Gold & Precious Metals

How Appealing Is Gold Priced In Other Currencies?

The gold naysayers are still out there in droves, other than Lady Gaga who is ensconced after surgery in a custom-designed, 24-carat gold plated wheel chair.

There is no denying that gold is off to its worst yearly start in a quarter century and that just in February investors sold 106 metric tons of gold from gold ETFs. (Even so, this is just a small portion of the fund’s holding and gold has gone up since then, a bullish sign) The newspapers headlines are full of eulogies for the gold bull market saying it’s finished, washed up, over.

This sort of stuff gets us, contrarians, excited. The best time to buy into the gold market is when investors are at their most bearish.

Still, legendary investor George Soros reduced his stake in a gold ETF by 55 percent in the last quarter, but we don’t know if he has piled back in or not. Soros Fund Management LLC owned about $97 million of the yellow metal through the SPDR Gold Trust as of Dec. 31, according to regulatory filing. John Paulson, the largest SPDR investor, kept his gold holding valued at around $3.4 billion, unchanged last quarter, his filing showed.

Gold has underperformed so far this year. That is the unsavory truth. (We note that gold didn’t decline for all investors. Gold priced in yen rose this year and the same was the case in terms of the British pound.

With global stock markets at a four-year high and the dollar near its strongest in seven months, eight of 13 analysts surveyed by Bloomberg said they expect gold prices will be lower in 2014 than this year. The median estimate of the 13 analysts is for a record annual average of $1,700 in 2013, falling to $1,638 in 2014.

There seems to be a general sentiment that the world economy is improving. Many are speculating that the Fed is going to stop printing money after 2013 (through QE that is).

That’s nice. But things are not always what they seem. We don’t see reasons for this enthusiasm about economy recovery just yet. We don’t see an end to quantitative easing. The Fed is increasing its already large $3 trillion holdings of Treasury and mortgage securities by $85 billion a month. Bernanke has made it clear in his most recent testimony before Congress last month that he will not make any changes until unemployment rates fall to 6.5% or lower. He plans to hold short-term interest rates near zero and has no plans to increase rates.

The truth is that fundamentals since gold reached its apex a year and a half ago have not changed. Central banks around the world are accumulating more gold, and announcing much more quantitative easing than even before.

With fundamentals unchanged, let’s see how technical situation looks like for the yellow metal – we’ll start with its long-term chart (charts courtesy of http://stockcharts.com. (Click HERE or on the Chart for Larger View)

radomski march192013 1

In this chart, we see that in addition to reemphasizing that the “extremely oversold RSI readings on the gold market that the RSI suggests that the situation is as extreme as 2008, we must also discuss the 300-day moving average signals for gold”moving average. While a move below this level is not bullish for gold on its own, recall that in 2008, gold moved below this level twice and the second time marked the final bottom.

We are now in this situation once again.  This is the second time gold is visibly below this important moving average. This consolidation period was longer, but it still is the second move below the average and in 2008, a rally was subsequently seen.

Other than adding this observation virtually nothing changed on the above chart since we previously commented on (Gold Price in March 2013) and we continue to have a bullish outlook as gold is above the declining medium-term support line and 2012 lows.

We have already mentioned that even though the yellow metal’s performance seems relatively poor this year, it is not so in currencies other than the USD. Japanese Yen seems to be the best example hence we’ll turn to gold priced in this currency now.

radomski march192013 2

In this chart we see a clear breakout and a verification of the breakout above the 2011 high. With this breakout just being verified, the outlook is clearly bullish at this time.

On a side note, we would not be surprised if some websites provided this chart as an example when defining what a breakout or verification are – it’s that clear.

Let’s have a look at the yellow metal from the euro perspective now.

radomski march192013 3

Here, we see a small breakout above the declining resistance line. On Friday, when the above chart was made available to our subscribers, we wrote that if [the breakout was] confirmed, the outlook would be very bullish for the weeks ahead – and we expect to see this confirmation shortly.

We now see that this was indeed the case and the technical picture has improved. 

Summing up, we continue to have a bullish outlook for the yellow metal. The yellow metal remains above key support lines from both the USD and non-USD perspectives. We also saw a breakout for gold priced in euro this week, and it seems that the final bottom for recent declines may already be in for the precious metals. In case of the speculative capital, having a stop-loss order “just in case”, is still suggested, though.

 

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Thank you for reading. Have a great and profitable week!

Przemyslaw Radomski, CFA

Founder, Editor-in-chief – Gold Investment & Silver Investment Website – SunshineProfits.com

Investors Seeking Gold And Silver On Banking Instability

For weeks, I alerted you to a yen devaluation and warned that it may next turn into a Euro decline, which could then be followed by a U.S. greenback collapse. All of these global bailout attempts and now this levy on depositors in Cyprus could destabilize the European banking system and boost the discounted gold (GLD) and silver (SLV) prices.

In ancient Greece, farmers would plant crops based on prophecies from an oracle. Today investors look to spreadsheets and minute by minute charts to try to predict the future. Trying to be a prophet is an unprofitable occupation. The secret to wealth is buying wholesale, waiting and hopefully selling it retail. Gold (UGL) and silver (AGQ) should bounce off key support levels.

Chart below as of 8:14am PST March 19th:

Screen shot 2013-03-19 at 8.11.02 AM

1

…..read more HERE

 

Peter Grandich: Excellent Article on Gold

The Golden Age Comes To Mankind
 Only After They Have Re-discovered Gold’s Value

5 Reasons Gold Will Set an All-Time Record In 2013

No two bull markets are ever exactly the same and gold is no exception. During the last secular gold bull market in the 1970s, gold rose from $35 in 1968 all the way to $200 by late 1974. Then completely unforeseen the unthinkable happened. Between late 1974 and mid-1976, gold prices were cut in half, dropping from about $200 to $100. At the time, many Gold Bugs sold out in fear & disgust. But then the unimaginable happened again; Gold prices started to climb and climb, rising from $100 in mid-1976 all the way to $800 by January 1980. Anyone who bought gold at $35 earned better than 20 times their investment. But most of that rise occurred in just the last two months of 1979.

Since 2001, gold has been the single best performing asset for a record 12 straight years. In fact, the average return on gold was just shy of 18%/year.

Aubie Baltin5 Reasons Gold Will Set an AllTime Record In 2013-2013-03-16-001.jpg

….much more HERE

US regulator considering an inquiry into London’s gold and silver markets to check if prices are open to manipulation.

London’s financial sector was last night bracing itself for another official investigation into alleged price-fixing following reports that a US regulator is considering launching an inquiry into the City’s gold and silver markets.

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission is discussing whether the daily setting of gold and silver prices in London is open to manipulation, according to the Wall Street Journal, which stated that the CFTC is examining whether prices are derived sufficiently transparently.

….read more HERE

 

GOLD  dropped below $1580 per ounce Thursday morning, while gold in Sterling and Euros fell back below £1060 and €1225 an ounce respectively, extending losses from a day earlier that following stronger-than-expected US retail sales data.

Like gold, silver drifted lower this morning, dipping below $28.60 an ounce, while other commodities were broadly flat and European stock markets ticked higher.

US, UK and German government bond prices fell, while the US Dollar Index, which measures the Dollar’s strength against a basket of other currencies, rose to its highest level since August.

The Dow Jones meantime ended higher Wednesday for the ninth day in a row, setting another new record high.

“The US stock market [is] now increasingly viewed as gold’s main ‘competition’ for investment Dollars,” says Ed Meir, metals analyst at brokerage INTL FCStone.

“We think gold lacks both technical momentum and investment interest to recover significantly from current levels,” adds a note from Credit Suisse. 

“Gold has lost its luster,” agrees Danske Bank senior commodities analyst Christin Tuxen, speaking at Bloomberg’s FX Debates event in London Wednesday.

“Some of the reasons investors had last year to buy into gold are now gone. The focus will be on interest rates not surging, but gradually moving higher.”

China’s central bank has moved from last year’s pro-growth loose monetary policy stance to a “neutral” one, People’s Bank of China governor Zhou Xiaochuan has said.

“Obviously there’s a lot of [gold] investment demand in China… a large part of why people in China bought gold is because prices went up ” says Credit Suisse analyst Ric Deverell, adding that a price fall could be detrimental for Chinese gold demand.

In the US, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission is considering whether the twice-a-day London Gold Fix, which sets the international benchmark gold price, could have been manipulated in the same way as the London interbank offered rate (Libor), the Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday.

“[The fixings are] not arbitrary,” said a spokesman for the London Bullion market Association. 

“It’s very much done on a demand-supply basis until a price is arrived at. It’s fully transparent, it’s nothing like Libor.”

Over in Europe, “substantial progress is being made toward structurally balanced [government] budgets,” according to a draft European Union summit statement obtained by news agency Bloomberg ahead of the two-day meeting which starts today.

The statement, reports Bloomberg, calls for “growth-friendly consolidation” of government finances.

Elsewhere in Europe, Ireland borrowed €5 billion selling new benchmark 10-Year bonds yesterday, the first such sale since the country was bailed out in 2010.

The volume of gold production in South Africa fell 8.1% year-on-year in January, despite total mineral production rising 7.3% over the same period, according to Statistics South Africa figures published Thursday.

Ben Traynor
BullionVault

 

Editor of Gold News, the analysis and investment research site from world-leading gold ownership service BullionVault, Ben Traynor was formerly editor of the Fleet Street Letter, the UK’s longest-running investment letter. A Cambridge economics graduate, he is a professional writer and editor with a specialist interest in monetary economics. Ben can be found on Google+

(c) BullionVault 2013

Please Note: This article is to inform your thinking, not lead it. Only you can decide the best place for your money, and any decision you make will put your money at risk. Information or data included here may have already been overtaken by events – and must be verified elsewhere – should you choose to act on it.