The Gold Economy

The “World’s Greatest Investment Event,” the 2010 New Orleans Investment Conference kicked off on Wednesday as gold and natural resources investors descended on the Crescent City for answers to today’s market questions.

The list of speakers for this year’s conference reads like a who’s who of the natural resources and commodity world—Dr. Marc Faber, Newt Gingrich, Dennis Gartman, Dick Armey, Peter Schiff and others.

We know everyone can’t make it down to the conference this year, so we’re going to be sharing some of the highlights with you over the next couple of days.

Rick Rule, chairman of Global Resource

The pressure on silver shorts has been relentlessly increasing on a daily basis. On the heels of CFTC’s statement of intention to actually enforce antitrust regulations in the silver market, two lawsuits were filed against JPM and HBC for manipulating the silver price. With the testimony of whistleblower Andrew Macguire and admission that there has been fraudulent activity in the silver market by CFTC Commissioner Bart Chilton, these lawsuits have a much larger chance of success than just a year ago.

One of those lawsuits is seeking group or

It’s certainly no secret that the precious metal miners don’t loom large (if at all) on the radar screens of income investors. A quick look at some of the more widely held miners (via BigCharts.com) shows GFI (Goldfields) paying 1.22%, ABX (Barrick) at a 1.00% yield, and FCX (Freeport-McMoRan) topping the charts at 1.27%. Frankly, I would say that FCX probably shouldn’t be included in the list by virtue of the fact that it’s primarily a copper miner, rather than gold and/or silver.

In fact

Silver Wheaton Corporation (SLW) Up 4.36% Friday

As we mentioned in our update Thursday, this is just the ‘pop’ that we needed to finish the week well above the $27.00/oz level, which had been acting as resistance to Silver Wheaton’s progress. So it gave us great pleasure to watch this stock close at $28.75, for a gain of $1.20, or 4.36%.

The chart is looking fairly good at the moment with the MACD being nicely positioned for a crossover that should also be positive for the stock