I totally agree with Gary. The only “hedging” I’ve done is to trim some GDXJ calls and replace them with shares in select juniors.
Gold is about to do what it is supposed to do, regardless of the vote, but the MSM will use the vote to explain away the action no matter which way it goes in order to keep the sheeple from putting 2 and 2 together.

BIG AL, why a “NO” referendum is negative to you?

Very interesting as we have Doc not giving the green light to this Nov 7th gold low after a $70+ move = very conservative…now Gary suggests all in ahead of a vote that has the possibilities of really moving the gold price EITHER way = very aggressive, almost reckless.

I can here you now on Monday Gary if a No vote sends gold down hard….Manipulation!…failed intermediate cycle produced by the powers at be….why risk a reaction Monday that nobody has a clue how the hedge funds will react…if a trend is created either way get long or short…..good luck!

Good point jj – I was going to ask Gary the same thing – with Elliott Wave theoreticians proclaiming a short drop in the next 3-4 weeks to an all time low, will Gary claim MANIPULATION if this happens? Also Gary, you seem to be ALL IN at this point. SInce you don’t trade individual miners, could you tell us your trade???

Investing – Speculation – Gambling – Confused

Al is an Investor based his Univ. of Washington Degree.
Doc is a Speculator based on his Charts.
Gary is a Gambler based on his Cycle Count.
Joseph is Confused based on a lot of Useless Information.

LOL…Happy Thanksgiving

There is trading Friday.

Man i have 50% position in gold miners but I’m not willing to commit 50% more unless we double bottom or at least back down after this 4-5 day rally. I’m not gonna chase this.

Al i also do not think swiss ref will pass, which will give news event for cartel to slam gold down. Don’t be surprised if go for restest in 1137.

I’m not sure why a “no” vote would send gold down given that a ‘yes’ outcome is so very much unexpected. If for some strange reason, the Swiss manage to pull off that unexpected outcome, gold will likely climb $100-$200 in a day…Miners are having a large amount of trouble at their current levels for some reason, looks to be a 10-15% short term move in one direction brewing and who knows what direction for sure…and yes there is a half day of trading tomorrow.

Train is leaving the station with Gopro – up 6% now. I am heavy into this and they are getting into the drone business and the drones will use their cameras. I see this stock shooting past Apple soon as sales could double over the next 3 years. They have a 45% margin. I got hit hard with losses last week when they issued more shares at $10 less than the market price but it has bounced back quickly the past 3 days. I hope this goes up like Tesla and Netflix.

Thank’s AL ! Honesty is the best policy i got the mail !

Just for a record. I do not think Swiss initiative will pass. It will fail.
As result. Cartel will use this “story” (regardless negative or positive) to slam gold down and prices will fall. We will either retest 1137 or go down to 1050 within next few weeks. THEN WE OFF TO RACES AND NO NEW BOTTOM NEXT SUMMER. NO WAY.

If it’s going down I hope it goes down soon to get it over with – the sooner this bear market is over the better….

Glen…well said young man…..I am 80% in at the moment and waiting to deploy the remaining 20%.

Well that train might have left the station ???……

…….but it sure looks like its headed in the wrong direction to me….glad I didn’t jump onbard it today.
Cheers.

Also skeeta you may have to wait longer for your bottom target. What will you be doing in the meantime? You trading? shorting? sidelines?

Well it’s going down now. Test that 1180 in a bit here.

rankrev,

The line in the sand is 1177/1180..1170 would be a final push low that I would most likely withstand. Lets see what happens.

Glen and Matt good conversation. Thanks guys. Let’s see what happens.
We have gold news story coming out this weekend and we also have thinly trading markets on sunday. I say this is opportunity for cartel to murk. We’ll see.

Hello all,

I always find interesting (and sometimes amusing) to read posts on this website.

I’d like to add my own little comment, just to share my “experience” in the way I see/approach matters.

To me, it seems that many of us are trying to call THE bottom on the metal(s).
That’s fine for intellectual entertainment, but probably a futile endeavor – or a necessity if you are trying to sell subscriptions to your newsletter, especially if the subscription has a huge technical analysis angle.

I personally find it more easy to try to position myself at certain “zones”, with a certain (potential) risk/reward in place. And I insist on the risk/reward.

Let me try to elaborate.
Firstly, as a disclaimer, I take A LONG-TERM (multi year) view on the metals.
If I elect to trade short-dated options/futures, then levels do matter a lot as a few dollar changes in the underlying can cause huge price swings for the derivative, but this is not what I’m trying to discuss here as I take a long-term approach.

With a long-term view, whether gold’s price reach 1200 or 1150 or 1180 or 1130 should NOT really matter that much if I have a strong conviction on the long-term prospects.
More importantly, when there are declines below 1200, I should view and take these as opportunities to buy some. Why? Because most producers have a cost of about 1200.
So gold spot price can indeed go below 1200, but it is unlikely, IMHO, to stay there for long – say, a few quarters, I’m generous. When gold is at 1150, if potential downside is to 900, then that’s 250 of risk. But if I think it can re-test 1900 in the next few years, then the upside is 750. That’s a 3:1 risk reward ratio. I like that type of risk-reward.
Being less aggressive, if I think gold will hit 1600, that’s 450 of upside, and that’s a 1.8:1 ratio. I still like that ratio given that the 900 that I envisage as a downside is, IMHO, an extreme case.

In most commodities, prices can move below the average cost of most producers for a while… and this creates the (re)birth of bull markets.
Now, if one also agrees to the view that global demand for the metal is STRONG (and likely to continue to be so for a few years), that supply is hardly growing and that INVENTORIES available have likely been decently depleted over the past 3 yrs (central banks vaults, physical holdings of the ETFs such as the GLD), then prices can definitely move below 1200 but again, they will probably find it difficult to stay much below that level for a long time (again, say beyond a few quarters).

Now, sentiment on gold was the worst in many years as of Oct end/early Nov.
Then I think the question becomes: if I wanna buy gold and I don’t buy now, then when am I going to ??? And for those of us that wanted to buy gold “cheap” and didn’t buy at 1150, then where is the right level ? 1100 ? 1050 ? 1000? 900 ? I call this the “Amazon” or “online shopping” syndrome: trying to get the best deal, all the time.
I realize “Black Friday” is tomorrow, but there might not be a Black Friday with gold at 1100/1050/1000/900 ever. There might be. But there might not be. So again, the question becomes: at 1150, do I find gold is good VALUE or not. And do I consider the risk/reward of the investment as attractive or not?

Let me now shift to PM stocks.
As a preliminary consideration, I typically take the view that stocks lead the metals when it comes to moves around tops and bottoms (large ones or intermediate ones).

When I witnessed stocks trashed like they were end of Oct/early Nov with some hitting multi-year lows at the time when sentiment on gold is the most negative in many years, the only question I am asking myself (again) is: if I wanna increase my exposure to stocks and I don’t buy now, when am I gonna buy???
I understand the sector hasn’t gone through the bankruptcy phase of many miners (therefore lower lows might still be ahead for most stocks), which might be an indication the sector is really putting its FINAL cyclical bottom. But 1) I am not sure I will be able to time this bankruptcy phase bottom (it’s a process not something that happens on a given day I suppose), and 2) I personally cannot wait for the day I am convinced this is THE day the sector is putting its cyclical bottom and therefore go all-in (if you don’t go all-in on the day you think the bottom is in, when what’s the point in trying to wait for that bottom?). I believe this is not the most sensible way to invest as I might just be plainly wrong on the day. Therefore, I elect to deploy capital at zones which seem to make sense, with what I consider/view as a good risk/reward ratio.

Personally, I took this the late October/early Nov massacre with as a good opportunity, which I had been waiting for a while.
I already had exposure to many PM stocks (and was in the red on all of my PM positions except 1 or 2), but I wanted to deploy more capital (which I had reserved for these types of ugly days/market conditions).
So with the massacre occurring, I started to nibble at the very end of October, and early Nov. Some among us might have wanted to wait for a “confirmation” a bottom was in place or on gold reversing. But personally (and again), I think that trying to call bottoms and tops are a futile exercise, and miners typically don’t bottom on the same day as the metal (so calling the exact bottom on gold on a given day doesn’t typically enable to call the bottom on the stocks the same day – and typical miners bottom before the metal, so the metal bottoming typically means stock have already bottomed).
Importantly, when a sector or an asset class witnesses an extreme sentiment, moves in the other direction are often violent.
So my thought process here was: “I might be 5,10, 15, 20% too early on this capital adds/nibbling, but sentiment will reverse soon (remember, it was a multi-year EXTREMES) and when it will shift, the move is gonna be “violent”. How much violent I have no clue, but violent it will be.
When gold witnessed its intraday reversal from 1130 on Nov 7., I thought the adds during the previous days had proven to be a “decent” idea.

To be honest, I didn’t deploy as much as I intended to and I still am annoyed with myself about it.
The reason is that I didn’t stick to my plan and got a little fearful… just a little, so I only deployed about 3/4 of what I had planned to deploy – I take it as a lesson to learn from. But what’s important to me is that despite the fact that I didn’t buy at the recent bottom on ANY of these stocks, it didn’t really matter: these nibbles from the late Oct/early Nov levels are up 20-40% already – that’s “violent” enough for me.
So as for gold, I didn’t try to call the bottom, but just deploy at levels that seemed to make a lot of sense, with a good potential risk-reward in place. Thanks to this adds, now a very decent number my PMs holdings are now back in the black.

Likewise, I HOPE (and remember “hope” is not a strategy) we will have another pullback in the coming 2-3 weeks on gold. This will hopefully provide another pullback on the stocks.
If this occurs, it doesn’t matter if I see some stocks down 5,10, 15% on a day: if I see levels I am (already) targeting, I will add more. I might not catch the low again, but I will add what I intend to add, where I intend to add (lesson learned from 3 weeks ago: no messing around: 100% of the additional capital will be deployed, whether that proves to be a mistake later or not. Orders are already in place -> stick to the plan).

Similarly, I purchased some 1yr Calls on GLD this week. I already deployed 1/2 of my intended allocated capital for these trades as I see an about 3:1 risk reward for those assuming gold manages to hit 1430-50 in 2015.
I intended to put these trades about 2 weeks ago, but I truly “forgot” to put these trades. That’s a huge slippage in the investment process from me on this one, but it happens. If gold witness another pullback in the next 2-3 weeks (remember, this is what I “hope”), I will deploy the other 1/2 (here again, orders are already in place -> stick to the plan).

***********

The reason why I share these thoughts and how I approach investing in PM and PM stocks is just to highlight an investment process which brings me a lot of comfort and I like to say: “comfort is VERY important” (not for investing, but in general).
I believe Richard/Doc is also an adept of “nibbling” at certain levels, and he probably can somehow relate to the approach I use.
One of the advantages of keeping some dry powder, looking at risk/reward ratios and not trying to call bottoms is that it – at least for me – it takes away the stress of seeing my positions down 10-20% in a day (there was a day like this at the end of Oct) – but present it as add/buying more opportunities.
Also, we have to keep in mind that the resource sector is volatile, and that the stocks are even more volatile (compared to the hard asset) and that therefore, bloodbaths/purges are THE opportunities for us (as long as we have kept some dry powder) as reversal are typically “violent”. And that if we don’t buy during this purgatory phases, when are we gonna buy ?

Best to all and a happy Thanksgiving to those celebrating. *

LPG

* and don’t forget “Black Friday” tomorrow: it’s easier to get the best deal on that day than with the markets 🙂 🙂 🙂

Hello Richard,

I hear you re: December opportunities and share your views.
However, if you’re right on the extent of the gold move, I would suspect that some of the stocks I’m looking at won’t make a lower low vs. their early Nov lows…and it will be my bad. Take a stock like PVG (on the US listing) for ex. I can be wrong, but I doubt we’ll see the low 4’s anytime soon again (if ever again) – I hope we will, but I highly doubt it will occur. Just my 2cts.

I was annoyed with myself not because I didn’t add to a few names BUT because I didn’t fully stick my initial plan which was to add to them…so in terms of investment process, that’s a slippage, which I will try not make occur again.

I had been waiting for this gold correction for a few months, and to not have pulled the trigger on some stocks while I had decided to just annoyed me.

Anyway… now “waiting” for the next potential pullback to which I will also allocate, as yourself, significant capital.

As an aside, as Cory mentions this point often these days, it seems to me that last year, most of the correction in the stocks that I was looking at occurred in Nov while Dec. was ok-ish. I will suspect that this year again the pull might not be too bad – especially given the bloodbath we’ve had recently. And as Gary rightly noted, there’s been quite a lot of volume at this recent bottom, which suggest that a lot of “strong hands” have deployed capital. And I would suspect them to still have dry powder, hence being ready to pull the trigger at the same levels… therefore limiting the chances of a lower low on the stocks during the next gold move down that you and I expect (and hope for) within the next few weeks.

If you are celebrating, happy Thanksgiving.

Best to you,

LPG

LPG; I looked at the technicals on PVG and they appear to be in the beginning stages of a rollover that in all likelihood would probably challenge the 50 day MA at about $5.30. It might be a point of entry. That move down would correlate with my feeling we’ll probably have a slight slippage for gold and some of the PM stocks in December.

Anyway, best to you also on this Thanksgiving.

LPG (Liquidity Propelled Gold?), Richard, great stuff!

Martin Armstrong must be reading the banter between matthew and jj. His latest blog is calling for a pop in gold next week. The distrust in government has started.

oops! damn that manipulation! Gold & oil not paying attention to cycles analysis nor its proponents .. shocker! 😉