Sell gold | Quicksilver for Quick <b>Gold</b> | BU Today | Boston University |
- Quicksilver for Quick <b>Gold</b> | BU Today | Boston University
- More <b>Gold</b> Strategies in Wildstar | In An Age
- One More Major <b>Sell</b> Off Coming In <b>Gold</b>
- <b>Gold</b> Vulnerable To Manipulative <b>Sell</b> Off In June – Bargain Hunters <b>...</b>
| Quicksilver for Quick <b>Gold</b> | BU Today | Boston University Posted: 22 Jun 2014 09:00 PM PDT  Kristin Sippl (GRS'16) is conducting fieldwork in Africa this summer to research how certification and labeling organizations are communicating guidelines to miners for safe gold mining. Photo by Tomasz Strzalecki When we think of gold mining, we probably envision a pickax striking a glittering vein in ore or gold flakes glinting through river sediment. We're unlikely to have even heard about the 15 million men, women, and children poisoning themselves to produce 30 percent of the world's mined gold. Although the mercury, or quicksilver, used in artisanal and small-scale gold mining (ASGM) causes neurological damage and widespread pollution, miners in developing countries continue to use it—and Kristin Sippl (GRS'16) is finding out why and researching how to give these miners the information necessary to decide on a less dangerous method. The quickest, cheapest, and easiest method for extracting gold from ore is to mix crushed ore with mercury. The chemical adheres to the gold, forming an amalgam, which is then burned over a blowtorch or open fire to vaporize the mercury and isolate the gold. Women generally perform this task, because it requires more skill than strength, but when they breathe in the vapor, it infiltrates their reproductive systems. When mercury is released into the atmosphere, it's carried throughout the world by wind and deposited into waterways, where it bioaccumulates in fish (some of which end up in American markets). ASGM releases up to 1,000 tons of mercury every year, and once it is released, it remains in the environment for 2,000 years. Most miners have no conception of the damage they are inflicting on themselves and the ecosystem. "They don't always know that mercury is bad," says Sippl, a Graduate School of Arts & Sciences PhD candidate in political science. "In some cases, they actually think it's good. In Brazil, for example, they think it enhances virility." And in many areas, mining is a family tradition that is followed without question. When miners begin to feel the effects of mercury poisoning, they often cannot tell the difference between its symptoms and those of other ailments prevalent in their communities. Even if they attribute their sickness to mercury, most miners depend on ASGM for their livelihoods and see no other options.  A retort, made from a salad bowl, captures mercury in the extraction process. Photo by Marcello Veiga Certification and labeling organizations, like Fairtrade International, are working with miners to find sustainable ways to minimize the risks of ASGM. Certification requires miners to follow safe mining standards, with the goal of phasing out the use of mercury. These organizations promote the use of a retort, an affordable technology that captures 95 percent of the toxic chemical. In return for following the certification guidelines, the miners are assured of a fair price for their gold and receive a premium to spend on community development projects. Many miners don't know about these programs, however, so Sippl is working "to figure out how to improve the flow of knowledge and give miners the information to make decisions." Later this summer, Sippl hopes to conduct fieldwork in Tanzania, where she plans to interview miners and local NGOs working with Fairtrade International to learn how they became involved with the organization, what their most pressing issues related to livelihood are, and how they plan to spend the social premium they will be paid when they sell gold under the Fairtrade label. She will also research how they would like to see public and private mining regulations evolve. "In theory, certification should work, but what miners want is very different from what Fairtrade wants," Sippl says. "Miners might choose to adopt the rules if they were slightly different, so we have to figure out what they want. I'm trying to find the right mix of tools to get the supply chain under control." Sippl is equally interested in what can be done locally to support this mission. Each year, more than half of ASGM-mined gold goes to the jewelry industry. "Every decision that we make has an impact," she says. Although gold is "deeply embedded in our culture—how many of us wear gold jewelry?—it is a luxury product, so if we can clean up any supply chains, I think we ought to clean up this one." A version of this article was published in the fall 2013 edition of Arts & Sciences. Lara Ehrlich can be reached at lehrlich@bu.edu.  |
| More <b>Gold</b> Strategies in Wildstar | In An Age Posted: 23 Jun 2014 04:00 AM PDT I successfully purchased my first free month of game-time in Wildstar last week with a buy order of 2.25p. In case you're wondering, there is indeed a fee for putting up a buy order, because sinkception.  Because why not. Given how my highest character is level 23, you might be wondering how I did this. In no particular order, here are some of my gold-making methods: 1) Sell all the decor. I've gone over this before, but you should also get a feel for what's on the AH in addition to vendor price. For example, one of the things that put me over the top was a 25g sell order for an Ikthian Holding Tank. I have no idea what that is other than the fact(s) that it vendors for 1.83s, I won it from a Housing Challenge, and there were none on the AH. In retrospect, perhaps I should have put it up for 1p and seen what happened. 2) Similar to the above: selling Dyes. Specifically, selling the Dye Collections (e.g. don't open them) you can get from Housing Challenge rewards. This actually might be on its way out as a strategy on my server; they used to sell for 5g apiece all day long, but are now approaching 1g. That can still be a lot of money, just like with the nerfed-but-still-75s-apiece Challenge rewards I talked about a few weeks ago. The one that seems to still retain its value on my server is the Ikthia Collection, which hovers around 6g. 3) Tradeskill Reagents. In one of those WoW-esque bizarro scenarios in which you sell things to people capable of making it themselves, I was making a HUGE profit margin with Weaponsmithing, specifically making the Condensers (i.e. Titanium Elemental Condenser). Only Weaponsmiths can make this item and only Weaponsmiths can use it, so… the market for them should literally be zero. And yet it's not. I actually blame Carbine for this, as their crafting interface is a steaming pile of unintelligible garbage, but I'm not above selling things people shouldn't really have a need to purchase. 4) Abusing Buy/Sell Orders. This isn't so much "abuse" as it is "profit-extraction," but it basically entails noticing when a wide gulf exists between Buy and Sell Orders. For example, many AMPs have a Buy Order of 10s (below vendor price even before fees!) and a Sell Order of 2g or whatever. So I come in, create a Buy Order for 15s out of the goodness of my heart, then turn around and sell any that people inexplicably dump on the AH, for less than the best Sell Order. It's passive, it's not guaranteed, and it takes up a lot of your ridiculously limited Trade Orders (25 max)… but it works often enough that I'm on the lookout for such opportunities.  Provide no value, get paid. A rather ridiculous non-AMP example I have is with Roan Steaks. I only actually knew about this meat drop because I was trying to figure out if there was any reason to level cooking, and it was one of the requirements in the Tech Tree. At the time, the ~1s buyout price was nothing compared to the money I was making via Challenge decor vendoring, so I put in a 200 item Buy order at like 1.1s. A week later, I noticed that Roan Steaks had a Sell Order of 30s apiece. I sold all of them. To be clear, I turned 2.2g into 57.8g in the equivalent of a penny stock windfall. Not only is this still occurring, by the way, I'm pretty sure by this point reselling meat has been responsible for half of my total wealth. 5) Vendoring crafted goods. Tobold actually wrote about this several times, but you can occasionally get X profit per cycle crafting and vendoring the product, depending on AH prices. For example, Fine Titanium Cleaver requires 6 Titanium, a Low Viscosity Flux for 5.27 silver, and a Sapphire Power Core. If you use Refined Sapphire Powers Cores, e.g. a blue one, the result is a blue version of the weapon, which vendors for more. In this case, any time the combination of 6 Titanium and Refined Sapphire Power Cores is less than ~55s, you profit the difference. Even though this is effectively endless profit, I personally feel I can earn more money faster via other means, up to and including just killing mobs in the world. You can usually pack in more profit by creating your own Power Cores, but at some point it might be better to simply sell the Power Cores than adding the extra step. 6) Vendor everything else. Ever complete a Challenge and then get wildly disappointed by randomly getting the Salvaged Loot bag? It's not actually a disaster: each of the random crap items you receive sells for 5s or more apiece. The last loot bag I opened actually had 45s worth of "vendor trash." That's, you know, almost half a gold right there. Also, if you find yourself looking at regular quest rewards and not seeing an upgrade, make sure to pick the one that vendors for more; it's almost always the Heavy Armor piece. It all adds up eventually. 7) Runes. I only recently discovered this opportunity, and right now it's both low-demand and low-competition on my server. Basically, Runes are the equivalent of Gems in WoW but, bizarrely, everyone can craft them. All you need are the mats and some idea of which ones are selling high.  $_$ In the above example, Rune of Finesse has a current price of 20g. There aren't any Buy Orders, so theoretically the demand is questionable. Regardless, four Rune Fragments, two Signs of Air, and one Major Sign of Air costs barely 3g on my server AH. In other words, the potential margins can be HUGE. Rune Fragments are the typical bottleneck for this, as the only really reliable source of getting them is via Salvaging, which necessarily requires you to gamble the vendor price of the item. If Rune Fragments are expensive on your server though, they can be their own source of profit; just follow this video by Noxious. So, really, you should be covered on both end of things – either Rune Fragments are cheap and you can craft a bunch to sell, or they are expensive and you make money creating them. 8) Level Up. Although this is clearly not the route I have been taking, gold is easier to come by the closer to the cap you get. At level 50, you earn Elder Points for each full XP bar you earn, up to a certain weekly cap. Beyond that? All extra XP is converted to gold. This is on top of gold from daily quests, mob kills, vendoring level 50 loot, and so on. Worst comes to worst, you could vendor the tier 4/5 mats you get from mining (etc) to the tune of 50s+ per node. So there you have it. Between this guide and my first one, you should not really have any trouble getting a comfortable level of wealth in Wildstar, even before the level cap.
Related |
| One More Major <b>Sell</b> Off Coming In <b>Gold</b> Posted: 14 Jun 2014 04:03 PM PDT If you are a human reading this - it is an error of our website filters. Please email forbidden@econintersect.com and provide a copy of this notice. IP address = 50.116.61.109 |
| <b>Gold</b> Vulnerable To Manipulative <b>Sell</b> Off In June – Bargain Hunters <b>...</b> Posted: 30 May 2014 05:09 AM PDT June is seasonally a poor month for gold and technical damage means gold could be manipulated lower again before half year end … As one astute commentator said on Twitter this week, being able to acquire cheaper gold given the state of the world today is "like being given discounts on life-rafts on the Titanic … " Today's AM fix was USD 1,254.00, EUR 921.04 and GBP 749.33 per ounce. Gold fell $2.85 or 0.2% yesterday to $1,255.29/oz. Silver slipped 0.03 cents or 0.2% to $18.99/oz. Gold suffered its fourth straight losing session yesterday leading to a 4% fall for the week.
Gold bullion in Singapore traded sideways around the $1,258/oz level prior to a bout of concentrated selling at the open in London (0800 BST) saw gold quickly fall from $1,257/oz to $1,253/oz. The move lower this week would appear to be technically driven as there was no negative headline data, obvious reasons for price falls or indeed evidence of physical gold selling. Indeed, the mood music for gold is quite positive – especially the worsening situation in Ukraine and attendant geopolitical risk. One plausible factor for gold's weakness is the ever increasing, "irrationally exuberant" appetite for risk globally which may be impacting gold. Yesterday, the poor U.S. GDP number, which was much worse than analysts had forecast, did not lead to the bounce in gold that one would have expected. Nor did it lead to weakness in permanently levitating stock markets which continued on their merry way higher. The simplistic view that the U.S. economy's poor performance in the first quarter is purely weather related remains prevalent. This is despite increasing evidence that the U.S. consumer is struggling and close to being tapped out. The latter scenario is likely the case which will prove bullish for gold in the long term. Gold premiums in India almost halved this week on the belief the new government will ease restrictions on imports of the precious metal thereby increasing demand. Indian premiums fell to $30-$40 an ounce over the global benchmark, from $80-$90 last week, dealers told Reuters. In China, gold premiums ticked slightly higher this week but remain at around $3 per ounce. Chinese premiums have remained depressed this week, which suggests demand in China has not yet picked up on this week's price weakness. Special Notice Regarding Reduction In Premiums: Gold Bars Reduced To 1.6% Premium – Click Here Technically, gold is vulnerable to a further fall to test what appears to be a double bottom between $1,180/oz and $1,200/oz. This is particularly the case in the very short term, in other words, today and early next week. It is worth considering seasonal trends and June is traditionally one of the weakest months for gold (see heatmap). Gold's 5 year and 10 year average performance in June is negative.
It is also worth considering last year's performance. Gold saw massive concentrated selling in April and further weakness in May – from $1,476/oz to $1,386/oz. Then June saw gold fall again, from $1,386/oz to the $1,200/oz level at the end of June which marked the end of the 2nd quarter, 2013. This is a time when traders, investors and the media take stock and evaluate the relative performance of various assets. If one were attempting to paint the tape through price manipulation, one would aim to have gold lower at mid year and year end. This is exactly what happened. This had the effect of greatly reducing "animal spirits" in the gold market and snuffing out the potential for rallies given the very significant global demand that was occurring, especially in China. Gold then bounced sharply in July and August prior to giving up some of those gains in September, trading sideways in October and then trading lower in November and December prior to the what appears to be the second bottom – exactly at year end 2013 (see chart below).
Momentum is a powerful force and the short term trend is down and therefore further weakness in the coming days and in June is quite possible. However, gold's 14-day relative-strength index fell to 31.2 yesterday. The RSI is an important tool in a traders arsenal. These are the lowest levels since December and being near the 30 level indicates we are due a bounce soon. Gold frequently sees weakness and bottoms soon after options expiration which took place Tuesday. Also, $1,200 should remain support as the $1,200 level is the average cost to produce an ounce of gold globally. The fundamentals are continuing and heightened geopolitical risk and robust global demand as seen in the recent World Gold Council data. Chinese demand has fallen somewhat in recent weeks but there is now the possibility of the return of Indian gold demand with the newly elected Modi government in India. While gold is vulnerable technically to further weakness, its fundamentals remain sound. Some of the important gold related stories and developments this week which could yet propel gold higher include Putin's declaration that Russia and China need to secure their gold and foreign exchange reserves and China's plans to launch a physical 'Global Gold Exchange'. Overnight, ANZ Bank confirmed the story that it is seeking participation in the new international gold exchange in Shanghai. ANZ China CEO was quoted in the Wall Street Journal as saying "we are very keen to play a role in such a setup." Currency wars are heating up again and some of the key developments in recent days and weeks are gold bullish. In recent weeks, Russia dumped a record amount of US treasuries and Russia's central bank buys 28 metric tonnes of gold worth $1.4 billion in April alone. Last week Russia and China announced a landmark economic agreement which includes a natural gas deal worth $400 billion and increasing use of their own currencies in bilateral trade. This week Putin said Russia and China need to secure their gold and currency reserves and Russia set up the Eurasian Economic Union with Belarus and Kazakhstan. Armenia are to join within a month and Kyrgyzstan within a year. This comes against a backdrop of China openly calling for a de-Americanization of the world in recent months and China, Russia, Iran and 21 other countries signing an agreement bolstering cooperation to promote peace, security and stability in Asia. China is buying natural resources and hard assets globally and investing in infrastructure in Africa and West Asia in order to extract these natural resources. China is importing unprecedented amounts of physical gold and senior Chinese policy makers and officials have gone on record regarding how they view gold as in important strategic and monetary asset. Thus, while gold is vulnerable to weakness in the short term, the smart money is again accumulating and will use this latest bout of selling to acquire gold at what will in time be seen as bargain prices. All fiat currencies including the dollar, euro and pound are vulnerable to devaluations. As one astute commentator said on Twitter this week, being able to acquire cheaper gold given the state of the world today is "like being given discounts on life-rafts on the Titanic …" Special Notice Regarding Reduction In Premiums: Gold Bars Reduced To 1.6% Premium – Click Here |
| You are subscribed to email updates from Sell gold - Google Blog Search To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
| Google Inc., 20 West Kinzie, Chicago IL USA 60610 | |
0 Comment for "Sell gold | Quicksilver for Quick Gold | BU Today | Boston University"