Gold & Silver Trading Alert: Ahead of the Next Big Move

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Briefly: In our opinion, speculative short positions in gold and silver (half) and a speculative short position in mining stocks (full) are justified from the risk/reward point of view.

In yesterday’s alert we emphasized that it was important to wait for a confirmation before doubling some of our trading positions. Gold and mining stocks moved higher yesterday, but the volume was not big – can this serve as a meaningful confirmation?

In our opinion – not yet, and thus today’s alert will be very short. The situation is, to a great extent, just as it was before publishing yesterday’s alert, so what we wrote in it remains up-to-date.

Gold and miners indeed moved higher on relatively low volume but the latter was not extremely low and thus the strength of the bearish confirmation is limited. Moreover, we would like to point out that we saw a similar kind of performance on January 29, 2016 when the precious metals sector was after a corrective downswing and before the upswing’s continuation. Given the above, yesterday’s action doesn’t appear to have meaningful bearish implications (there are no meaningful bullish implications either). We are likely to see some kind of important confirmation relatively soon, but we haven’t seen it just yet and thus only half of the regular trading position in gold and silver appears justified from the risk to reward point of view.

All in all, we can summarize the current outlook exactly as we summarized it yesterday:

Summing up, it’s likely that precious metals are starting a big decline here, and the short-term outlook deteriorated based on yesterday’s action (especially in silver) but we would like to see an additional bearish confirmation before doubling the size of the current short position in gold and silver. We expect to see it this week.

As always, we will keep you – our subscribers – updated.

To summarize:

Trading capital (our opinion): Short positions in gold and silver (half) and a short position in mining stocks (full) are justified from the risk/reward perspective with the following stop-loss orders and initial target price levels:

Gold: initial target price: $973; stop-loss: $1,274, initial target price for the DGLD ETN: $94.27; stop-loss for the DGLD ETN $52.44
Silver: initial target price: $12.13; stop-loss: $16.14, initial target price for the DSLV ETN: $77.53; stop-loss for DSLV ETN $42.69
Mining stocks (price levels for the GDX ETF): initial target price: $9.34; stop-loss: $18.91, initial target price for the DUST ETF: $17.31; stop-loss for the DUST ETF $5.05

In case one wants to bet on junior mining stocks' prices (we do not suggest doing so – we think senior mining stocks are more predictable in the case of short-term trades – if one wants to do it anyway, we provide the details), here are the stop-loss details and initial target prices:

GDXJ ETF: initial target price: $14.13; stop-loss: $25.53
JDST ETF: initial target price: $36.46; stop-loss: $10.28

Long-term capital (our opinion): No positions

Insurance capital (our opinion): Full position

Plus, you might want to read why our stop-loss orders are usually relatively far from the current price.

Please note that a full position doesn’t mean using all of the capital for a given trade. You will find details on our thoughts on gold portfolio structuring in the Key Insights section on our website.

As a reminder – “initial target price” means exactly that – an “initial” one, it’s not a price level at which we suggest closing positions. If this becomes the case (like it did in the previous trade) we will refer to these levels as levels of exit orders (exactly as we’ve done previously). Stop-loss levels, however, are naturally not “initial”, but something that, in our opinion, might be entered as an order.

Since it is impossible to synchronize target prices and stop-loss levels for all the ETFs and ETNs with the main markets that we provide these levels for (gold, silver and mining stocks – the GDX ETF), the stop-loss levels and target prices for other ETNs and ETF (among other: UGLD, DGLD, USLV, DSLV, NUGT, DUST, JNUG, JDST) are provided as supplementary, and not as “final”. This means that if a stop-loss or a target level is reached for any of the “additional instruments” (DGLD for instance), but not for the “main instrument” (gold in this case), we will view positions in both gold and DGLD as still open and the stop-loss for DGLD would have to be moved lower. On the other hand, if gold moves to a stop-loss level but DGLD doesn’t, then we will view both positions (in gold and DGLD) as closed. In other words, since it’s not possible to be 100% certain that each related instrument moves to a given level when the underlying instrument does, we can’t provide levels that would be binding. The levels that we do provide are our best estimate of the levels that will correspond to the levels in the underlying assets, but it will be the underlying assets that one will need to focus on regarding the sings pointing to closing a given position or keeping it open. We might adjust the levels in the “additional instruments” without adjusting the levels in the “main instruments”, which will simply mean that we have improved our estimation of these levels, not that we changed our outlook on the markets. We are already working on a tool that would update these levels on a daily basis for the most popular ETFs, ETNs and individual mining stocks.

Our preferred ways to invest in and to trade gold along with the reasoning can be found in the how to buy gold section. Additionally, our preferred ETFs and ETNs can be found in our Gold & Silver ETF Ranking.

As always, we'll keep you - our subscribers - updated should our views on the market change. We will continue to send out Gold & Silver Trading Alerts on each trading day and we will send additional Alerts whenever appropriate.

The trading position presented above is the netted version of positions based on subjective signals (opinion) from your Editor, and the Tools and Indicators.

As a reminder, Gold & Silver Trading Alerts are posted before or on each trading day (we usually post them before the opening bell, but we don't promise doing that each day). If there's anything urgent, we will send you an additional small alert before posting the main one.

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