Gold & Silver Trading Alert: Are Miners Really Breaking Higher?

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Briefly: Short positions (full position) in gold, silver and mining stocks are justified from the risk/reward perspective.

Gold and silver rallied visibly yesterday and miners closed above the July highs. What can we infer from this breakout? Let’s take a closer look (charts courtesy of http://stockcharts.com).

GDX - Market Vectors Gold Miners - Gold mining stocks

Since this “breakout” materialized on low volume, we can infer that it’s likely a fake move. The same goes for the shape of the daily upswing – miners reversed and declined before the end of the session. So, all in all, the small breakout was not a bullish development.

Short-term Gold price chart - Gold spot price

As far as gold is concerned, we partially covered yesterday’s action in yesterday’s alert:

The mentioned [support/resistance] line is currently (as of today) at about $1,352 and gold is currently trading at about $1,353 – more or less at this line. The session is far from being over, so it could easily be the case that gold closes below the line and there will be no real invalidation of the breakdown. Speaking of closing prices, if we draw the support/resistance line based on them, we will get a line that provides resistance at a price a bit higher: $1,354.

Consequently, it’s too early to say that the breakdown was invalidated.

Gold closed below $1,346 yesterday, so there was no invalidation of the breakdown. In fact, in terms of the daily closing prices, the breakdown was confirmed, which means that the outlook became even more bearish.

Both gold and silver reversed before the end of the session and formed a daily reversal, so – again – yesterday’s move higher was not really bullish.

Summing up, the analogy to the 1983 decline remains in place and so do many bearish signals discussed on Monday, and yesterday’s upswing seems to have smaller implications than it appeared at the first sight (especially before the session started). The breakdown below the support line in gold was not invalidated, so the bearish implications remain in place.

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

To summarize:

Trading capital (supplementary part of the portfolio; our opinion): Short positions (full position) in gold, silver and mining stocks are justified from the risk/reward perspective with the following entry prices, stop-loss orders and initial target price levels:

Gold: initial target price: $1,006; stop-loss: $1,423, initial target price for the DGLD ETN: $74.37; stop-loss for the DGLD ETN $34.91
Silver: initial target price: $13.12; stop-loss: $21.63, initial target price for the DSLV ETN: $39.78; stop-loss for the DSLV ETN $14.34
Mining stocks (price levels for the GDX ETF): initial target price: $9.34; stop-loss: $33.17, initial target price for the DUST ETF: $16.38; stop-loss for the DUST ETF $3.77

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: $54.29
JDST ETF: initial target price: $14.39; stop-loss: $3.22

Long-term capital (core part of the portfolio; our opinion): No positions

Insurance capital (core part of the portfolio; 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 signs 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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