With Gold turning around and reaching to the confirmation levels for Double Bottom Reversal in 2013, it is very important to check the sentiment in the market place. We have the perfect set up for Gold and Silver to surprise a lot of investors now. Sector is simply hated. Nobody loves Gold and Silver miners any more either. As it is pointed in the article, it does not mean that we have the perfect indicator for a Turn Around, but it means that we have the perfect situation in case of this turn around. All shorts will be rushing to cover and will fuel the initial rally to take off. On Gold side we are very close to this point after yesterday's Jobs number disaster. With Gold crossing $1250 shorts will be very uneasy, particularly with record high leverage at the COMEX with 93 owners per each ounce of Gold now.
Junior miners are finding the bids these days. McEwen Mining and TNR Gold had a very good week and huge short position on McEwen Mining will be driving the price in case if Gold will confirm its break out next week.
Bloomberg: China May Become The Third-largest Holder Of Gold GDX, TNR.v, MUX, GDX
"Here it comes and a lot of people will be taken totally by surprise. Record buying of Gold by China last year will be translated in the much higher Gold holdings by PBOC. Bloomberg reports that these holdings could surpass now those of Italy and France - Jim Rickards talks about the announcement by Chinese Central Bank of 5,000 t of Gold holdings in the nearest future. It will be the game changer and puts Gold solidly into the investment game as well. Yesterday shock with Jobs numbers can be the sign of the real state of US Economy and it means that FED does not have any real exit strategy from QE permanent state. In another news Royal Mint in UK has run out of gold coins due to the exceptionally high demand."Peter Schiff: Gold & Dollar - An Imaginary Recovery Does Not Create Real Jobs
"Huge miss in Jobs numbers with only 74k created vs estimated well north of 200k can not be just dismissed as a blip in the data. Peter Schiff discusses that FED can not really Taper now, there is no real recovery and FED does not have the exit strategy. Gold is waking up to these developments. What if this data is the real state of the economy? Once people will realise how wrong is the expectation about the recovery Gold will go straight up. COMEX data shows that Gold shorts will be in trouble very soon."
Kitco:
Precious Metals Sentiment Update
We’ve recently written quite a bit about the current technical situation in precious metals as well as the current bear market compared to past bear markets. Thus we’ve neglected sentiment somewhat. This is a good time to examine sentiment as the sector appears to be bottoming or trying to emerge from a bottom.
The first chart shows the speculative position (for Gold & Silver combined) as a percentage of open interest. The black is a price index comprised of Gold and Silver. At the June low speculators were only 4.6% long as a percentage of open interest. That marked a 12 year low. It is currently 11% and was as high as 52.8% in 2012.
Before Christmas, public opinion on Silver was near 20% bulls. That was in the bottom 3% of all readings in the past 20 years. At the same time, the speculative position in Silver was in the bottom 8% of all readings in the past 20 years. (Source: SentimenTrader.com)
This chart from Tiho Brkan, shows the Central Fund of Canada and its premium or discount to NAV. At the June low the discount was 7%. Shortly thereafter, the discount surpassed 8% though CEF did not make a low in price. That was the highest discount to NAV in 12 years! The current discount is 5%.
Assets in the Rydex Precious Metals Fund have evaporated from $370M to $58M. I don’t have the history handy but I believe this is near a ten-year low. Even more striking is the decline in assets as a percentage of all sectors. That is down to 4.7% which is well below the 2008-2012 lows.
Sticking with precious metals stocks we see that short interest is very high in GDX. This isn’t necessarily bullish. The shorts have been correct for more than a year. However, short interest surged in November and December and the stocks failed to make new lows in December. If short interest remains high in January and the market continues to firm then its bullish. (Source: Schaeffers Research).
Just like history, sentiment does not pick or ensure a bottom. The best recipe is to wait for a combination of extreme negative sentiment and very strong technical support. We were hoping the precious metals complex would plunge further to that very strong technical support noted in recent editorials. It could still happen. However, we have to listen to the market and its price action. The gold and silver stocks failed to make new lows in December. Last week Gold and Silver tried to make new lows and failed.
If precious metals fail to make new lows when sentiment indicators are at decade extremes then how could they make new lows in the near future? There are some speculative longs in the market (11% of open interest) who could drive it lower temporarily if metals don’t rally soon. As we’ve said, any selloff is likely to be final and would produce a strong rebound. If that doesn’t happen then the market could continue a slow, grinding saucer type of bottom. The longer this drags out then the more likely that is. The age and depth of this bear, extreme negative sentiment, lack of new lows and recent relative strength in the shares lead us to err on the bullish side. If you’d be interested in learning about the companies poised to rocket out of this bottom then we invite you to learn more about our service.
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