August and the summer are now over and investors and savers are now focusing on the autumnal months ahead. Stocks internationally had their worst August performance since 2001 and the ISEQ fell 7.2% in the month. Mounting concerns about the health of the economic recovery in Ireland, the US and internationally saw investors move into government bonds and gold. Some respite came due to the falling price of oil - oil was down 8.9%, its first monthly decline since May.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average ended the month 4.3% lower, while the S&P 500 was down 4.7%. The weak performance of equity markets was mirrored across the world's major financial centres, with the Nikkei 225 down 7.5% and Germany's Dax down 5.8%. Mining stocks on the FTSE helped it to only fall 0.6% in the month. With the S&P 500 index down 5.9% for the year and September being historically the worst month for stocks, traders are bracing for a continued downward bias.

by Brad Zigler

Real-time Monetary Inflation (last 12 months): -2.1%

This week, gold turned in another mixed performance against the world's reserve currencies. In addition to its appreciation against the U.S. dollar, bullion gained 0.3 percent against the yen and 0.6 percent vs. sterling. Gold gave up 0.5 percent to the euro and 0.9 percent to the Swiss franc.

Several times a week, Seeking Alpha's Jason Aycock asks money managers about their single highest-conviction position - what they would own (or short) if they could choose just one stock or ETF.

Analyst Kevin Grewal is founder, editor and publisher of ETF Tutor, and editor at SmartStops.net and the ETF Institute. Previously, he worked as an analyst at a small hedge fund.

Which single asset class are you most bullish (or bearish) about in the coming year? What ETF position would you choose to best capture that?

Every day New York-based investment gurus Jeff Mosseri and Doug Loud make key decisions for their high net-worth clients. Many of those decisions involve strategically positioning investors in small- and micro-cap gold and silver plays. In this exclusive interview with The Gold Report, you will learn some of the names of those plays and how they use Mosseri and Loud as hedges against a failing economy.

The Gold Report: Today, we're talking with Jeff Mosseri, president of New York-based Greystone Asset Management and a director of Axiom Capital, as well as Doug Loud, who is the executive director of both companies. How do you go about making your clients money?

It’s that time of year again, folks. Welcome to September.

For all the commentary about gold entering its period of seasonal strength, within the realm of silver much of the attention has been focused on whether the white metal can break $20 on a sustained basis. While much of the recent media attention has been focused on gold setting new all-time highs, silver is nearing a showdown with the key $20 psychological and technical level. This echoes the debate that was taking place at this time last year regarding gold’s ability to break $1000.

So much for a lackluster summer and the summer doldrums as gold prices increased by around $100/oz in August 2010, to close at $1251.20/oz . As the chart shows, August has been a great month for gold prices setting the stage for a ‘Fall’ rally which we expect to be dramatically to the upside. The technical indicators are now in the overbought zone and we would normally expect gold to take a breather, however, these indicators have been known to stay high for prolonged periods of time.

This morning I added PowerShares DB Gold Fund (DGP) to the Barchart Van Meerten New High portfolio purely for technical reasons. The ETF is based on the Deutsche Bank Liquid Commodity Index - Optimum Yield Gold Excess Return and managed by DB Commodity Services LLC. The Index is a rules-based index composed of futures contracts on gold and is intended to reflect the performance of gold. Again this is purely for technical reasons.

The points I considered are:

By Christian DeHaemer

It's time to stop the whining on housing, jobs, and banks. If you don't like the current state of affairs in Washington and the politicians' cozy relationship with Wall Street — then vote the bums out. If you don't like the way the fiscal picture has shaped up — then stop believing the banksters and find a better place to invest.

As we've detailed in the past, John Paulson's hedge fund has owned NovaGold Resources (NG). But per a recent SEC filing, we get an update on his stake. Paulson & Co has disclosed a 9.1% ownership stake in NovaGold Resources (NG) with 20,181,818 shares. The filing was made due to activity on August 31st, 2010 and keep in mind that a 13D signifies activist intent. In the past, this had merely been a passive stake for Paulson.

His hedge fund originally acquired NG shares in an offering at $5.50 per share. However, his most recent position size is the same as it was back on June 30th, so he has not added to the stake recently. This NG position is undoubtedly part of Paulson's strategy to take equity stakes in gold miners via his new gold fund. Other recent gold related portfolio activity from Paulson includes a reduction in his Centamin Egypt position. We'll have to monitor as to what kind of activist agenda Paulson potentially has with his NovaGold stake, seeing how there were no intentions outlined in the filing itself.

By Brad Zigler

The past few weeks have been bullish for gold, in its bullion form and as an embed in mining stock prices. We've touched on the differential volatility of bullion and mining stocks before, most recently in "Appraising Gold Miners' Equity Risk." In that piece, we compared the performance and volatility of the Market Vector Gold Miners ETF (GDX) and its components to bullion proxied by the SPDR Gold Shares Trust (GLD).

By Brad Zigler

In my refrigerator, a jar of something called "sandwich spread" has been lurking for weeks. I honestly don't know how it got there, but I suspect one of my Canadian friends who's been invited over for our backyard barbecues may have brought his favorite along and then forgot to export it from our premises.

Tuesday, Bloomberg revealed the results of its gold price survey. Bloomberg surveyed 29 analysts about expected gold price highs in 2011. The median of the survey was $1,500.

In parallel, Bloomberg also compiled 17 forecasts for next year's average gold price, the median estimate being $1,247.50.

The holdings at the iShares Silver Trust (NYSE:SLV) have been climbing recently, some 129 tonnes of the metal added in just the last seven days, as the price of silver has surged from under $18 an ounce to more than $19.50 with more upside likely ahead.

The shortfall in the loss of U.S. jobs created a risk-on environment spurring immediate gains for equity index futures, while sinking the dollar and bonds. Yields surged as the 10-year U.S. note sank by three-quarters of a point.

Investors love companies that generate high returns on capital. Companies that can do so sustainably are destined to grow shareholder value, as they can grow earnings while rewarding shareholders at the same time. But some companies that generate excess returns can be traps that can cost shareholders dearly! Only if the business falls within the investor's circle of competence can he ascertain whether the company can continue to generate high returns.

Consider Access Plans (APNC.OB), a marketer of various consumer health and insurance products. The company has a book value of just $13 million, but it generates about $1 million in after-tax income per quarter.

Ezra Klein and others had a series of posts and twitter exchanges about the increases in SEC funding and the role of regulator discretion in the financial reform bill.

First off, when I was making my mental list of things that could be done if the financial reform bill failed to pass, tripling the budget of the regulatory agencies was up there. They’ve been starved of adequate resources quite consciously post 1980, which leads to brain-drain and revolving doors.

If you are still bearish big American banks on credit you either think they are faking it on a grand (even criminal) scale or you believe in a massive double-dip or you are just not looking. Credit is unambiguously improving in the numbers. Most of the bears in the financial blogosphere – and there are many – were flat wrong on how long credit would take to turn.

Turning Japanese?, John Hempton

This is Part 4 of a 5-part series on gold and silver price analysis. Please read Parts 1, 2, and 3 before proceeding to read this article as each article in the series builds upon the last.

Those who have been following precious metals manipulation in the market have been waiting a long time for the explosion in prices. Since gold is hovering around $1200 now and silver broke $19 very recently, it seems as though the breakout has occurred.

Given the decades of rampant manipulation of the precious metals markets on the “short” side of trading, it is more than ironic that as the U.S. CFTC (“Commodity Futures Trading Commission”) ponders restrictions on commodities markets, it has expressed the most public concern about “speculators” on the “long” side of investing.

This comes with HSBC (HBC) sitting with the largest concentrated-position in the gold market in history (“short”), while JP Morgan (JPM) sits with the largest concentrated-position in the history of the silver market (also “short”). Furthermore, these concentrations (in proportionate terms) are far larger than anything seen in the history of all commodities markets.

• Deutsche Bank analyst predicts $1,550 gold for 2011
• We're in the early stage of a huge uptrend
• My strongest recommendation yet

Gold is entering a tenth straight year of gains, and if we're going to be honest with ourselves, that trend should give us pause before we add to a position in gold.

But don't sell your gold just yet. According to recent article from Bloomberg, there's still plenty of upside.