With all the discussion of the crash of April 12-15, I thought it would be interesting to do a little forensic analysis. Instead of looking at price graphs, let’s look at a graph of the gold basis. Contrary to the currently popular assertion that the gold price crashed due to manipulation, the evidence points to something [...]
Guest Post: Bron Suchecki – COMEX stock drawdown: single most important metric to watch
To understand what is going on with COMEX stocks, don’t look at the stock level – it will lead you astray. You need the metric I presented at the Gold Standard Institute’s 2009 seminar; one which Professor Fekete thought was the single most important metric to determine stress in the market. The second thing you need to do [...]
How Not to Trade the Dollar
I hope this essay provides some food for thought. It is not my intention to insult or belittle anyone, but using humor and cold logic, to help people understand an abstract topic with many counterintuitive principles. The ultimate goal is to protect what you have and make some more (in that order). Gold is money. [...]
The Gold Futures Open Interest Caper: Part 2
Regular readers will know that most traders with a short position in the futures market are not “naked”. It is an easy trap to fall into, to assume that everyone else in the market is the same as the small trader: betting on the likely direction of price. But, this is not the case. The...
The Gold Futures Open Interest Caper
In the recent Gold Basis Report, we published a graph showing the open interest in gold and silver futures (i.e. the number of contracts held at any given time). At the time of the crash and in subsequent days, the open interest number decreased only modestly in both metals. A number of people asked me [...]
Guest Post: Pater Tenebrarum – US Stock Market – Giddy Bulls Abound
Barron’s Big Money Poll Bullish Consensus Reaches a Record High This week’s Barron’s magazine contains the latest Barron’s ‘big money’ poll. Evidently they interviewed a herd – there was once again near unanimity on a number of markets. The bullish consensus on US stocks clocked in at a new all time high for the Barron’s [...]
Guest Post: The Big Picture by Alex Manzara
The big picture over the past few months is that markets are experiencing one large adjustment after another, perhaps analogous to the shifting of tectonic plates that create rolling earthquakes and various aftershocks. The first large move was the fall in the yen (rise in dollar/yen), and the change in sentiment towards Apple (AAPL) which [...]
What is Pushing Down the Gold Price: Part II
This is a continuation of “What is Pushing Down the Gold Price: Part I” One factor is the lack of rapidly rising consumer prices. If consumer prices aren’t rising, then this eliminates the need to buy gold as a hedge. Gold speculators are like everyone else. They get frustrated waiting for a rapid price gain...
What Is Pushing Down the Gold Price?
It has been an increasingly brutal ride for gold and silver, beginning around late March and accelerating through April. The gold price was over $1600 and on Monday April 15, it fell below $1350, a loss of $250. Silver did even worse, falling from $29 to $22. We called for the gold:silver ratio to rise, [...]
Bitcoin: Oh Why Did You Have to Crash?
During the recent exponential rise in the price of Bitcoin, there were jokes all over the Internet about the fall of the dollar—more than 80% in Bitcoin terms. Why not measure the value of the dollar in terms of tulips? One must measure the more variable unit with the more constant. Dollars are used to [...]
Gold and Silver Basis
