Gold & Silver Trading Alert: Miners Consolidate Before Next Big Move

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March 17, 2015, 8:12 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 in and at the same time we’re allowing the profits to increase.

Mining stocks have been trading sideways for several days now and the decline seems to have paused. We can infer something from this pause based on an event that accompanied it. Is the decline over or exactly the opposite – is it about to continue?

Before we reply to the above question, we would like to stress that basically nothing changed in the precious metals market yesterday, so all points that we made yesterday, remain up-to-date. Consequently, today’s alert will be rather short. Let’s take a look at what happened in gold (charts courtesy of http://stockcharts.com).

Short-term Gold price chart - Gold spot price

Gold basically did nothing once again, but – this might seem surprising – the implications are actually bearish, not neutral. The reason is that gold remains in a rather tight and quickly declining trend channel. The pause that we saw in the past several days was enough to take gold from the lower border of the trend channel (which provided support) to (almost) its middle.

In other words, thanks to doing nothing recently, gold can now move lower without encountering support immediately. It’s still possible that gold will continue to move sideways or even move a bit higher in the following days, but the potential size of the correction is now bigger as the upper border of the declining trend channel is also lower.

The next interim target for gold is at about $1,120 and the final one is at about the $1,000 level.

Once again, nothing changed in the case of silver (and the outlook remains bearish), so let’s move on to the situation in mining stocks and to the reply to the previous question about the miners’ pause.

GDX - Market Vectors Gold Miners - Gold mining stocks

The thing that is very important on the above picture is the volume. It has been declining during miners’ recent consolidation, which suggests that the move is indeed a pause within a trend and not a bottom (in the case of the latter, we would expect to see higher volume during daily upswings). The previous move was down, so a move lower is likely to follow.

Please note that mining stocks verified the breakdown below the rising support / resistance line, which is yet another bearish sign.

Summing up, we are likely to see a small corrective upswing sooner or later, but it doesn’t seem that we will see a more visible correction until we see gold close to its 2014 (intra-day) low. Gold stocks are now once again underperforming gold, which serves as a confirmation that the correction is over and the decline will now continue.

Even though the size of the profits on the current short position may suggest that’s it’s worth taking them off the table (we opened the short position on Jan. 23 when gold was at about $1,300), it seems that the risk/reward ratio still favors keeping the position open as it doesn’t seem that the decline is over. Even though gold has already fallen significantly, it’s still likely to decline even more in the coming weeks and it is this outlook that makes us think that the short position remains justified at this time.

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: $1,135; stop-loss: $1,234, initial target level for the DGLD ETN: $85.48; stop loss for the DGLD ETN $65.45
Silver: initial target level: $15.10; stop-loss: $17.23, initial target level for the DSLV ETN: $74.05; stop loss for DSLV ETN $48.36
Mining stocks (price levels for the GDX ETN): initial target level: $17.13; stop-loss: $21.17, initial target level for the DUST ETN: $23.49; stop loss for the DUST ETN $11.35

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: $22.13; stop-loss: $27.38
JDST: initial target level: $14.58; stop-loss: $7.10

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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