That’s all, folks. Whatever “bullish news” for gold was likely to happen has likely already happened. And you know what happens next?
Declines.
The nonfarm payrolls were lower than expected, and miners rallied. Temporarily only, but still.
The CPI numbers were also lower than expected, and the precious metals sector moved higher. Once again, most likely temporarily, based on the analogy to the previous similar situations.
And the situation in the Middle East? It continues to be very tense. And yet, the concern with “war” in general is already after its peak and is now declining.
All three above factors should have made the precious metals sector move much lower. And did they? The situation in the Middle East did cause gold to move higher, as it’s a safe-haven asset, but gold didn’t move above its 2022 high when the analogous concerns regarding Ukraine arose.
And… both wars are still taking place, and gold still failed to hold above $2,000. It’s trading pretty much where it topped 12 years ago, while silver and gold stocks are not even close to their 2011 highs.
Massive bull market in the precious metals sector?
No.
It was a local response to military conflicts in the case of gold. Silver and mining stocks continue their downward trends in a clear manner. The same goes for platinum and palladium. Gold is the exception.
Now, since the bullish news already happened, what kind of surprises await the precious metals market in the following days? Bearish ones. People already extrapolated the bullishness to the following days, and the precious metals sector likely moved too high too fast. Especially that… the real rates moved higher based on the recent move lower in CPI and core CPI.
From the weekly point of view (after three sessions in the case of this week), we see that gold simply corrected after moving to its declining support line, but it failed to hold above its rising resistance line.
This means that the recent move higher is likely a regular breather.
Please note the moments marked with arrows. That’s when gold topped after the concern with “war” (based on Google Trends’ data) peaked. Any back-and-forth movement here should be viewed as smoke and mirrors before the big move happens. And the big move is likely to be to the downside – just like what we saw in 2022.
From the short-term point of view, we see that gold just reversed yesterday. We might have just seen the local top.
The interesting thing about this recent upswing is how much silver rallied compared to the rally in gold.
The white metal soared and almost touched its October highs! Gold was nowhere close to those levels. In other words, silver just outperformed gold on a very short-term basis. If you’ve been following my analyses for some time, you know that this is something that we often see right before bigger declines.
Mining stocks, however, did not move close to their October high this week. This makes silver’s strong performance stand out even more – making it even more bearish.
The vertical, dashed lines on the above chart mark the situation when CPI statistics were below expectations.
- Back in August 2022, it was practically right at the top, which was followed by a sizable decline.
- In November 2022, it was right before a local top.
- In December 2022, it was practically right at the local top.
- In July 2023, it was right before a local top, which was followed by a sizable decline.
What are the implications? They are unclear for the immediate term (1-3 days), bearish for the short-term (1-2 weeks), and likely bearish also for the medium-term (several weeks).
The reason for the latter is that the medium-term trend in the mining stocks is clearly down, and the fact that junior miners clearly underperformed both gold and the general stock market in recent weeks, confirms this bearish gold forecast.
Besides, the reaction of the precious metals market was weak in general – at least when compared to what happened in stocks and in the USD Index.
Remember when, on Nov. 6, I told you that negative surprises in nonfarm payrolls are not necessarily a bullish thing despite the market’s initial reaction? The GDXJ plunged shortly thereafter. It seems that we are in a similar situation with regard to the CPI numbers.
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Sincerely,
Przemyslaw K. Radomski, CFA
Founder, Editor-in-chief