Back from hiatus. As frequent readers will remember, gold remains a core part of my portfolio (since the beginning of QE madness from the FED). However, from time to time I will take a trading position in the yellow metal when opportunities present themselves. Well, that time is now upon us. I am buying GLD.
Why?
Gold has been in a downtrend since reaching its high back in 2011 around $1913. Recent selling has been initiated on the (I believe) false assumption that QE 3 is off the table. Wrong! Another month of weak unemployment numbers will almost certainly force the Fed into more QE (maybe sterilized in some form) to force long term interest rates even more. QE=Money Printing=Dollar Debasement=Higher Nominal Asset Prices. No rocket science here.
However, the market has failed to realize that QE is back on the table. This case is especially true in Europe where the ECB will be forced into doing more to stop the bleeding. The European public does not want more austerity (outside of Germany). They want more government spending financed by money printing. ECB will initiate more QE or expand its current refinancing operations.
Sentiment on gold is extremely negative which from a contrarian perspective is positive. According to the Hulbert gold newsletter sentiment index (a collection of market timers) the crowd is now short gold-- Here is an excerpt, "Today, in contrast, it is at minus 14.8%, which means that the average gold timer is now allocating about a seventh of his gold-oriented portfolio to shorting the market."
As usual these professional market timers are almost always wrong. They are bullish at the top of the market and bearish at the bottom. So I will be happy to buy when they are shorting.
Obviously, gold could go lower, but the odds favor that we are approaching a major bottom in gold.
Black Swan Insights
