Look for Value Opportunities and Put Your Capital to Work Selectively in this Market

The Gold Report: When we talked in November, you warned that there would be downward pressure on gold this year. What are you anticipating for the balance of 2015 and into next year?

Florian Siegfried: We were being cautious in November when we published guidance that indicated gold could trade as low as $1,070 per ounce ($1,070/oz) as a support zone. And that is pretty close to where it is trading right now. But I think that we have to distinguish between the paper price of gold and the physical price, which trades at a premium. For example, the U.S. Mint currently sells gold at around $1,400/oz.

"Pretium Resources Inc.'s Brucejack is one of those mines that brings a long mine life and high grade in a safe jurisdiction."

This suggests that there is some tendency toward increasing premiums in the market for physical metal. Where we go by the end of the year is a difficult question because it's always hard to catch the bottom of the market. But a look at the last three or four years gives us some clues. Hedge funds were maximum net long in gold at the peak of 2011, and now they're maximum net short, which could be a good contrarian indicator (see chart above).

It looks as if $1,080/oz could be the bottom. It's not defined yet, but the sentiment is definitely at extremes.

The turn in gold will come from short covering, and the short covering will come when the bearishness really reaches a climax event. Probably we are there, but we will have to wait and see. It is difficult to make a call for year-end because there are so many factors influencing the gold price, and sentiment is extremely negative. The trigger for moving up could come from the bond market, which is in a difficult spot right now. Liquidity is down. Yields and credit spreads are rising. When something goes wrong there, where will the conservative money go to? I don't think it is going to go back into government funds. As investors lose confidence, that could be the trigger for gold. We are probably going to see this in the fall, by September or October. I think the bond market is about to turn around.

TGR: What are some of the other triggers you're watching? Are you monitoring the U.S. Federal Reserve and whether that rate hike happens in the fall? Continue reading "Look for Value Opportunities and Put Your Capital to Work Selectively in this Market"

Why There's Upside To Silver's Four-Year Lows

By: David Sterman of Street Authority

Even as investors were re-embracing stocks in 2010 and 2011, they scored really big gains with one of the hottest commodities in the world: Silver.

The precious metal soared in price from under $20 in August 2010 to nearly $50 an ounce by the next spring. In the hindsight, the silver spike was a classic bubble, fueled by inflation concerns that simply never materialized.

Though few people could have guessed that silver would be capable of a 150% nine-month gain, few also would have predicted that the eventual slump in silver would be so extended. Silver prices fell back below $30 an ounce by the start of 2013, and they've been in freefall ever since. A snapback to 2011 peaks is out of the cards.

You can get a sense of just how painful the silver slump has been by glancing at the performance of key exchange-traded funds (ETFs). The leveraged (2-times and 3-times) funds have been among the market's worst performers.

And when it comes to the silver producers themselves, it appears as if sentiment has utterly collapsed. In recent weeks, industry share prices have slumped another 20%-to-30%. In contrast, the pullback in gold prices and shares of gold miners has not been nearly as severe. Continue reading "Why There's Upside To Silver's Four-Year Lows"

Louis James: Are You Ready for an Early Shopping Season?

The Gold Report: Jeff Clark, senior precious metals analyst at Casey Research, recently wrote in an article titled "Time to Admit that Gold Peaked in 2011?" that countered a chart making the rounds showing gold matching its 1980 inflation-adjusted dollars peak in 2011. The chart implies we should expect a decade or more of lower prices. Aside from the fact that John Williams of Shadow Government Statistics might have a problem with how inflation was calculated, how are gold's fundamentals different today than they were in 1984?

Louis James: The fact that things are different today than in the 1980s is a really good point. The argument over methodology almost doesn't matter. Even if it were true that the gold price of 2011 matched the inflation-adjusted gold price of 1980, that wouldn't mean that gold has to go down the way it did in 1980. There wasn't a near collapse in the banking sector back then. There wasn't the Lehman Brothers upset. The government did not triple the money supply. We're dealing not with apples and oranges, but apples and whales.

TGR: If history is not a map for the future, is John Williams correct that we are getting ready for hyperinflation? Continue reading "Louis James: Are You Ready for an Early Shopping Season?"