Lawrie Williams

Lawrieongold hits 100,000 pageviews

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For a new financial commentary site focusing on precious metals (I don’t like the word blog as to me it conjures up thoughts of scurrilous dialogue on some of the baser aspects of life) lawrieongold.com has done  well in terms of global readership.  We have been going for just  under 13 months and have just passed the 100,000 page views metric with readers from over 160 countries (countries as defined by the WordPress statistical  department).  Over half our accesses have been from North America.  The other most prominent sources of readership have been the UK, Australia, Germany, South Africa, The Netherlands, India, Switzerland and Singapore (in that order).

We would like to thank those of you who have been following the site and our commentary, and those external authors who have allowed us to republish some of their material – notably Julian Phillips in South Africa and Frank Holmes in Texas.  As readers will know my own commentary is not restricted to writing on these pages, but I also have material published, or republished elsewhere, of which the two most prominent sites are SharpsPixley.com – which is also one of the best aggregators of precious metals news and views out there as well as providing original comment – and also on Seeking Alpha where I publish articles directly while it also picks up many of my lawrieongold articles too.

I do hope you continue to find the commentary published on this site valuable (hopefully prescient!).  Admittedly my own views (and editorial selections) are largely pro-gold, but not fanatically so.  I call it as I see it.  Thus I do hope you will continue to follow the site this year, and for the future (as long as I keep on publishing it) and do take a look at my work on other sites too, and wish you all the best for the future.

Lawrence (Lawrie) Williams

Gold price benchmarking battle commencing

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The London LBMA Gold Price benchmarking process has this week added three new participants to its benchmarking process, one of which is the Bank of China.  Meanwhile reports indicate that a second Chinese bank (China Construction Bank) is also to be approved for participation among the benchmark setters.  It thus looks as though there is an ongoing move to try and maintain the London influence despite the move of gold trade eastwards and continuing accusations of lack of transparency in the process.

It should be recalled that when the new benchmarking process was set up earlier this year there was considerable speculation that up to three Chinese banks, which would seem to meet all the parameters to membership of the elite group of price setters, would be involved.  Come the event there was considerable disappointment amongst the gold bulls in particular, and some others, that no Chinese banks were involved.  Indeed the initial participants were effectively the same banks which had been participating in the old system.  These were subsequently joined by first Goldman Sachs and UBS and then by JP Morgan (See: Red rag to gold bulls – JPMorgan added to LBMA Gold Price Banks) making for a grouping which would raise the blood pressures of those who believe in gold price manipulation by the bullion banks in conjunction with certain central banks as the LBMA participants then comprised virtually all the usual suspects in suggested gold price rigging scenarios……..

Read full article on Mineweb.com  – 

Gold price benchmarking:let battle commence

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About Lawrie Williams and LawrieOnGold.com

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Lawrence (Lawrie) Williams is a well known London-based writer and commentator on financial and political subjects, but specialising in precious metals news and commentary.  He is a qualified and experienced mining engineer having graduated in mining engineering from The Royal School of Mines, a constituent college of Imperial College, London – recently described as the World’s No. 2 University (after MIT).

He has worked in mines in South Africa (gold, uranium and platinum), Canada (uranium), Zambia (copper) and U.K (coal) and holds a South African Mine Managers certificate.  He also worked as a gold mining company analyst for one of the major South African mining houses. He left South Africa to join Mining Journal as Financial Editor and worked his way through that organisation to edit Mining Magazine, and then join the Board.  He was Managing Director (CEO) of the company for 13 years up until it was sold in 2001.  During part of this period he was also President of Nevada-based U.S. company Mining Media Inc which was publisher of North American Mining magazine.

Following his time at Mining Journal he became editor, and then General Manager, of Mineweb.Com, taking it from lossmaker to becoming highly profitable before taking partial retirement in 2012.  Since then he continued to write for Mineweb up until September 2015, and now writes for other organisations including Sharpspixley.com as contributing editor, Seeking Alpha and for Johannesburg Stock Exchange special supplements and his articles are picked up and linked to by numerous websites around the world.   Again these articles mostly concentrate on precious metals markets and mining.

LawrieOnGold.com has been set up as a vehicle to publish articles by Lawrie Williams not published elsewhere and will also link to some of his other articles. It will also include contributions from other selected specialist writers as well as links to other carefully chosen articles of interest to those interested in the precious metals sector.

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