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Gold Update: The small trade within the big trade

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  • #16
    Re: Gold Update: The small trade within the big trade

    I can't understand what the hell some of you guys were doing buying gold at $1000 after seeing it rise from $650 in barely six months. One should never buy anything when the price action has been strongly bullish for months. You are chasing a trend and that's dangerous. If you had very little exposure to gold when such a parabolic rise started, you should have resigned yourself to waiting it out and buying the month's long flat price after that parabola crashed!

    And buying more in multiple purchases spaced closely together in price, while the price is dropping hard? What the heck is that? You are your own worst enemy piling into a volatile asset that way. Gold could well see a prolonged downturn here and your collected buys could end up deeply underwater! Safest time to buy is after the plunge in prices, when you encounter a long interval of basing action - just exactly the way prices were all through the summer of 2007.

    It costs maybe $800 - $1000 a year to simply buy the seasoned market watching skills of a half dozen gold monitoring newsletters. Looks a little pricey on the surface of it. But many people here routinely throw that kind of money away on quite risky puts and calls suitable only for professional traders - yet these same people willing to be adventurous on puts won't buy a couple of newsletters to take out some insurance on their buy and sell timing affecting tens of thousands of dollars? This order of priorities sees spending money on gold price advisor newsletters as 'profligate', but thinks of any loss from mis-timed market puts as merely 'the cost of doing business investing in the PM's? Nuts.

    These advisors were warning not to put any new money into gold for the past two or three months already!

    Using puts and calls instead of simply waiting for safe entry windows in the gold price action, probably means many of us who are not professional traders are simply thrashing around spending several thousand dollars a year on such strategies, with uncertain results. Bottom line: If you have even $20K invested in the gold market, pay up some money for a little professional guidance as to when gold is overbought or oversold! You wouldn't think of owning a home without fire insurance - why consider having a big chunk of your savings in a volatile asset without taking out a little insurance at least on buy timing decisions?

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    • #17
      Re: Gold Update: The small trade within the big trade

      Originally posted by Lukester View Post
      I can't understand what the hell some of you guys were doing buying gold at $1000 after seeing it rise from $650 in barely six months. One should never buy anything when the price action has been strongly bullish for months. You are chasing a trend and that's dangerous. If you had very little exposure to gold when such a parabolic rise started, you should have resigned yourself to waiting it out and buying the month's long flat price after that parabola crashed!

      And buying more in multiple purchases spaced closely together in price, while the price is dropping hard? What the heck is that? You are your own worst enemy piling into a volatile asset that way. Gold could well see a prolonged downturn here and your collected buys could end up deeply underwater! Safest time to buy is after the plunge in prices, when you encounter a long interval of basing action - just exactly the way prices were all through the summer of 2007.

      It costs maybe $800 - $1000 a year to simply buy the seasoned market watching skills of a half dozen gold monitoring newsletters. Looks a little pricey on the surface of it. But many people here routinely throw that kind of money away on quite risky puts and calls suitable only for professional traders - yet these same people willing to be adventurous on puts won't buy a couple of newsletters to take out some insurance on their buy and sell timing affecting tens of thousands of dollars? This order of priorities sees spending money on gold price advisor newsletters as 'profligate', but thinks of any loss from mis-timed market puts as merely 'the cost of doing business investing in the PM's? Nuts.

      These advisors were warning not to put any new money into gold for the past two or three months already!

      Using puts and calls instead of simply waiting for safe entry windows in the gold price action, probably means many of us who are not professional traders are simply thrashing around spending several thousand dollars a year on such strategies, with uncertain results. Bottom line: If you have even $20K invested in the gold market, pay up some money for a little professional guidance as to when gold is overbought or oversold! You wouldn't think of owning a home without fire insurance - why consider having a big chunk of your savings in a volatile asset without taking out a little insurance at least on buy timing decisions?
      lukester, i think a little understanding is in order. it's always easy to pick a top in retrospect. i haven't added to my pm positions for some time, because i felt fully allocated at recent prices. had i not been fully allocated, i.e. had i not fully accepted the investment thesis about gold until quite recently, then i surely would have wondered how high gold was going on this move. around xmas '07 gld was at 80, having hovered just below that level for 2 mos. from there it went to 85 in about a week, and by the middle of january had reached 90, and corrected back to 87. then 92 in about a week, etc. where was one to buy? gold was moving higher and the financial world looked very much on the edge of complete meltdown. the fed was coming out with new liquidity facilities on almost a daily basis, but financial stocks were plummeting. there was no way to predict when or if the meltdown would end, or even pause. [still isn't, really.] if one felt underinsured, speaking of insurance, it seems to me reasonable to have purchased some gold under these circumstances. [how much is a subject for a different discussion. i favor hussman's recommendation of buying 40% of what you wished you had, and then waiting a month to re-evaluate.] so, yes, i agree it's a bad idea to chase an idea that's run away from you. but i still think gold is a long term buy, and that the folks who bought recently will eventually be glad they bought.

      as to spending money on advisories, i am in full agreement with you. if you figure that the average mutual fund would charge you at least 1%, it makes sense to allocate up to 1% of your portfolio for information/advisories. that's a lot, and likely you can get by with significantly less than 1%, but i think it's worth spending some money to get useful information.

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      • #18
        Re: Gold Update: The small trade within the big trade

        Can you name some good gold newsletters?

        Thanks,

        Jason

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        • #19
          Re: Gold Update: The small trade within the big trade

          Jason -

          John Doody's GOLD STOCK ANALYST - large and mid cap producers. No need for a focused gold stocks mutual fund. He can build a small concentrated portfolio better. He's very good. Will keep you consistently in 10 - 20 of the most dynamic producer stocks through the entire bull market, with annual average results that are a stand out. Not flashy, but highly consistent.

          The ADEN FORECAST - varied commodity stocks portfolio with excellent long term charting. Takes "technical analysis" and makes it real simple by charting the long trends and not getting thrown off by short term noise. "Short term" for example would be this past week's convulsion in the gold price.

          As far as I'm concerned the ADEN sister's very long term charting tells 90% of the actionable story each month, leaving all the frenetic "up close" chartists chasing around in circles to discern the short term trends (which they love to do incessantly). A very welcome relief from the frantic short term traders.

          Casey Research - BIG GOLD - a new service on large cap and mid-cap gold producers. New service but supposed to be quite good. Doody and Casey replicate each other's work in this sector.

          __________

          Junior stocks? IMHO that's for your play money. Lots of stock market enthusiasts like to play in there. I personally dislike all stocks to begin with - prefer "stuff" like real commodities in an index or real-estate, or gold and silver metal which I can grab a hold of. If I can't "see it" I don't trust it nearly as much. It's maybe a retrograde instinct, but in recent years it's actually served me really well.

          The above services cover the mid and large cap producers. For me the sweet spot in the gold shares is the mid-cap universe, like where Yamana was two or three years ago (maybe still) or where Silver Wheaton and Goldcorp were three or four years ago also. The mid-caps can really roar up, and have much more "weight" in their momentum than the small caps.

          Having said that I dumped every last share a year ago and want nothing to do with stocks right now. I'll leave them to the rest of you stock mavens!

          There are one or two "special" gold metal timing services - which are entirely different from gold stock newsletters. IMHO these are what's really interesting for the next five years. The conservative investor in gold owns by far more positions in the metal than in the shares. That's my bias. So you need a timing service that is really good, to time the peaks and blowouts of the metal, for a 25% portion of your holdings..

          In that area, I'm keeping my own discoveries under my hat - If I post them here a couple of hundred thousand readers will pick over them (the iTulip community is growing like King Kong), and this would steer tons of clients to these small advisories, and my buys and sells will get shot to hell. I apologise for this reservation. If you dig around however you'll unearth these yourself. These are perhaps the most valuable advisors for the scary markets we are heading into.

          Hope this helps.

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          • #20
            Re: Gold Update: The small trade within the big trade

            Originally posted by jk View Post
            lukester, i think a little understanding is in order.
            Sorry for not replying to this JK. I have been busy making an ass out of myself attempting to hash something out with El Bartos and the inimitable J.N. (Mr. "I think you're full of shit"). Didn't get very far - and managed to make a fool of myself in the process. Always very lively and entertaining around here!

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            • #21
              Re: Gold Update: The small trade within the big trade

              I recommend Doug Casey but also Steve Saville's Speculative Investor.

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              • #22
                Re: Gold Update: The small trade within the big trade

                didn't Casey ride Gold down most of the way from $850 ? (I'm NOT completely sure of this, it's a vague recollection, not a "I'm sure he rode it down ...")

                Originally posted by grapejelly View Post
                I recommend Doug Casey but also Steve Saville's Speculative Investor.
                Howard Ruff was one of the few, AFAIK who got out near the top.

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                • #23
                  Re: Gold Update: The small trade within the big trade

                  Originally posted by kemper28 View Post
                  Can you name some good gold newsletters?

                  Thanks,

                  Jason
                  i'm not sure you want "gold" newsletters. one question you need to ask yourself is whether you want to trade, or buy long term positions based on a more macro approach. do you want to accumulate over time, or do you need to deploy a larger amount all at once? i subscribed to doody's letter for a year, and it is very good, but i decided i didn't really want to own gold stocks, i wanted to own the metal [albeit in paper form - gld and slv - though i am mulling over the wisdom of that].

                  so first think about the big picture and how your own situation might determine what kind of information is going to be of most use.

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                  • #24
                    Re: Gold Update: The small trade within the big trade

                    Thanks for the info... I am looking for a service that may alert me to a 10% or more upcoming decrease in the gold spot price. I may then decide to sell part of my position and buy back at a later time. I mostly only deal with real gold coins.

                    So the "special" alerting type is what I am looking for... I need to get that hat so I can get the info...

                    Thanks again...

                    Jason

                    I am on board with the belief that I may witness the end of the US dollar in my lifetime (I am 36). It's the 10-15% drops in gold along the way I am trying to hedge against.

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                    • #25
                      Re: Gold Update: The small trade within the big trade

                      Fred,

                      Will you be suggesting a buy point during this "small trade within the big trade"?

                      It seems like we are getting close to a good entry point for gold again and for silver, may already be at bottom.
                      Greg

                      Comment


                      • #26
                        Re: Gold Update: The small trade within the big trade

                        Originally posted by kemper28 View Post
                        Thanks for the info... I am looking for a service that may alert me to a 10% or more upcoming decrease in the gold spot price. I may then decide to sell part of my position and buy back at a later time. I mostly only deal with real gold coins.

                        So the "special" alerting type is what I am looking for... I need to get that hat so I can get the info...

                        Thanks again...

                        Jason...
                        Definitely empathize with your sentiment. I'm basically a "long term" investor that holds a fair proportion in hard money at all times, but does like to layer on a bit of a counter trade due to the sometimes gut-wrenching volatility. Unfortunately, I know of no reliable service to that end.

                        Fred's opening comments here are as helpful as any I've come across, pointing out that within the context of an overall bullish trend, traders will sometimes push prices above trend and at others back below:

                        Originally posted by FRED View Post

                        A Tale of Two Markets


                        Within the long gold and silver trade are players that create price movements that at times are counter to the long term trend and at other times exaggerate the long term trend. It is our position that the pullbacks created by the short term counter trends are buying opportunities for long investors and for traders the peaks of exaggerated short term price movements are selling opportunities. More importantly it is critical to distinguish between the kind of price volatility that funds can create with leverage versus the kind of price volatility we will see at the end of the long term PM inflation trade in place since 2001.

                        We do not foresee in light of ongoing liquidity problems in global bond markets, combined with slowing economic growth and rising inflation around the world, how governments will be able to make bonds more attractive than hard assets by raising yields above the rate of inflation to draw money away as occurred in the early 1980s during the previous cycle at a time when increased liquidity is needed to manage the debt deflation.

                        As long as future real interest rate expectations remain negative, the long PMs position that we took in 2001 remains in place.


                        Originally posted by BiscayneSunrise View Post
                        Fred,

                        Will you be suggesting a buy point during this "small trade within the big trade"?

                        It seems like we are getting close to a good entry point for gold again and for silver, may already be at bottom.
                        FWIW, I'd look at it at least partly in terms of where you are now. If I had no gold and silver at all, I wouldn't wait a New York minute before picking some up. If I had 100%, I'd sell some pronto. At some point in between, I'd probably hold off a little longer before adding to my position if at all. Best guess as far as prices go is gold could pull back as far as the low 800s before resuming the uptrend, due in part to the dynamics of the market (gold tends to become less volatile near lows and more so near tops) and in part to seasonal factors. But these factors are not so reliable as to be one's sole basis for action.
                        Last edited by Finster; April 25, 2008, 03:36 PM.
                        Finster
                        ...

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                        • #27
                          Re: Gold Update: The small trade within the big trade

                          Originally posted by BiscayneSunrise View Post
                          Fred,

                          Will you be suggesting a buy point during this "small trade within the big trade"?

                          It seems like we are getting close to a good entry point for gold again and for silver, may already be at bottom.
                          We are hearing from some of our members who are trading gold that they are buyers again at $850. We are still above the $200 decline that this analysis speculated on March 5, 2008 that implies a bottom price of $780 for the small trade within the big trade.
                          Ed.

                          Comment


                          • #28
                            Re: Gold Update: The small trade within the big trade

                            Originally posted by FRED View Post
                            We are hearing from some of our members who are trading gold that they are buyers again at $850. We are still above the $200 decline that this analysis speculated on March 5, 2008 that implies a bottom price of $780 for the small trade within the big trade.
                            My current time window for a bottom is between May 22 and June 9, ideally June 5th.
                            http://www.NowAndTheFuture.com

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                            • #29
                              Re: Gold Update: The small trade within the big trade

                              Originally posted by bart View Post
                              My current time window for a bottom is between May 22 and June 9, ideally June 5th.
                              Thanks Bart, for sharing your 2008 gold trade ideas with the rest of us "unwashed masses". Kudos to Jim Sinclair also for sketching out this 'notional' projection for gold's price action back in mid-2007? Guy wasn't born yesterday. I think he posted this chart back in 3QTR 2007.


                              JS_MINESET_GOLD_PROJECTION.gif
                              Last edited by Contemptuous; May 01, 2008, 10:35 PM.

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                              • #30
                                Re: Gold Update: The small trade within the big trade

                                Originally posted by Lukester View Post
                                Thanks Bart, for sharing your 2008 gold trade ideas with the rest of us "unwashed masses". Kudos to Jim Sinclair also for sketching out this 'notional' projection for gold's price action back in mid-2007? Guy wasn't born yesterday. I think he posted this chart back in 3QTR 2007.


                                [ATTACH]366[/ATTACH]
                                I seem to recall that you also were pretty vocal about a near term setback in gold and (even more so?) silver about the time of the Bear bail out Lukester.

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