Trading And Investing In Gold: Follow The Money

The paper gold attack that I first suggested might occur in the September 7th issue has taken gold from $1360 down to $1270 (continuous contract basis). Technically, gold has moved from an “overbought” condition to a mildly “oversold” condition. The RSI and MACD indicate that gold is slightly “oversold” but I believe both indicators will flash “extremely oversold” before this price attack over. This should occur sometime in the next 2-3 weeks.

I say this because I continue to believe the open interest in Comex paper gold, combined with the analyzing the weekly Commitment of Traders report, is the best indicator of gold’s next move, at least until the western Central Banks are unable to control the price of gold with paper derivatives. To be sure, the COT report is not always a perfect predictor but in the last 15 years the two reports combined have been around 90% accurate.

Currently, the Comex banks’ net short position in paper gold is at the high end of its historical range. Concomitantly, the net long position of the hedge funds is also at the high end of its historical range. Per last Friday’s COT report, the banks began to reduce the short positions, thereby reducing their net short position, and the hedge funds began to reduce the long positions, thereby reducing their net short position (click to enlarge):

The graphic above is from the CFTC’s weekly COT report for all commodities. I’ve referenced the COT report quite a bit so I thought I’d put some “meat” on the bones. The report was published Friday (Sept 29th) but the cut-off day for the data used is the Tuesday before last Friday (Sept 26th). Unfortunately, by the time we, the public, can see the data it’s three days old. By the time we can try to trade on it (the following Monday) it’s four days old. This is unfortunate and the CFTC could force a daily disclosure of the data, which would be ideal, but since when does the Government do anything for the benefit of the public? Having said that, we can still get a feel for then general “flow” of positioning in gold futures by the various trading cohorts. Note: though the CFTC publishes the COT report, the actual data comes from the banks who operate and manage the Comex trading floor and computer systems.

I’ve highlighted the data that is important to me. The reportable positions are the “producer/hedgers,” “swap dealers,” “managed money,” “other reportables” and “non-reportable.” The latter two are large money pools that are not hedge funds or mutual funds and retail traders, respectively. They are not a factor in the analysis except to the extent that it is thought, though unprovable, that the banks throw some of their positions into the “other reportables” category to hide them.

TO READ THE REST, CLICK HERE:  INVESTMENT RESEARCH DYNAMICS