Everything in the USA starts with a Cup

Everything in the USA starts with a Cup
First StarBucks at the Moscone Center

Wednesday, December 1, 2010

Hard Assets Conference


Once a year before thanksgiving holiday, San Francisco has an interesting conference. Hard assets conference is a group of people, mostly from Canada and South America, or Australia and even from mainland China, where every one has a gold mine, or silver mine or copper mine or whatever mine. Never a never mind.

Most of these people have expertise in geology. Yet they all wanted to sell a share of their mines in exchange for cash to dig a hole into the ground. Obviously they are poor because they need investment to their small company which has got a piece of land, which has no use but mining.

Even the farmers have a better piece of land because they can grow foods or even build houses if the housing market is good.

Mining is a very hard job, dangerous and may not find anything sometimes.

Comparing to technology companies such as medical or computer software, mining is a last choice.

Yet, due to the increasing price trend of gold and other hard assets, in the Hard Assets conference this year, no one is selling gold mine or uranium mine any more, instead, lots of silver mine for sale, betting that the silver price will hit $50 per oz from $27 recently, which came up from $15 per oz 7 years ago, when gold was only $600 per oz compared to now over $1300 per oz. Debate was hold on gold rising up to $46000 per oz, with conservative estimates at $5000, 2000, and 1000 per oz. Yet the timing of when, is really more important than just a price quote.