Gold & Silver Trading Alert: Can Very Similar Closing Prices Change Anything?

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February 25, 2015, 7:20 AM

Briefly: In our opinion speculative short positions (full) in gold, silver and mining stocks are justified from the risk/reward perspective. We are keeping the stop-loss levels at their current levels, which means that we are effectively keeping some gains locked and at the same time we’re allowing the profits to increase.

Gold moved down and back up 3 times yesterday, but ultimately closed very close to the previous day’s close. Silver and miners also closed in a similar way. Can very similar closing prices change anything? It seems so.

To be honest, in most cases, no changes in closing prices mean no changes at all. The above is the case because, in most cases, metals are not right after a breakout or breakdown. Gold is currently after the latter so even if nothing seems to change – it could.

Yesterday we wrote that gold was after a confirmed breakdown below the rising support line in terms of closing prices and based on yesterday’s close we also saw a confirmation of the breakdown below the line based on intra-day lows. The above has bearish implications. Let’s take a look at the short-term gold chart (charts courtesy of http://stockcharts.com).

Short-term Gold price chart - Gold spot price

We can also see that gold’s intra-day reversal wasn’t accompanied by high volume, which means that the bearish implications of the reversal are small.

Overall, little changed yesterday (we saw another small bearish confirmation) and what we wrote yesterday remains up-to-date – if you haven’t read yesterday’s alert, we suggest that you do so today. We can summarize the situation in the same way as we summarized it yesterday:

Summing up, the situation was and still is bearish for the short run, but, based on the weekly closing prices, it just deteriorated further for the medium term. (…)

By keeping our full speculative position intact, we aim (and it seems that we are likely to) increase our profits on it and by staying out of the long-term investment capital in the precious metals market we are likely to continue to outperform the simple buy-and-hold approach.

As always, we’ll keep you – our subscribers – informed.

To summarize:

Trading capital (our opinion): Short positions (full) in gold, silver and mining stocks with the following stop-loss orders and initial (!) target prices:

Gold: initial target level: $1,180; stop-loss: $1,254, initial target level for the DGLD ETN: $75.23; stop loss for the DGLD ETN $63.16
Silver: initial target level: $15.70; stop-loss: $17.63, initial target level for the DSLV ETN: $66.25; stop loss for DSLV ETN $45.40
Mining stocks (price levels for the GDX ETN): initial target level: $18.40; stop-loss: $22.17, initial target level for the DUST ETN: $18.99; stop loss for the DUST ETN $11.32

In case one wants to bet on lower junior mining stocks' prices, here are the stop-loss details and initial target prices:

GDXJ: initial target level: $23.37; stop-loss: $28.37
JDST: initial target level: $12.30; stop-loss: $7.00

Long-term capital (our opinion): No positions

Insurance capital (our opinion): Full position

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 automated tools (SP Indicators and the upcoming self-similarity-based tool).

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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