Gold & Silver Trading Alert: Gold Moves Higher but Miners Don’t

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Briefly: In our opinion, full (150% of the regular full position) speculative short positions in gold, silver and mining stocks are justified from the risk/reward perspective at the moment of publishing this alert.

Yesterday’s session was yet another one in row when mining stocks underperformed the yellow metal, which continues to have bearish implications. Nonetheless, gold moved to new short-term highs and in today’s alert we’re going to discuss the implications of this move.

In short, there are no important ones. Let’s see why (charts courtesy of http://stockcharts.com).

Short-term Gold price chart - Gold spot price

The key reason is that gold didn’t break above the rising resistance line based on the previous major lows (in terms of daily closing prices). Without the above, there is no breakout to discuss, so the outlook is just as it was previously.

The additional reason for us to view yesterday’s move as something negligible is the size of the volume – it was relatively small, which suggests that “up” is not the true direction of gold and that the buying power is drying up. The volume was not extremely low, though, so it doesn’t have to be the case that the top is already in (especially that the USD Index hasn’t moved to 96.4 yet), but it does indicate that even if another move higher is to be seen, it’s not likely to be significant.

Another reason to think that nothing really changed is a really minor change with regard to Monday’s session. If we use kitco.com’s prices instead of the above ones, Friday’s closing price was about $1,267 and yesterday’s closing price was $1,268.60 – basically nothing changed despite an intra-day price spike in the meantime.

HUI Index chart - Gold Bugs, Mining stocks

Gold stocks have once again changed very little and they are very far from making new highs – their underperformance continues. Moreover, please note that the HUI Index is not only below the rising blue resistance lines, but also below the black declining line (based on the August 2016 and February 2017 highs). Consequently, last month’s upswing appears to have been nothing more than just a verification of the breakdown below the rising blue line, especially that miners corrected only to the 61.8% Fibonacci retracement without closing above it. The outlook for miners remains bearish.

With no changes in gold’s technical picture, no price changes in silver, no price changes in miners and the continued underperformance of the latter, there are indeed no changes in the overall outlook for the precious metals sector and we can summarize today’s alert just like we summarized the previous issues - we remain to be in a situation where there are pennies to the upside (literally in silver and mining stocks) and dollars to the downside and thus short positions appear to be justified.

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

To summarize:

Trading capital (supplementary part of the portfolio; our opinion): Short positions (150% of the full position) in gold, silver and mining stocks are justified from the risk/reward perspective with the following stop-loss orders and initial target price levels / profit-take orders:

Gold: exit-profit-take level: $1,063; stop-loss: $1,317; initial target price for the DGLD ETN: $81.88; stop-loss for the DGLD ETN $44.57
Silver: initial target price: $13.12; stop-loss: $19.22; initial target price for the DSLV ETN: $46.18; stop-loss for the DSLV ETN $17.93
Mining stocks (price levels for the GDX ETF): initial target price: $9.34; stop-loss: $26.34; initial target price for the DUST ETF: $143.56; stop-loss for the DUST ETF $21.37

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: $45.31
JDST ETF: initial target price: $417.04; stop-loss: $43.12

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

Insurance capital (core part of the portfolio; our opinion): Full position

Please note that the in the trading section we describe the situation for the day that the alert is posted. In other words, it we are writing about a speculative position, it means that it is up-to-date on the day it was posted. We are also featuring the initial target prices, so that you can decide whether keeping a position on a given day is something that is in tune with your approach (some moves are too small for medium-term traders and some might appear too big for day-traders).

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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