Weekly Gold and Silver Markets Recap with Mike Seery

The institutional traders are back from vacation and trading volume is picking up. So who better to have than our trading partner Mike Seery back to give our readers a recap of this weeks trading and help us put together a plan for the upcoming week. 

Gold futures in the December contract settled last Friday in New York at 1,121 an ounce while currently trading at 1,106 down about $15 this week trading below its 20 and 100 day moving average near a 3 week low as I’m currently sitting on the sidelines as this market remains choppy with poor chart structure.

I still see no reason to own gold currently as the risk/reward is not your favor so look at other markets that are starting to trend such as the silver market which I am currently recommending a short position because the chart structure is outstanding. Gold prices had a significant rally in the month of August bottoming out around 1,080 then rallying to 1,170 which was impressive in my opinion due to short covering and a flight to quality as the stock market has experienced volatility in recent weeks sending money out of stocks and into gold as a safe haven but things have settled down putting short term pressure on gold.

As I’ve talked about in many previous blogs I am a trend follower and I do not like to trade choppy markets because they are extremely difficult in my opinion so avoid this market at the current time and focus on silver.
Trend: Lower
Chart Structure: Poor

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Silver futures in the December contract are trading lower by about $.30 this Friday afternoon in New York currently trading at 14.33 an ounce as I’ve been recommending a short position from around 14.70 and if you took that trade place your stop loss above the 10 day high which currently stands at 14.95 as you’re going to have to be patient as that stop loss will not be lower for quite some time.

The next major level of support is at the contract low around the $14 mark and I do think that’s a possibility that could be retested in next week’s trade as the chart structure is still very solid at the current time. Silver prices settled last Friday at 14.55 while currently at 14.33 down over $.20 for the trading week as prices have been consolidating the recent downdraft in prices over the last three weeks, but the long term and short term trend still remain bearish in my opinion, so continue to play this to the downside while taking advantage of any price rally while maintaining the proper risk management strategy.

Silver futures are trading below their 20 and 100 day moving average closing at 3 week low in today’s trade as the commodity markets still looks bearish in my opinion.
Trend: Lower
Chart Structure: Solid

Mike has been a senior analyst for close to 15 years and has extensive knowledge of all of the commodity and option markets. Get more of Mike's calls on this Weeks Commodity Markets


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One to Three Years Left For Gold’s Run

Gold has a couple more years to outperform the stock market before the end of this leg, if history is any guide.

This week's chart looks at the Dow Jones Industrial Average expressed in terms of the number of ounces of gold it would take to "buy" the DJIA's index value.  This is a popular comparison that a lot of chartists like to show, especially when it gets up to a really high level like it did back in 1999-2000, at the end of the tech bubble.

 

It has been falling since then, as gold prices have gone higher.  Having an ounce of gold become more valuable means that it takes less of it to buy something else.  And the (violently) sideways movement of the stock market over the past decade has allowed gold's price rise to pull this ratio back down toward "normal" levels seen over the past century.

Based on this way of looking at the DJIA, there have been 3 big bubble tops in the DJIA as expressed in ounces of gold.  What I find interesting and relevant just now is that the declines out of those first two took 13 and 14 years respectively.  So if the current decline follows the same course, then we can expect this ratio to bottom out about 13-14 years from the most recent top.

Doing the math on that is a little bit problematic, since the last top was actually 2 tops, in August 1999 and October 2000.  So if we take 13 years from 1999, and 14 years from 2000, that gives us a date range of 2012-2014 for when to expect a bottom for this ratio. 

That tells us about the "when", but it does not tell us about the "how far".  The bottoms for this ratio in the 1930s and 1940s were down below 3.0, and it got all the way down to 1.3 at the low in January 1980 (based on monthly closes).  If the DJIA were to stay around 12,000 for the next few years, then a ratio of 2-3 would mean gold at around $4000 to $6000 an ounce.  Or the ratio could get down below 3 by having gold stay where it is, and the DJIA get cut in half, or some other combination of movements.  That's how the math works. 

It is risky to forecast both the timing and the price for the end of a trend, so I'll refrain from endorsing those numbers.  I just offer them as food for thought.  Nothing mandates that this ratio reach any particular level. 

The more important conclusion to take from this is that the decline in this ratio does not seem to be done, and is not due to be done for a little while longer.  But the end to this decline in the DJIA/gold ratio is going to come someday, probably when the Fed decides to wake up and start fighting inflation again via higher interest rates.  That does not appear to be on their agenda any time soon. 

Tom McClellan
Editor, The McClellan Market Report