We’re getting whiplash from all the political changes in Europe, neo-Nazis in an unstable government in Greece and a changing of the guard in France– “adieu” to Nicolas Sarkozy. We see plenty of reasons for holding on to our long-term gold positions despite the clobbering the yellow metal got on Wednesday down to a four-month low. The euro tumbled this week against the dollar in the worst run since 2008. There is an intense resurgence of political risk in Europe and a couple of months of weak jobs numbers in the U.S. All that has put stimulus back on the table. Another item on the table is the risk of a Greek euro exit, which has risen to as high as 75 percent; according to Citigroup Inc. We also see a rising anti-austerity tide gaining ground in Europe and the abolishing of a gold excise duty in India, all favorable for gold.

Francoise Hollande has been elected France’s president, the first socialist president in almost two decades, on the promise that he would deliver an alternative to the austerity diet. The French have been wondering who had moved their high-calorie cheese. They have become tired of the message reiterated by Nicolas Sarkozy that painful choices and belt tightening will bring jobs and growth. Hollande takes power at a critical juncture for both France and Europe and he will have to deliver fast –no honeymoon vacation. France has a ten per cent unemployment rate and its labor costs are among the highest in the OECD. With a budget deficit for almost 40 years, France lost its triple A credit rating this year. The day after Hollande takes power next Tuesday, France must raise €12 billion on the markets. He then will have to convince German chancellor, Angela Merkel, who was cozy with Sarkozy, to renegotiate the European budget austerity pact to add measures on growth. Investors are worried about potential tension between Germany and France, the two eurozone heavyweights.

It is not likely that Germany will be willing to foot the bill for Hollande’s campaign promises.

Having discussed the political factors driving the price of gold, let us now see how the markets can influence the yellow metal’s behavior in the days to come. We will start today’s technical part with analysis of the S&P 500 Index and begin with the long-term chart (charts courtesy by http://stockcharts.com.)

In the chart, we see that prices have moved below the support line created by the 2011 highs, which looks bearish. Taking a relative comparison to the similar rally that we saw in the second half of 2010 (more on that topic can be found in last week’s commentary) with the current price patterns, it seems quite possible that we could have simply seen a correction with a rally now to follow.

Let us now take a look at the financial sector.

In the Broker Dealer Index chart (a proxy for the financial sector), we do not have any clear “buy now” signals (based on this chart alone) but may have some confirmation here that a bottom has formed in the general stock market. This index bottomed at the 50% retracement level of its previous rally, something that could be expected during a correction (just like a bottom being formed with financial at other Fibonacci retracement levels, so, again, this is not a crystal clear buy signal).

Let us now move on to the crude oil market and try to find out whether the black gold will have an impact on the real one’s future price.

Looking at the chart we see that prices have moved lower after trying to break out above the declining resistance line. Since that attempt, prices have declined and are now actually close to the long-term support line. RSI levels suggest that a rally is likely to begin sooner rather than later. Another small move to the downside may be seen, and a powerful upturn could follow. The situation will become clearer once oil price finally confirms either a breakout or a breakdown.

Overall, the signs here are blurry but favorable for gold in the short term, as the gold market has been generally aligned with the crude oil market this year. This is not necessarily true for the very short term, but the two markets were generally positive correlated lately and their overall directions are similar. The implications from the crude oil price chart are a bit more bullish for gold than not as the support line is closer than the resistance line and the RSI says “buy”.

To finish off today’s essay let’s have a glance at our in-house developed tool that traces the intermarket dependencies.

The Correlation Matrix is a tool, which we have developed to analyze the impact of the currency markets and the general stock market upon the precious metals sector. This week we see that precious metals are negatively correlated with the USD Index and positively correlated with the general stock market. The outlook for the general stock market is more bullish than not, and the implications for precious metals are therefore more bullish than not as well.

Summing up, the situation in the general stock market is mixed for the long term and a bullish scenario seems a bit more likely than the bearish one for crude oil. The implications for gold based on the outlook for crude oil and the general stock market seem to be a bit more bullish than not at this time.

To make sure that you are notified once the new features are implemented, and get immediate access to my free thoughts on the market, including information not available publicly, we urge you to sign up for our free e-mail list. Gold & Silver Investors should definitely join us today and additionally get free, 7-day access to the Premium Sections on our website, including valuable tools and unique charts. It’s free and you may unsubscribe at any time.

Thank you for reading. Have a great and profitable week!

P. Radomski
Editor
www.SunshineProfits.com

One of the questions that we receive on a regular basis is whether one should invest in junior or senior mining stocks. The answer is that diversification is the way to go, but that’s not the full reply as weights in the diversified portfolio can still favor either juniors or senior stocks.

The reply to this question depends on when the question is asked – there are times when juniors outperform and there are times when they underperform the senior mining stocks. Before providing you with a chart of the junior-senior ratio, let’s take a closer look at the situation in the general stock market, ale the latter is highly correlated with juniors in the long term (charts courtesy by http://stockcharts.com.)

In the long-term S&P 500 Index chart, we have much the same outlook as we saw last week. The recent correction appears quite similar to the one of 2010 and the consolidation seen in RSI levels is also similar. Back then, prices rose nearly 15% in about three months following the small correction. Self-similar patterns (like this one) are quite reliable, so at this point, stocks appear ready to move higher.

In the short-term SPY ETF (proxy for the S&P 500 index) chart, the situation is somewhat mixed. This week could be viewed as a few days of rally followed by consolidation (with another rally just around the corner) or the beginning of another move to the downside. The 50-day moving average continues to be within range as a support line and may continue to hold declines in check. Note, however, that it was been broken temporarily on several occasions late last year.

In the Broker Dealer Index chart (proxy for the financial sector) we see that a key support line has held. This line is at the first key Fibonacci retracement level and is also close to the high seen in the financials last October, slightly above 95. Support levels are in check and the bottom may be in. The rally seen since late 2011 has corrected and it now appears that the financials are ready to move higher and perhaps take other stocks with them.

Consequently, the situation for stocks appears mixed for the short term and bullish for the long term. Overall therefore, the outlook is bullish as long-term signals carry more weight than short-term ones. The impact on the junior-senior ratio is positive.

As indicated earlier, we will now move to the performance of the whole junior sector and compare to the senior mining stocks.

As you can see on the above chart, the juniors-seniors ratio (GDXJ to GDX ratio) corrected from February to the end of April. We call this correction instead of decline because this 3-month move didn’t erase the previous monthly rally (January 2012). As all corrections come to an end eventually, it seems to be the case also with this one. The ratio moved sharply higher in the recent days and the correction appears to be over as the resistance line has been broken. The implication is that another wave of juniors’ outperformance is likely underway. This chart yields also other implications, interesting for the precious metals investors. These are discussed in greater detail in the premium version of this essay.

Summing up, at this time juniors appear to have greater upside potential than senior mining stocks.

To make sure that you are notified once the new features are implemented, and get immediate access to my free thoughts on the market, including information not available publicly, we urge you to sign up for our free e-mail list. Gold & Silver Investors should definitely join us today and additionally get free, 7-day access to the Premium Sections on our website, including valuable tools and unique charts. It’s free and you may unsubscribe at any time.

Thank you for reading. Have a great and profitable week!

P. Radomski
Editor
www.SunshineProfits.com

HOW OFTEN are gold prices as range bound as this?

The London gold fix on Wednesday afternoon marked the fortieth trading day in a row that gold fixed between $1600 and $1700.

The last PM Fix outside this range was on March 5 ($1705 an ounce). Spot gold prices did manage to poke their head above the $1700 mark later that same week, but since then gold has gone pretty much nowhere. Is it common to see such a protracted period of sideways trading?

One way of gauging how much (or indeed how little) gold prices have moved in that time is to calculate the coefficient of variation (CV) – simply the standard deviation divided by the mean average – and compare it with rolling 40 day periods.

The chart below does exactly that, going back to 1968, the year the London Gold Pool collapsed. The vertical green lines represent the final day of any 40 day period with a lower CV than the 40 trading days just gone, with the gold price shown over the top (left hand axis):
By the CV measure, gold has not had a quieter 40 days since mid-2007, right at the start of the financial crisis.

A block of six trading days – August 30 to September 6, 2007 – each marked the end of quieter 40-day periods than the one we have just had. There is a similar cluster of four days in July 2007.
As you can see from the chart, these days have tended to come in consecutive blocks – which makes sense since we are taking rolling statistical measures. This allows us to pick out specific quiet periods when gold prices were not really doing much.

Over the last 10 years, there have been only five 40-day periods quieter than the one we have just had – the two in 2007, another two in 2005, and one towards the end of 2002.

By contrast, the 1990s saw loads of periods quieter than the current one. So too did the late 1960s and early 1970s, as we would expect since gold was, until August 1971, still officially tied to the Dollar at $35 an ounce (though a two-tier market allowed for a fluctuating price for non-central bank transactions).

Of course, 40 trading days is a rather arbitrary span of time to pick. But similar patterns emerge when we look at other rolling periods.

Lately, gold has been a disappointment to many investors while it has been mostly treading water. Gold has traded well beneath its all-time high of $1,924 an ounce on September 6th and well above its subsequent low near $1,520 which took place in late December. Many anticipated higher prices this year, but the year isn’t over yet, and neither is gold’s long-term spectacular, secular bull market. We are now in one of those periods of consolidation that tries the souls of gold investors, tests their resolve and challenges their staying power. This is when the market takes a breather and adjusts to prepare for the next major move.

If you need some encouraging news, according to the latest IMF statistics, at least 12 countries are known to have increased their gold reserves in March continuing a trend that goes back more than two years. Overall Central Banks appear to have purchased about 58 tons in the month, which suggests acceleration in their gold accumulation. The significant purchases were by Mexico, which increased its holdings by 16.81 tons; Russia with purchases of 16.55 tons and Turkey with 11.48 tons. The statistics only show the figures for those nations which are transparent in their reporting. In the past there have been some sharp ‘upwards adjustments,’ to gold reserves notably from China, which seems to like to accumulate its gold on the quiet. Last year Central Banks that do report their statistics bought 439.7 tons of gold and many gold analysts are predicting similar levels of purchases in 2012.  And to think that years ago investors feared that the bull market will end a long time ago because of massive sales of gold by governments and monetary authorities over the world…

Analyzing the fundamental situation and news is important, but the analysis would be incomplete without referring to charts. In today’s essay, we will focus on the long-term charts of USD Index and S&P 500 and then briefly discuss the impact that they can have on the gold market.

Let’s begin with the analysis of the US Dollar Index (charts courtesy by http://stockcharts.com.)

On the above chart we see that the sideways trading patterns continue between the two levels which are quite important from a technical perspective. These are the declining long-term support line and the horizontal support line based on the early 2011 high. At this point, the very-long term chart remains mixed with a bearish bias (after all, the prevailing trend is down).

To illustrate how small the trading range has been for the USD Index recently, the past six Premium Updates have found the change from the previous week to be as follows: down .41, down .61, up .95, down .79, up .25, and down .39. So nearly every week saw a change of less than 1% for the index value of a week earlier, and with the good mix of ups and downs, this is a prime example of true sideways trading.

Still, with the main trend being down, the odds are that the next significant move will take the USD Index lower, not higher.

Having said that, let’s take a look at the general stock market.

From the long-term perspective, the bottom in the S&P 500 Index appears to be in. The support line based on previous highs has been reached and crossed but the breakdown failed. Prices bounced higher soon after reaching this line (based on 2011 high), and the long-term picture is bullish based on this development.

The Correlation Matrix is a tool, which we have developed to analyze the impact of the currency markets and the general stock market upon the precious metals sector. Let’s see how the above can translate into future price moves of gold.

Since we are discussing the long-term impact, please focus on the 1500-trading-day column. The values of correlation coefficients are negative in terms of the relationship between precious metals (gold, silver, mining stocks) and the USD Index and they are mixed as far as metals-stocks link is concerned. Consequently, the rather negative long-term situation in the USD Index is what we should focus on and since its relationship is inverse, we can infer that the long-term picture for gold is indeed bullish.

Summing up, both: fundamental and (indirect) technical factors provides with a bullish long-term outlook for the gold market. As far as short-term is concerned and whether the consolidation is over or not is a different matter and other factors (not mentioned above) must be taken into account.

To make sure that you are notified once the new features are implemented, and get immediate access to my free thoughts on the market, including information not available publicly, we urge you to sign up for our free e-mail list. Gold & Silver Investors should definitely join us today and additionally get free, 7-day access to the Premium Sections on our website, including valuable tools and unique charts. It’s free and you may unsubscribe at any time.

Thank you for reading. Have a great and profitable week!

P. Radomski
Editor
www.SunshineProfits.com

The New York Times reported on a growing phenomenon in Europe: “suicide by economic crisis.” Apparently people are taking their own lives in despair over unemployment and economic failure. Paul Krugman in his column in the New York Times wonders if it isn’t the case that European leaders are committing economic suicide for the Continent as a whole.

Just a few months ago I was feeling some hope about Europe. You may recall that late last fall Europe appeared to be on the verge of financial meltdown; but the European Central Bank, Europe’s counterpart to the Fed, came to the Continent’s rescue. It offered Europe’s banks open-ended credit lines as long as they put up the bonds of European governments as collateral; this directly supported the banks and indirectly supported the governments, and put an end to the panic.

The question then was whether this brave and effective action would be the start of a broader rethink, whether European leaders would use the breathing space the bank had created to reconsider the policies that brought matters to a head in the first place.
But they didn’t. Instead, they doubled down on their failed policies and ideas. And it’s getting harder and harder to believe that anything will get them to change course.

Of course, now it is Spain that is feeling the pain. Krugman asserts that Spain is in a full depression with an overall unemployment rate of 23.6 percent. Unemployment among the young is a staggering 50 percent. Spain wasn’t fiscally profligate like Greece. On the eve of the crisis it had low debt and a budget surplus. The rain that hit Spain in the plain is an enormous housing bubble, made possible in large part by huge loans from German banks.

Krugman states that fiscal austerity will depress Spain’s economy ever more. He suggests that the solution is an exit from the euro and a restoration of national currencies.
So it’s hard to avoid a sense of despair. Rather than admit that they’ve been wrong, European leaders seem determined to drive their economy — and their society — off a cliff. And the whole world will pay the price.

The International Monetary Fund apparently doesn’t agree with Krugman.  It is more optimistic about the global economy after seeing faster growth in the United States and a coordinated effort in Europe to address its debt crisis, the group said last Tuesday. In its latest economic report the IMF said that the American economy should expand 2.1 percent this year. (It was last year at this time that the ratings agency Standard & Poor changed its outlook on America’s credit score to “negative”, the first step in the U.S. losing its stellar triple A rating.) Europe is likely to shrink 0.3 percent and the world economy should grow 3.5 percent. All three of the I.M.F.’s estimates are slightly better than its January’s forecasts. The group praised European leaders for bulking up its bailout fund and taking other steps to address the crisis. Both the IMF and Krugman agree on one thing– that the eurozone crisis continues to loom as the biggest threat to the global economy.

Let’s turn to the technical part of today’s essay. Before we move on to the use of relative strength analysis, let us first see if anything has changed in the USD’s very long-term chart in comparison with last week (charts courtesy by http://stockcharts.com.)

We can see that very little has changed since last week. We have therefore decided to quote from last week’s essay:

We see that the sideways trading patterns continue between the two levels which are quite important from a technical perspective. These are the declining long-term support line and the horizontal support line based on the early 2011 high. At this point, the very-long term chart remains mixed as the USD Index moved a bit higher once again this week, but no breakout has been confirmed thus far.

Since the trend remains down for the USD Index, it seems that the precious metals could very well rally once this index begins to move lower.

Let us now proceed to the main part of our essay – the use of relative strength analysis that consists simply in plotting the ratio of two commodities on a single chart. We can then apply other “traditional” technical analysis tools to see which one is outperforming the other and how this situation is likely to change in the future. Let us have a look at the silver-to-gold ratio.

In this chart, we see a major support line in play and the suggestion is that a move to the upside here is very likely. The chart tells us that silver is likely to outperform gold in the months ahead, though not necessarily immediately. A more in-depth analysis of the white metal’s situation is provided in the full version of this article.

The last part of today’s essay is devoted to platinum-to-gold ratio, that shows us the strength of platinum relative to the yellow metal.

In the platinum to gold ratio chart (you can click the chart to enlarge it if you’re reading this essay at sunshineprofits.com), we see that platinum is once again cheaper than gold (the ratio is less than 1.0). We have been asked to comment on this. It is important to keep in mind that the ratio has rallied sharply since January 1 so a pullback is not all that surprising.

Let’s compare it to the last rally which was seen after a considerable decline. In the 2008-2009 trading period, the short-term volatility was in place and this did not invalidate the bullish trend at all. The ratio was actually a bit higher then as compared to its extremely low value at the start of 2012. The potential to catch up this time has been enormous so we continue to believe that platinum is a very good long-term play in and of itself as well as relative to gold.

Summing up, the long-term picture in the USD market continues to appear a bit more bearish than not and the implications for the precious metals are generally positive. The silver-to-gold ratio chart suggests that silver is likely to outperform gold in the months to come, yet it should be kept in mind that this may require some time to happen. Additional short-term volatility has been seen in the platinum market, but this is not unusual. Platinum seems poised to outperform gold in the medium and long term, but the short-term situation is somewhat unclear at this time. More details with regard to both the short-term and the long-term situation in the yellow metal’s market is available to our subscribers (plus we have just posted an extra update dedicated to gold stocks – if you’re wondering how much more they can fall, you will surely enjoy today’s very detailed discussion).

Thank you for reading. Have a great and profitable week!

P. Radomski
Editor
www.SunshineProfits.com