That was fun. Since mid-December gold has behaved like a tech stock, jumping from $1,240/oz to $1,337 and carrying a long list of gold mining stocks along for the ride.
Now everybody's asking the same question: Is this finally the start of the long-overdue run at gold's (and silver's) 2011 record high, or just a case of futures speculators once again panic-buying themselves into an untenable long position, only to be fleeced by the big banks that dominate the paper markets?
The commitment of traders (COT) report is not encouraging. In the current rally, the speculators (who are, remember, usually wrong at big turning points) have jumped back in with both feet and are now enthusiastically long while the commercials (usually right at big turning points) are once again aggressively short.
The next chart shows this visually. When the two columns converge, that's bullish for gold. When they diverge that's bearish. Favorable conditions of early December have quickly morphed back to bearish.
Looking at just this one indicator, it would be reasonable to assume that gold's all-too-brief run is about to end. But on the other side of this equation is the certainty that physical demand will eventually swamp these paper games and send gold and silver up in a bitcoin-worthy arc to their intrinsic values of $5,000/oz and $100/oz, respectively.
Therein lies the gold bug's dilemma. Precious metals will bounce around aimlessly – until they don't – but the phase change won't be obvious until after the fact. With that in mind, here are three possible approaches:
