Gold is King of New Orleans Conference

By Patrick A. Heller, GoldSeek

The annual New Orleans Investment Conference is usually rated as the premier investment conference. Over its 35-year history, it has hosted some of the world’s most noted economists, politicians, financial gurus and others. The average net worth of attendees is almost certainly the highest of all multi-day investment programs in North America.

In the first week of October several hundred attendees feasted on a wide variety of presentations over four days. Speakers came from a myriad of backgrounds, including Rick Santelli, Charles Krauthammer, Karl Rove, Howard Dean, Doug Casey and Ron Paul. There were also dozens of exhibitors from a variety of industries, of which mining companies were the most common.

Although the financial experts making presentations came from a wide variety of backgrounds and specialties, it was surprising that some of their recommendations for action were almost unanimous. For instance, just about all of them, when discussing equity investments, considered the domestic and foreign markets to have few bargains at today’s prices. While specific bargains can be located here and there, as can always be found no matter the general trend of the equity markets, they are few and far between. Generally, the speakers warned against the possibility of a pullback in the near term, possibly even affecting gold and silver mining companies.

When explaining where they would invest their money today, nearly every speaker emphatically recommended gold.

In some instances, gold was the only investment they liked without reservation. Since the backgrounds of the speakers include real estate, equities, bonds and even somewhat exotic fields (tequila) in addition to resource extraction and precious metals trading, I was astounded to find such a consistency of opinion. When one panel of four speakers (Gene Arensberg, Pamela Aden, Chris Powell, and Rich Checkan) was asked to forecast the price of gold one year from now, they all said at least $1,500 and possibly as high as $2,000.

Of speakers who recommended gold mining shares, there were no companies that were on most speakers’ lists. There was some overlap of recommendations, but each speaker had some favorites that no one else mentioned. There was a significant air of caution with these recommendations. Money manager Adrian Day, for instance, noted that only about one of every 3,000 “finds” that are explored for gold ever become an operating mine.

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