Gold Thoughts

Near the end of any investment cycle a transfer of ownership normally occurs, from investors to speculators. The asset moves from strong hands to weak hands, from real ownership to fictional ownership in the market for contracts for future delivery. That usually set up conditions for the penalty phase, as those still bleeding from the Silver bear market fully understand.

As we learn from Japan, owners of physical Gold in all forms are aggressively liquidating. From "Tokyo struggles to keep pace with gold rush" by L. Whipp from Financial Times, 20 August,

"Japanese families are rushing to sell gold jewelry, sake cups and even teeth to cash in on surging gold prices. The stampede to sell gold is so intense that shops buying the precious metal are struggling to cope and are even having to turn some disappointed customers away."
"In the past week, Goldplaza, which buys and melts down gold for resale, has been handling about Y100m($1.32m) of gold every day - about 15 times its daily average in July. The craze began in earnest on August 11 . . ." [Emphasis added.]

At same time, speculators are building massive positions. CME has been reporting record open interest for options on Gold futures. At one point last week those speculative trading positions represented ~126 million ounces, or ~3,900 tonnes. That is indeed speculation of size, and that activity has been the driving force for creating a speculative bubble in $Gold, and the parabolic curve shown in the chart below. Left axis is dollars while the right axis is percentage of 1999 low, the beginning of this market move.

A parabolic curve is a formation that is extremely dangerous as it is inherently unstable. As price rises, the slope of the price line becomes steeper in defiance of financial gravity. Imagine throwing a ball into the air and it rises faster the further it rises. This curve suggests that as price rises demand is rising, a wholly unnatural state of events.

We know two things about parabolic formations:

1. One, they always end in pain.
2. We never know when they will end, due to the unnatural conditions for demand.

All this might not be so worrisome if $Gold were not so over valued relative to financial assets, as shown in the graph below.