… gold and Gazprom
Useful vs. useless rules
Rules are there to be followed. This is particularly well known to stockbrokers who, in the heat of the moment, do not pay attention to a previously set stop loss, or who have placed far too large a share of their portfolio on a supposedly “safe thing”. Once the damage has occurred, the misery is great and one firmly resolves that such a mistake should not be made again. So much for sensible rules. But of course there are others as well, as has been shown, for example, by the policy of combating corona and shows again and again. In Bavaria, for example, there was the now famous rule that in the early days you were not even allowed to sit alone on a bench outdoors – a rule that has now become notorious for the absurdity of some measures. But even if you take the train from Munich to Vienna or even to Budapest today, you are subject to different rules on the same train with the same passengers. No sooner have you crossed the border to Germany again on the way back than passengers are barked at with the command “Mask open!”, which is somehow reminiscent of the “trunk open!” at the former inner-German border. The waiter could have done without the postscript “We are here in Germany!”, well, yes, because the location could be deduced from the tone of voice.
Wrong-way driver with winter tires
Meaningless rules can, indeed must, be questioned. In principle, this even applies to every rule, because it is not always possible to know a priori which category a rule ultimately falls into. In this respect, the dictum of RKI boss Lothar Wieler “These rules must never be questioned” at the start of the measures was one thing above all – a public declaration of bankruptcy. At that time, however, Wieler was still working under Health Minister Jens Spahn (CDU), who has since mutated into an energy expert. Under his successor Karl Lauterbach (SPD) – in cooperation with Minister of Justice Marco Buschmann (FDP) – the draft of a new infection protection law has now been made public, which has it all. Through the back door, everyone who is not “freshly” vaccinated/recovered (max. 3 months ago)” would be subject to a mask requirement in certain situations in the period from October to Easter. Incidentally, the period is not derived from evidence or the evaluation report that quickly disappeared into the drawers, but from a clumsy analogy to the calendar winter tire obligation, which does not exist at all. Under Lauterbach it seems that catchy wording beats fundamental rights. The three-month period is also a rough estimate, as are the individual measures. As a result, this means that anyone who wants to be consistently “freshly vaccinated” between October and Easter would have to undergo three more injections – in early October, early January and early April. April 1st in particular could become a popular “vaccination date”.
Incentive or Exception?
After massive protests, Lauterbach is now trying to backtrack and make improvements, which in his case regularly means making things worse. What was originally read out of the draft as a clear incentive to vaccinate should now be a kind of exception that could then be completely suspended in the event of abuse. Plain text: Masks are mandatory despite fresh X-fold “vaccination”. Since the “fresh vaccination” has an expiration date, meaning that there would be a constant outflow of “freshly vaccinated” people from the statistics, the so-called vaccination quota should remain with the old count of the received syringes. After all, a success of the campaign should be reported. As before, the status “fully immunized” would then be set arbitrarily with a certain number of injections and can also be revoked just as arbitrarily. The latest inhuman crazy idea is color coding in the so-called Corona app. Accordingly, in the future there will be fine-tuning of the regimentation with traffic light colors according to the status fresh/old/not vaccinated/recovered – an “idea” that seems to have been copied directly from the communist dictatorship in China.
It depends on the currency
Turning to something more encouraging, some mainstream media outlets have followed with a certain glee the fall in gold prices, which have clearly failed to live up to their promise of being a hedge against inflation and war. Of course, the course was disappointing. However, after it had recently become quieter again about the yellow metal, one could be almost certain that the gold had not fallen any further. In fact, it has even increased a little more significantly. It’s a bit like in the Sherlock Holmes novel “The Hound of Baskerville”: In order to get on the right track, it is not always the loud barking that is decisive, but often enough that precisely this barking is missing. This is especially true in connection with mass media and the narratives that prevail there.
You can also see two charts in the figure. In addition to gold in USD (red line), gold in EUR (blue line) is also shown there. While the presentation in US dollars is the most common around the world, the presentation in euros is the relevant one for investors in the euro area. While gold is in a downtrend against the US dollar, it looks more like an extended consolidation after an impulse rally against the euro. The difference between the two curves is also so large because gold and the US dollar are usually perceived as opponents on the markets. It was the flight to the US dollar that spoiled the performance for gold investors. But that seems to be slowly changing again. However, it still sounds a bit paradoxical that gold investors in the euro area tend to have tailwind on the gold market when the domestic currency is not tending too weakly against the US dollar.
Gazprom – another way?
A sequel that hasn’t found a happy ending yet is the question of swapping Gazprom’s ADRs. We are still on the ball here, even if there are no new SdK newsletters on the subject so far. Yesterday, our freelance editor Thomas Steinhauser reported on a way of approaching the subject of an exchange in a relatively simple manner. Since time is short on the one hand and we were not able to check this path in the short time available on the other hand, we are repeating the findings of Mr. Steinhauser, who is himself affected, here without any guarantee:
“As most holders of Russian ADR/GDRs are now aware, the ADR/GDR program is to be discontinued. It is to be feared that the issuers will “call” the securities and forcibly liquidate them at prices well below their intrinsic value. Up to now, the alternative has been to transfer the ADRs to the account of a Russian bank and exchange them for original shares. However, this proved to be impractical, especially for private investors, since Gazprombank, for example, requires that the customer present himself personally in an office in Moscow and legitimize himself. One broker that can handle the exchange and whose registration process is significantly simpler is Kazakhstan’s Freedom Finance. The company has offices in Europe and is listed on the NASDAQ (symbol: FRHC). Under
https://de.freedom24.com/ you can open a depot in about half an hour and it will be activated immediately. There is no basic fee, new customers get a random share booked for free. The transfer of my Russian ADRs from Flatex took about 5 days. Once the shares have been booked, you can apply for the conversion to take place automatically.
This process is currently underway for my own shares. The deadline for the exchange is August 15th. but it has already been extended once and it is conceivable that further delays will be granted in the short term. The broker charges a fee of 3% of the current exchange rate in Moscow for the exchange. This fee shall be charged after a successful exchange. Shares of companies currently under sanctions (e.g. Sberbank) cannot be transferred. However, companies from the energy and agricultural sectors are not affected by the sanctions.”
So much for Thomas Steinhauser’s remarks. Otherwise, we can once again refer to our newsletter from last week, in which the subject was dealt with in detail.
To the markets
The DAX is practically unchanged compared to the previous week. The framework conditions have also changed very little. The index continues to trend below the 200-day declining moving average, so it is in a long-term downtrend from this vantage point. Things are looking better in the shorter timeframes, but whether this is a correction in the downtrend or a new uptrend remains to be seen. The markets reacted quite robustly to Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan, which led to the expected saber-rattling of the People’s Republic of China. Why oil is being poured on the fire here at another source of conflict, as if there were not already enough construction sites in geopolitics and the global economy, remains the mystery of Nancy Pelosi and the handful of German members of the Bundestag who have already announced that they want to follow their example . Against the background of an additional tension in German-Chinese relations, after all Germany’s most important trading partner, the market reaction was actually extremely relaxed to robust. Technically, however, the market still lacks a significant sell-off and there has been little enthusiasm from sales activity during the recent upleg.
Musterdepots & wikifolio
In the section Sample portfolios & wikifolio we report today on our current purchases and on the development in our wikifolio “Smart Investor – Momentum”. There you can get a quick overview of the transactions of the last few weeks by simply scrolling through them. To read this section you must be a subscriber to Smart Investor Magazine and logged in to the Smart Investor website. If you have forgotten your password, please request a new one from [email protected].
Conclusion
Unfortunately, Germany will probably have to get in the mood again for a tough autumn and winter with Corona measures. In this regard, the country is becoming more and more a solitaire in Europe – or, to put it less politely, a wrong-way driver.
Ralf Flierl, Ralph Malisch
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