Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Costco gold bars are selling out within hours

cnbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

451–460 of 515 posts

Re: Costco gold bars are selling out within hours

#451

Post by lotsofpulp »

chiefalchemist wrote: post #450
lotsofpulp wrote: post #407

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Suppose the government did put its thumb on the scale here, how would it impact consumers? Will they now be able to shop for lower prices at a business that earns 1% profit margin or less instead of the 2.6% profit margin that Costco has managed to climb to?

The government is not supposed to be in the favoritism business. When that happens, as we're seeing, there are unexpected and/or unwanted consequences. The government is supposed to level the playing field, not the other way around.

How does the government favoritize Costco?

Technology and economies of scale favor Costco, and Walmart and etc. And people obviously like the low prices due to the economies of scale.

Re: Costco gold bars are selling out within hours

#452

Post by kortilla »

cf141q5325 wrote: post #376
kortilla wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Derivatives are not the same thing as paper gold and conflating the two is just a sales tactic to push the oversubscription meme. Paper gold is something like the gold ETFs where a share represents gold in the fund’s vault. If those were actually fraudulent in reserves, then you would have a point. Every commodity that has a futures and options market will have a huge ratio of derivatives to the underlying. That’s th…

If i am not mistaken those gold ETFs are backed by derivatives. Please do share a differing definition for "paper". I also didnt disagree with derivative overhang being normal. Not sure why you thought it necessary to repeat.

It’s like two seconds of googling. The biggest ones are backed by the asset. https://www.ssga.com/us/en/intermediary/etfs/funds/spdr-gold...

This one even lets you convert: https://www.vaneck.com/us/en/education/investment-ideas/phys...

I thought it necessary to spell it out because your understanding is clearly based on the false assumption that most of the gold investments aren’t backed.

Re: Costco gold bars are selling out within hours

#453

Post by kortilla »

tokai wrote: post #367
kortilla wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Charity is not individualism. You’re making a false equivalence between collectivism and the government. There are huge collectivist communities in the US (generally centered around religions) that have very structured and organized ways of helping those in need. It is peak collectivism to accomplish this without requiring the monopoly on violence and the taxation that comes with it.

>You’re making a false equivalence between collectivism and the government And you are imagining things and claiming its what I am thinking.

You literally said charity is individualism, with the implication being that anything voluntary (which is charity) is not collectivism. for it to not be voluntary, you need the monopoly on violence to force it.

Re: Costco gold bars are selling out within hours

#454

Post by shyn3 »

maerF0x0 wrote: post #413
shyn3 wrote: post #309

Hacker News users are always wrong when it comes to things that matter. This is not going to age well. Going to wait for gold to drop as that's what always happens with HN topics like Bitcoin and Tesla and DropBox and so many others. The next year buy it at half and hold for 10 years seems guaranteed. Funny how Americans who voted Biden in probably still think they have 10% inflation when Inflation is almost 40%. Goi…

It's a trick of currency risk though. The denomination can make things weird. The price of a gold piece could be $1000USD or $100USD . But if it buys you a loaf at either point of time, has the gold changed in value? I have a joke that I believe BTC is going to $1M USD. But my fear is that so is a price of bread. To explain the joke, I'm suggesting that Bitcoin might hit $1M each, but that it will actually be nearly…

That's what happens to all currencies once people lose faith in them. Being invested in US Dollars means you trust the federal reserve and the U.S. president and that's got to require an absurd level of naivety based on the recent and historical events.

Re: Costco gold bars are selling out within hours

#455

Post by landemva »

marcosdumay wrote: post #445
plonk wrote: post #440

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would inflation push people into banks? In my (EU) country, banks don’t offer anything that matches current inflation besides speculative investments.

It pushes people into high-liquidity short-term investments. Banks are the main place you find those.

In USA at banks near me, I don't find high liquidity with decent returns. Rates on savings accounts are paltry, and CDs are only liquid if ignoring early withdraw penalties.

I use bank to accept revenue and transfer it to brokerage houses where it sits in highly liquid money market with better returns than bank savings.

Re: Costco gold bars are selling out within hours

#456

Post by junofan »

542458 wrote: post #270
alephnerd wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HN seems to have a lot of kooks these days, or maybe the kind of people who would push back have just stopped. I've seen a surprising amount of vaccine denialism, xenophobia, unsubstantiated pop Econ takes, Peter Zeihan bullshit, etc. YC should just cut the cord on this forum tbh. It's not about "Hackers" or "News" anymore.

Segments of HN have been predicting the imminent collapse of the US dollar for at least the last decade. One thing 10-years-ago HN had but today doesn’t is the constant predictions of the imminent collapse of the VC startup model in general, or maybe I’m just looking in the wrong threads these days. That said, you may be correct in that the voices have gotten louder. Also, the Covid conspiracy stuff drives me up the…

> I didn’t remember older HN being like that.

It was stuff like mass surveillance, the TSA, etc. Went away after Snowden.

Re: Costco gold bars are selling out within hours

#457

Post by GaryNumanVevo »

bluGill wrote: post #341
ToucanLoucan wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to sound hyperbolic but I feel once the US Dollar crashes entirely to the degree that it no longer serves as a "default currency" of sorts, that society will have broken down far enough that even the gold will be relatively worthless and the predominant goods of choice will be cans of dog food and beans.

For a year you will be correct. However after a year what is left will start to rebuild, and gold works better than beans (remember the cans are all eaten by now - we are talking beans someone actually grew). The problem with beans is they spoil (even carefully stored): eventually someone says "I have all the beans I need now, but I still want to sell my shoes". Using something like gold as an agreed medium of exchan…

The price of gold is only relative to the dollar. We don't spend money in the current economy with ounces of gold. We do know how much stuff should roughly cost in US dollars (or local currency). So if I go to the barber, I'll get a hair cut on credit, to be paid later by either direct barter or from credit that I paid someone else.

Roman currency (both the coinage and the numeric value promixal to goods) lasted for years after the empire fell. It was just easier to use that relative value, and rely on local credit

Re: Costco gold bars are selling out within hours

#458

Post by cardiffspaceman »

0cf8612b2e1e wrote: post #435
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'd love to see an economists take on the value to a consumer of holding gold in this form, at the price Directly-held gold is mostly a scam. In good times, vault gold trades at a premium. (Like diamonds, try to sell your ingot of gold for anywhere close to commodity spot.) In bad times, someone will stab you for it. Unless you have $100+ million, where you can charter your own logistics outside government-sanction…

If you do not want gold to be traced, surely it is worth taking a hit in value and melting down the stamped ids?

Fictional Auric Goldfinger made parts of a car body out of gold right? But isn’t tracking metal more refined than just reading a number molded or stamped in an ingot?

Re: Costco gold bars are selling out within hours

#459

Post by shyn3 »

RandomLensman wrote: post #300
olalonde wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've used decades old dollar bills in SE Asia that have been pretty much detached from the US economy for decades and have held value better than bitcoin ever has. I'm not sure what makes you feel that way. Gold and Bitcoin are up against the dollar in the past decade, and by a significant margin. Bitcoin is up ~225x against the dollar. Gold is up ~50x against the dollar going back five decades. The US dollar is pr…

If you had bought something productive like the S&P500 50 years ago, would have outperformed gold easily. No-one wants to long-term just store value unproductively (which is also bad from a macro perspective).

Time in the market is the dumbest thing ever propagated on society by the media. Seriously it's so easy to buy low and sell high if you pay the people who watch markets. I find the issue with knowledge workers is er overestimate our skill and don't realize how dumb we really are. For example I helped Tesla and should have sold last year but didn't listen to to the guy I'm paying $1500/month yet if I did I could have bought in January and sell again today. Next time I'll be better prepared.

Same with gold, buy low and sell high.

Re: Costco gold bars are selling out within hours

#460

Post by kortilla »

cammikebrown wrote: post #388
caeril wrote: post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most people have things in their home, that they paid for, that have negative utility. Televisions, video game consoles, etc. A 1/2 oz gold coin is a superior investment to a PlayStation 5. Sure, it won't generate any yield, and has some degree of illiquidity, but it won't waste N hours per day of your limited, and rapidly expiring life, that you could have spent on more productive pursuits.

Yeah, why have fun when I could be Generating Profit? Sorry I enjoy recreation.

Where did you get the impression generating profit is the goal?
Post reply on HN