By Arkadiusz Sieron – Re-Blogged From http://www.Gold-Eagle.com
Attention, please! The leverage in the stock market has been recently rising. As one can see in the chart below, the stock market margin debt surged more than $113 billion in 2017, one of the largest annual surges. Moreover, it was the ninth annual increase in a row.
Chart 1: Stock Market Margin Debt (in $ billions) from February 2010 to January 2018.
By Mark O’Byrne – Re-Blogged From http://www.Gold-Eagle.com
– Christmas film serves as reminder that savings are not guaranteed protection by banks
– Savers are today more exposed to banking risks than ever before
– Gold and silver investment reduce exposure to counterparty risks seen in financial system
– Basket of Christmas goods has climbed since 2016 thanks to 11% climb in gold price
By Adam Hamilton – Re-Blogged From http://www.Gold-Eagle.com
The gold miners’ stocks have largely ground sideways this year, consolidating their massive 2016 gains. That lackluster trading action, along with vexing underperformance relative to gold, has left gold stocks deeply out of favor. But these uninspiring technicals and resulting bearish sentiment should soon shift. The gold stocks are just now entering their strongest seasonal rally of the year, the super-bullish winter rally.
Gold-stock performance is highly seasonal, which certainly sounds odd. The gold miners produce and sell their metal at relatively-constant rates year-round, so the temporal journey through calendar months should be irrelevant. Based on these miners’ revenues, there’s little reason investors should favor them more at certain times of the year than others. Yet history proves that’s exactly what happens in this sector.
By Bob Shapiro
I see in the commodities markets that the price of oil has gotten into the mid 50s, after spending years it seems in the 40-50 Dollar range. Prices always fluctuate, but this uptick at least bears watching.
As with many resources, oil exploration and development takes years, so once the decision is made, the cost to produce oil from any particular well or oil field are known. Yes, costs also fluctuate for oil production, but in a very narrow band. So, what happens when prices fluctuate is that it is magnified when the bottom line is calculated.
By Adam Hamilton – Re-Blogged From http://www.Gold-Eagle.com
With the third quarter’s earnings season now underway, the gold miners will soon join in and report their latest results. No data is more highly anticipated by investors, for good reason. Quarterly reports dispel the dense fogs of herd sentiment that usually obscure gold stocks, revealing their operations’ underlying fundamental realities. Q3’17’s upcoming results are likely to prove quite bullish for this neglected sector.
Four times a year publicly-traded companies release treasure troves of valuable information in the form of quarterly reports. Companies trading in the States are required to file 10-Qs with the US Securities and Exchange Commission by 45 calendar days after quarter-ends. The gold miners generally release their quarterly reports in the latter half of this span. So Q3’17’s will arrive between late October and mid-November.
By Adam Hamilton – Re-Blogged From http://www.Gold-Eagle.com
The gold-futures and silver-futures short positions held by speculators have rocketed up to extremes in recent weeks. These elite traders are aggressively betting for further weakness in gold and silver prices. But history has proven extreme shorts are a powerful contrarian indicator. Right as speculators wax the most bearish as evidenced by their collective bets, gold and silver decisively bottom and birth major new rallies.
Futures trading has a wildly-outsized impact on gold and silver prices, especially over the short term. It is amazing how much volatility futures speculators’ collective buying and selling generates, often drowning out everything else. Two factors are responsible for this dominance. The extreme leverage inherent in futures trading and the unfortunate fact the resulting gold and silver prices are the world’s reference ones.
By Adam Hamilton – Re-Blogged From http://www.Silver-Phoenix500.com
Silver has suffered a lackluster year so far, really lagging gold’s upleg. Sentiment is still reeling following silver’s crushing selloff from mid-April to mid-May. But that plunge was largely driven by extreme silver-futures selling by speculators, including a blistering spike in short selling. The resulting excessive shorts have left silver with excellent near-term potential for a short squeeze, which would catapult it rapidly higher.
Technically, silver ultimately acts like a leveraged play on gold. The yellow metal has long been silver’s dominant primary driver. Investors and speculators alike flock to silver when gold is rallying, forcing this tiny market to surge dramatically. But when gold sentiment is weak due to lackluster price action, silver demand from traders dries up. Thus silver drifts listlessly or grinds lower, compounding bearish psychology.
