With gold below $800 and investor sentiment surveys in the bearish zone (contrarian bullish), one might think that we may be close to a turnaround on bullion.
Not so fast!
Average bear down 34% in 18 months
Bespoke Investment Group’s report on typical gold market behavior suggests that there is further downside. The average bear market in gold is down 34% over a period of 18 months, and we are only down about 21% right now.
Watch what they do: The selling is not over yet
Sentiment surveys are interesting, but they don’t tell the whole picture. While readings are low enough to spark a temporary oversold rally, investors haven’t sold enough of their positions to warrant a call for an intermediate term bottom.
The latest data from CFTC’s Commitment of Traders report show that large speculators (read: hedge funds) have begun to liquidate their gold long positions. However, they haven’t gone short yet and so readings aren’t sufficiently bearish to see a sustainable up move.
I reverse engineered the positions of the average mutual fund using the technique shown in my sidebar entitled Reverse Engineering a Manager's Macro Exposure. Consensus mutual funds, which consist of 22 large cap blend funds managed by the largest mutual fund complexes, have also started to liquidate their overweight positions in the S&P 500 Materials Index. However, they remain overweight the sector and have further selling to go.
Some reasons to stay long-term bullish
Not all is lost for the gold bulls. The above analysis shows that the smart funds, by contrast, remain stubbornly overweight the Materials sector indicating that they haven’t given up on their commodity bet.
Moreover, some of the smarter commentators such as the Aden sisters, who have adroitly navigated the gold bull and bear markets over the years, remain bullish on bullion.
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This article has 9 comments:
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User 244491
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27 Comments
Aug 18 05:21 AM-
gigem77
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99 Comments
Aug 18 06:35 AMUnderstand also that the COT cutoff is Tuesday for the Friday report, so the high volume washout on Thursday and Friday is missing from the latest report.
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kkin365
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309 Comments
My Website
Aug 18 09:06 AM-
gigem77
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99 Comments
Aug 18 09:36 AM-
JE
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125 Comments
Aug 18 01:29 PMPaper trades and the real stuff appear to be going seperate ways.
The shorts are going to get it cramed down their throats.
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Alex Stanczyk
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48 Comments
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Aug 18 03:32 PMwww.rapidtrends.com/bl.../
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jww10862
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3 Comments
Aug 18 04:49 PM-
JBP
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47 Comments
Aug 18 11:21 PMCommodities…Buy the Dips!
Commodities…Buy the Dips!
By James Rogers
The commodity bull market has a long way to go. This bull market is not magic. It's not some crazy "cycle theory" I have. It does not fall out of the sky. It's supply and demand. It's simple stuff.
In the 80s and 90s, when people were calling you to buy mutual fund and stocks, no one called to say. "Let's invest in a sugar plantation." No one called and said, "Let's invest in a lead mine." Commodities were in a bear market and in a bear markets people do not invest in productive capacity. They never have. Perhaps they should have, but they've never done it throughout history and probably never will. There has been only one lead mine opened in the world the last 25 years. There's been no major elephant oil fields [of more than a billion barrels] discovered in over 40 years.
Many of you were not even born the last time the world discovered a huge elephant oil field. Think about all the elephant fields in the world that you know about. Alaskan oil fields are in decline; Mexican oil fields are in rapid decline; the North Sea is in decline. The UK has been exporting oil for 27 years now. Within the decade, the UK is going to be a major importer of oil again. Indonesia is a member of OPEC. OPEC stands for the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries. Indonesia is going to get thrown out because they no longer export oil, they are now net importers of oil. Malaysia has been one of the great exporting countries in the world for decades. Within the decade, Malaysia is going to be importing oil. 10 years ago, China was one of the major exporters of oil, now they are the 2nd largest importer of oil in the world. Oil fields deplete, mines depletes. This is the way the world's been working for a few thousand years and it will always work this way. So supply has been going down for 25 years.
Meanwhile, you know what's happening to demand. Asia's been booming. There are three billion people in Asia. America's growing. Most of the world has been growing for the last 25 years. So supply has gone down and demand has gone up for 25 years. That's called a bull market.
One of the things you'll find if you go back and do your research is that whenever stocks have done well, such as the 1980s and 90s, commodities have done badly. But conversely, you find that whenever commodities have done well, such as the 1970s, stocks have done poorly. I have a theory as to why this always works, but it doesn't matter about my theory. The fact is that it always works this way and it's working this way now.
So before I set off to my second trip around the world, I came to the conclusion that the bear market in commodities was coming to and end. So I started a commodities index fund. [Editor's note: An ETN based on the Rogers International Commodity Index trades on the AMEX under the symbol: RJI.] This is an index fund. I do not manage it. It's a basket of commodities we put in the corner. If it goes up we make money; if it goes down we lose money. But since Aug 1st 1998, when the fund started, it is up 471%.
I [mention this index] to show you that the commodity bull market is not something that will happen someday. It's in process right now, and it's going to go on for years to come, because supply and demand are out of balance. And by the time we get to the end of the bull market, commodities will go through the roof. There will be setbacks along the way. I don't know when or why, but I know they are coming, cause markets always work that way. Commodities have done 15 times better than stocks in this decade and they're going to continue that [trend].
You remember my little girls. My 5-year old never owns stocks or bonds; she only owns commodities. She's very happy owning commodities. She doesn't care about stocks and bonds, but she knows about gold. I assure you, she knows about gold.
Some of you probably diversify, or believe in diversification. I do not diversify; I am not a fan of diversification. This is something that stockbrokers came up with to protect themselves. But you're not ever going to get rich diversifying. I assure you. But if you DO diversify, commodities are the best anchor because they are not going to do what the rest of your assets are going to do.
I will give you one brief case study about oil, because it's one of the most important commodities. Some of you know that oil in Saudi Arabia is owned by a company called ARAMCO. It was nationalized in the 70s. They threw out BP and Shell and Exxon. But the last Western company to leave did an audit [of Saudi oil reserves] and came to the conclusion that Saudi Arabia had 245 billion barrels of oil. Then in 1980, after 10 years, Saudi Arabia suddenly announced that it had 260 billion barrels of oil. Every year since 1988 – 20 years in a row - Saudi Arabia has announced, "We have 260 billion barrels of oil."
It is the damndest thing. 20 years; it never goes up; it never goes down, and they have produced 67 billion barrel of oil in this period of time. When nuts like me go to Saudi, we ask, "How can this be? How can it be that they always have 260 billion barrel of oil?" (By the way, last year they said they have 261 billion barrel of oil). And the Saudis say, "You either believe us or you don't," and that's the end of the conversation.
I have never been to the Saudi oil fields, and even if I had, I wouldn't know what I was looking at. But I do know something is wrong. I know that every oil country in the world has a reserve problem, except Saudi Arabia of course. I know that every oil company in the world has declining reserves. So I know that unless someone discovers a lot of oil quickly, the surprise to most people is going to be how high the price of oil stays and how high it goes eventually. That is the supply side. Let's look at the demand side.
The Indians use 120th as much oil as their neighbors in Japan and Korea use. The Chinese use 1/10th as much per capita. There's 2.3 billion people in India and China alone. Well, the Indians are going to get more electricity. The Indians are going to get motor scooters. They are going to start using more energy, so are the Chinese. But if the Indians just doubled the amount of oil used per capita, they would still use only 1/10th of what the Koreans use. If the Chinese doubled their oil use, they would still be using only 1/5th what the Japanese and the Koreans are using. So you can see what kind of pressures there are on the demand side for oil and energy, at a time of terrible stress on the supply side. These are simple things.
So I would urge you are to take a lesson from my little girls. My little girls are learning Chinese. My little girls are getting out of the US dollar. My little girls own a lot of commodities. I would urge you to do the same.
As always, be sure to do your own research to determine what best suits your goals and strategy. Whatever you choose, gold and currency diversification are a great place to start, so be sure to check 'em out.
Posted by Pipo at 6:55 AM 0 comments
Labels: jim rogers, jim rogers blog, jim rogers videos
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silveraxis
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63 Comments
My Website
Aug 19 10:39 PM