Most Popular
1. Banking Crisis is Stocks Bull Market Buying Opportunity - Nadeem_Walayat
2.The Crypto Signal for the Precious Metals Market - P_Radomski_CFA
3. One Possible Outcome to a New World Order - Raymond_Matison
4.Nvidia Blow Off Top - Flying High like the Phoenix too Close to the Sun - Nadeem_Walayat
5. Apple AAPL Stock Trend and Earnings Analysis - Nadeem_Walayat
6.AI, Stocks, and Gold Stocks – Connected After All - P_Radomski_CFA
7.Stock Market CHEAT SHEET - - Nadeem_Walayat
8.US Debt Ceiling Crisis Smoke and Mirrors Circus - Nadeem_Walayat
9.Silver Price May Explode - Avi_Gilburt
10.More US Banks Could Collapse -- A Lot More- EWI
Last 7 days
US Presidential Election Cycle and Recessions - 18th Mar 24
US Recession Already Happened in 2022! - 18th Mar 24
AI can now remember everything you say - 18th Mar 24
Bitcoin Crypto Mania 2024 - MicroStrategy MSTR Blow off Top! - 14th Mar 24
Bitcoin Gravy Train Trend Forecast 2024 - 11th Mar 24
Gold and the Long-Term Inflation Cycle - 11th Mar 24
Fed’s Next Intertest Rate Move might not align with popular consensus - 11th Mar 24
Two Reasons The Fed Manipulates Interest Rates - 11th Mar 24
US Dollar Trend 2024 - 9th Mar 2024
The Bond Trade and Interest Rates - 9th Mar 2024
Investors Don’t Believe the Gold Rally, Still Prefer General Stocks - 9th Mar 2024
Paper Gold Vs. Real Gold: It's Important to Know the Difference - 9th Mar 2024
Stocks: What This "Record Extreme" Indicator May Be Signaling - 9th Mar 2024
My 3 Favorite Trade Setups - Elliott Wave Course - 9th Mar 2024
Bitcoin Crypto Bubble Mania! - 4th Mar 2024
US Interest Rates - When WIll the Fed Pivot - 1st Mar 2024
S&P Stock Market Real Earnings Yield - 29th Feb 2024
US Unemployment is a Fake Statistic - 29th Feb 2024
U.S. financial market’s “Weimar phase” impact to your fiat and digital assets - 29th Feb 2024
What a Breakdown in Silver Mining Stocks! What an Opportunity! - 29th Feb 2024
Why AI will Soon become SA - Synthetic Intelligence - The Machine Learning Megatrend - 29th Feb 2024
Keep Calm and Carry on Buying Quantum AI Tech Stocks - 19th Feb 24

Market Oracle FREE Newsletter

How to Protect your Wealth by Investing in AI Tech Stocks

Gold and Silver Sentiment Update

Commodities / Gold and Silver 2014 Jan 09, 2014 - 10:19 AM GMT

By: Jordan_Roy_Byrne

Commodities

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 professional guidance in this endeavor, then we invite you to learn more about our service.

Good Luck!

Email: Jordan@TheDailyGold.com
Service Link: http://thedailygold.com/premium

Bio: Jordan Roy-Byrne, CMT  is a Chartered Market Technician, a member of the Market Technicians Association and from 2010-2013 an official contributor to the CME Group, the largest futures exchange in the world. He is the publisher and editor of TheDailyGold Premium, a publication which emphaszies market timing and stock selection for the sophisticated investor.  Jordan's work has been featured in CNBC, Barrons, Financial Times Alphaville, and his editorials are regularly published in 321gold, Gold-Eagle, FinancialSense, GoldSeek, Kitco and Yahoo Finance. He is quoted regularly in Barrons. Jordan was a speaker at PDAC 2012, the largest mining conference in the world.

Jordan Roy-Byrne Archive

© 2005-2022 http://www.MarketOracle.co.uk - The Market Oracle is a FREE Daily Financial Markets Analysis & Forecasting online publication.


Post Comment

Only logged in users are allowed to post comments. Register/ Log in