Briefly: in our opinion, small (50% of the regular size of the position) speculative long position in gold, silver, and mining stocks are justified from the risk/reward point of view at the moment of publishing this Alert. We are moving profit-take levels for gold and silver lower.

Gold moved from the upper border of its short-term consolidation to the lower border thereof and it's now moving back up again. Nothing interesting, some might say. But take a good look - while gold formed a bearish reversal, the miners made a profound bullish reversal yesterday. Is gold's rally really over?

It may not be over just yet - gold could experience one more upturn before it drops. As we wrote in the previous paragraph, one of the signs suggesting such an outcome is the daily strength in the miners.

The Short-Term Reversals in PMs

The HUI Index - the lower part of the above chart - ended the session in the green after an intraday decline below 210. This is profound, because gold didn't recover during the same day. It's only moving back up in today's pre-market trading, along with silver. So, gold miners showed strength, and they did so in the most bullish way - they resisted the bearish forces. It was not a emotional daily rally - it was true support from the buyers.

At times, miners show strength relative to gold at the tops, but the shape of yesterdays' session suggest it is not this kind of performance that we just saw. Consequently, gold and silver are likely to rally here, especially since neither gold, nor silver, nor mining stocks reached the declining resistance lines yet.

Gold price was very close to reaching the declining resistance line, but it didn't manage to do so yet. It broke below the rising short-term support line instead, which is a bearish development.

Silver, on the other hand, has already invalidated its small breakdown below the rising support line, which is bullish. It's usually best to ignore silver's signals if they are not confirmed by the other parts of the PM market, but this isn't one of such cases. The miners' strength confirms what we see in silver today, so it's something that we should pay attention to.

What does it all mean? It means that it's quite likely that we'll get another quick upswing during which the declining resistance lines will be reached or perhaps temporarily breached. If the resistance line is breached in case of silver, but not in case of the rest of the precious metals market, it will serve as a great bearish confirmation.

There is one more scenario that needs to be considered here. It could be the case that silver rallies to the declining resistance line, outperforming gold, while the yellow metal only verifies the breakdown below the rising support line. This line is at about $1,512 in gold today. The low risk to reward strategy is to aim for exit the current long position close to this level instead of waiting for gold to rally further - to the declining resistance line.

Consequently, we are moving the profit-take levels lower.

Naturally, the key bearish factors for the medium term remain intact.

Key Factors to Keep in Mind

Critical factors:

• The USD Index broke above the very long-term resistance line and verified the breakout above it. Its huge upswing is already underway.
• The USD's long-term upswing is an extremely important and bearish factor for gold. There were only two similar cases in the past few decades, when USD Index was starting profound, long-term bull markets, and they were both accompanied by huge declines in gold and the rest of the precious metals market
• Out of these two similar cases, only one is very similar - the case when gold topped in February 1996. The similarity extends beyond gold's about a yearly delay in reaction to the USD's rally. Also the shape of gold price moves prior to the 1996 high and what we saw in the last couple of years is very similar, which confirm the analysis of the gold-USD link and the above-mentioned implications of USD Index's long-term breakout.
• The similarity between now and 1996 extends to silver and mining stocks - in other words, it goes beyond USD, gold-USD link, and gold itself. The white metal and its miners appear to be in a similar position as well, and the implications are particularly bearish for the miners. After their 1996 top, they erased more than 2/3rds of their prices.
• Many investors got excited by the gold-is-soaring theme in the last few months, but looking beyond the short-term moves, reveals that most of the precious metals sector didn't show substantial strength that would be really visible from the long-term perspective. Gold doesn't appear to be starting a new bull market here, but rather to be an exception from the rule.
• Gold's True Seasonality around the US Labor Day points to a big decline shortly.

Very important, but not as critical factors:

• Long-term technical signs for silver, i.a. the analogy in terms of price to what we saw in 2008, shows that silver could slide even below $10.
• Silver's very long-term cycles point to a major reversal taking place right now and since the most recent move was up, the implications are bearish (this is also silver's technical sign, but it's so important that it deserves its own point)
• Long-term technical signs for gold stocks point to this not being a new gold bull market beginning. Among others, it's their long-term underperformance relative to gold that hint this is rather a corrective upswing within a bear market that is not over yet.
• Record-breaking weekly volume in gold is a strong sign pointing to lower gold prices

Important factors:

• Extreme volume reading in the SIL ETF (proxy for silver stocks) is an effective indication that lower values of silver miners are to be expected
• Silver's short-term outperformance of gold, and gold stocks' short-term underperformance of gold both confirm that the precious metals sector is topping here
• Gold topped almost right at its cyclical turning point, which makes the trend reversal more likely
• Copper broke below its head-and-shoulders pattern and confirmed the breakdown. The last time we saw something similar was in April 2013, when the entire precious metals sector was on the verge of plunging lower.

Moreover, please note that while there may be a recession threat, it doesn't mean that gold has to rally immediately. Both: recession and gold's multi-year rally could be many months away - comparing what happened to bond yields in the 90s confirms that.

Copper moved above the neck level of its head-and-shoulders pattern that's based on the intraday lows, but it didn't invalidate the analogous level based on the weekly closing prices, so we don't think it's justified to say that this bearish formation was invalidated at this time.

Summary

Summing up, the big decline in the precious metals sector is likely to resume within the next few days, marking the easy part of the current rally as being over. Consequently, we are moving the profit-take order for gold and silver closer to its current price with the aim of closing the current long positions shortly and getting back on the short side of the market at that time.

Moreover, please note that in our opinion, once gold reaches its profit-take level at $1,511.80, the entire long position should be closed, and the short position in gold, silver, and mining stocks should be opened with the details as outlined below. This will likely mean closing the position at a small (but still) profit in gold, moderate profit in silver, and a bigger profit in the mining stocks.

In other news, today is the final day of the temporary access to our Oil & Forex Trading Alerts for all Gold & Silver Trading Alert subscribers - we trust you enjoyed reading and profiting thanks to them. Taking the earlier profitable ride on short side of the oil market, the price of black gold is now almost $3 higher than it was when we opened the long position last week (almost right at the bottom), and the long position in the USD Index that we just entered based on the 98.35 level being reached, looks very promising.

As always, we'll keep you - our subscribers - informed.

To summarize:

Trading capital (supplementary part of the portfolio; our opinion): Small speculative long position (50% of the full position) in gold, silver, and mining stocks is justified from the risk/reward perspective with the following stop-loss orders and binding exit profit-take price levels:

• Gold: profit-take exit price: $1,511.80; stop-loss: $1,488; initial target price for the UGLD ETN: $142.37; stop-loss for the UGLD ETN: $133.82
• Silver: profit-take exit price: $17.87; stop-loss: $17.16; initial target price for the USLV ETN: $94.96; stop-loss for the USLV ETN: $82.16
• Mining stocks (price levels for the GDX ETF): profit-take exit price: $29.28; stop-loss: $26.27; initial target price for the NUGT ETF: $34.16; stop-loss for the NUGT ETF $25.98

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

• GDXJ ETF: profit-take exit price: $39.87; stop-loss: $35.48
• JNUG ETF: profit-take exit price: $71.88 stop-loss: $51.96

Important: even if gold is the only part of the precious metals market that reaches its upside target, all above-mentioned trades should be closed, and the trades below should be (in our opinion) opened:

Trading capital (supplementary part of the portfolio; our opinion): Once gold reaches $1,511.80, full speculative short position (250% of the full position) in gold, silver, and mining stocks will be justified from the risk/reward perspective with the following stop-loss orders and exit profit-take price levels:

• Gold: profit-take exit price: $1,391; stop-loss: $1,573; initial target price for the DGLD ETN: $36.37; stop-loss for the DGLD ETN: $25.44
• Silver: profit-take exit price: $16.41; stop-loss: $19.06; initial target price for the DSLV ETN: $20.96; stop-loss for the DSLV ETN: $14.07
• Mining stocks (price levels for the GDX ETF): profit-take exit price: $24.62; stop-loss: $30.11; initial target price for the DUST ETF: $10.32; stop-loss for the DUST ETF $6.08

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

• GDXJ ETF: profit-take exit price: $33.82; stop-loss: $41.22
• JDST ETF: profit-take exit price: $21.58 stop-loss: $12.46

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

Whether you already subscribed or not, we encourage you to find out how to make the most of our alerts and read our replies to the most common alert-and-gold-trading-related-questions.

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 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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Thank you.

Sincerely,
Przemyslaw Radomski, CFA
Editor-in-chief, Gold & Silver Fund Manager