Gold now up for the year

Don't look now, but the little yellow metal that pays no interest and provides no dividend is one of just a few assets that can make the claim of being in positive territory for the year.
It's only eked out a gain of about one percent - a London PM fix of $833.75 last December 31st versus about $840 as this is written - but, most investors would be happy with any number that doesn't start with a minus sign this year.

Interestingly, if you held the physical metal versus the paper variety, you'd be up somewhere around five percent at the moment.

The next two weeks could also be kind to gold as the second half of December has produced an average gain of about two percent over the last seven years, since the price began rising at the rate of almost 20 percent per year.
Just an average gain between now and New Year's Day would put the price at around $860 an ounce, still down more than 15 percent from the high seen in the spring, but quite a good result, all things considered.

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TMTGM top tags, word cloud, whatever

The word cloud, top tags, or whatever this thing at Technorati is called is an interesting depiction of the subject material here at this blog. It's probably been there for some time, but I just noticed it the other day.

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The "real" owners - it's a big club and you ain't in it

George Carlin (1937-2008) rest in peace (via Housing Panic).

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Conversations with father

Last week was very much of a whirlwind - one day quickly expiring and leading into the next without allowing sufficient time to reflect on what had happened.

Recollections of conversations now come drifting back after the pace has slowed and a normal schedule resumes.

Two such conversations were with my soon-to-be 80-year old father on the changes that have occurred over the generations with the younger crowd.

Seventy-some years ago he started working as a paper boy earning a whopping 5 cents per week. As was the custom during that era, one or two pennies went to his family and he kept the rest.

When I was a teenager, working part time, particularly during the summer months, was about the only way that one could afford to buy their own car (or at least make the required sizable contribution toward one) and fund other expenditures.

Today, teenagers come from eastern Europe by the thousands to work along the east coast every summer because many of the younger crowd couldn't be bothered with slaving away for minimum wage.

Times sure have changed.

Dad also takes particular pride in telling the story about how his son insisted on paying back money borrowed to finish up college twenty-some years ago. At first the elder Iacono refused the monthly remittances but the son insisted on making regular payments for more than five years.

When the story is told today, the listener usually stares in disbelief as freely flowing home equity money has helped to make expensive college educations seem a birthright.

Times sure have changed.

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No reply from Tim

I just learned that a fair number of non-SPAM emails are winding up in the SPAM folder of my Yahoo! Mail account which I stopped checking a few months ago because the volume of SPAM had grown to ridiculous levels.

If you've sent me mail in the last few months or so and have not heard back from me (I try to at least send something back to acknowledge receipt of the message), well, sorry about that.

While I won't promise to dutifully sort through all the solicitations from Nigeria about some multi-million dollar account they need help unfreezing so that I can find every last correspondence from readers of the blog, at least now you know why you received no reply from me.

If you want to make sure your correspondence goes through, please use the email address at the investment website: tim-at-iaconoresearch.com.

Maybe it's time for a new email account - I've had the one from Yahoo! since sometime in the mid-1990s (late-1990s?) and it's now probably on so many lists that it should just be abandoned.

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Don't tell Barry about this

Brian Gongol at Gongol.com has published this traffic ranking for business and economics websites - don't tell Barry Ritholtz at The Big Picture that CR and Tanta at Calculated Risk are breathing down his neck for the top spot.
It's nice to see CR and Mish with such a growing audience.

Coming in at a respectable 21st place is the blog you are now reading with the name that still makes its author chuckle from time to time when seeing it in print.

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BOO!

These came in the mail - you may have gotten them too. If anyone knows their source, please leave a comment and I'll be happy to give proper credit.











Happy Halloween!

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