market prices its bullion in Australian dollars.

So if the Australian dollar strengthens relative to the U.S. dollar, the local price of bullion will fall. Conversely, if the value of the Australian dollar weakens relative to the U.S. dollar, the local price of bullion will rise.
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The Australian dollar last hit parity with the U.S. dollar in 2013, negating this effect. More recently, the Aussie’s value has declined somewhat, explaining why the price of gold in Australian dollars has remained strong.

Highlights of 4PM Seller
 

• 4PM Seller has been the reference point for our clients in the precious metals chain for over 60 years.

 

• Every day, 4PM Seller not only works to ensure that quality, reliability, and responsibility, but 4PM is also the defining elements of the products and services that we offer to our clients.

 

• 4PM Seller has an international presence, and is close (even physically) to our business partners thanks to our Swiss parent company and to our affiliates in Germany, Italy and Latin America. 

 

• Precious metals: gold, silver, platinum and palladium, are a commodity traded 24 hours a day all over the world on markets subject to distinctive pricing dynamics. Our clients have access to international gold, silver, and platinum markets, and benefit from constantly updated information, competitive executions of trading orders, and a wide range of financial services.

 

• In addition, 4PM Seller offers a complete range of physical business services: transportation, insurance, location swaps, quality swaps, as well as conversion of all forms of metal (including scraps) into internationally accepted Good Delivery material or into semi-finished products for industry.

​Please note your referral fee will be credited to you at closing; however, you must register your client with us.  One-time 0.5% of initial acquisition amount is our referral fee.  For example, if the initial acquisition amount is USD 1 million, your referral fee is USD 5,000 (Five Thousand USD).

​​For additional information, please contact us.  We will email you additional information within 24 hours.
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• Bankruptcies accelerated this year even as crude prices surged
• SandRidge Energy, Breitburn negotiating with creditors

Three bankruptcies this week shows that $45 a barrel oil isn’t enough to rescue energy companies on the verge of collapse.

Since the start of 2015, 130 North American oil and gas producers and service companies have filed for bankruptcy owing almost $44 billion, according to law firm Haynes & Boone. The tally doesn’t include Chaparral Energy Inc., Penn Virginia Corp. and Linn Energy LLC, which filed for bankruptcy this week owing more than $11 billion combined.

At least four more oil and gas companies owing more than $8 billion are nearing default, including Breitburn Energy Partners LP and SandRidge Energy Inc. Bankruptcies have accelerated as cash-starved companies find it almost impossible to raise capital. Energy companies have been virtually shut out of the high-yield bond markets, banks are cutting credit lines and asset sales have slowed.

​"I don’t think the E&P model in North America is economic and I don’t think it was real economic even at $80 and $100 oil," Jim Chanos, Kynikos Associates founder and president, said in an Bloomberg TV interview Thursday. "It’s certainly not economic at $45 oil."

Several more are struggling to sustain crippling debt loads. SandRidge Energy, which owes $4.13 billion, said in its annual financial report that auditors have raised doubts about its ability to stay in business. It delayed releasing its first-quarter results, citing ongoing discussions with creditors on a “potential comprehensive restructuring transaction.” Breitburn, which owes $3 billion, missed interest payments in April and is in talks with creditors.

​W&T Offshore Inc. owes almost $1.5 billion and is overdrawn on its credit line, which was cut to $150 million from $350 million in March. The company has said it will pay off the loan in three monthly installments. Connacher Oil and Gas Ltd. has told creditors it’s making preparations to file for bankruptcy as it continues to search for a way to stave off default, according to two people familiar with the matter.

While troubled companies may not be saved by $45 oil, some of the better operators will turn profitable at $50, said Subash Chandra, an analyst with Guggenheim Securities in New York. Companies best able to take advantage will be those with acreage in North Dakota’s Bakken shale, the Permian in Texas or the Scoop and Stack prospects in Oklahoma.

"If oil is at $50, fortunes turn dramatically," Chandra said. "But the problem is they turn so much that the service companies come in and raise prices and take a share of it, or if production responds so quickly that oil has a hard time staying at $50."

While some of the best operators in the most prolific acreage may boast well break-evens of $35 a barrel, that only includes the cost of drilling, said Spencer Cutter, a credit analyst with Bloomberg Intelligence. Expenses like overhead, salaries, taxes and interest expenses easily add another $10 to $15 a barrel, he said.
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"The short answer is $45 a barrel doesn’t save anybody," Cutter said. "Anyone who was going bankrupt at $30 is still going bankrupt at $45. You need to see oil sustained at $60 to $65 before you see a real turnaround in profitability for the sector."
 
Source:  Bloomberg