SENTIMENT NOW POSITIVE FOR GOLD / MACLEOD FINANCE

Sentiment now positive for gold

Alasdair Macleod

There’s a sea-change underway in investor attitudes towards gold and silver. 

Markets now see growing risk to the dollar as a consequence of oil supply disruption.

When America first attacked Iran on 28 February, gold and silver prices declined: gold from $5320 and silver from $93. 

Admittedly, both were vulnerable to a severe bout of bull market indigestion which was hardly propitious. 

But the suggestion of deferred interest rate deductions appeared to work against precious metal prices. 

Meanwhile, the equity and other bubbles continued to be inflated by free-flowing credit.

Just about the only sensible arguments as to why this was the case veers towards conspiracies: bullion banks using febrile investor psychology that they should liquidate their positions before they lose even more. 

Sentiment became about as negative as it could get, with open interest on Comex falling to exceptionally low levels. 

The chart below illustrates open interest in the silver contract:

Open interest in both gold and silver contracts are beginning to recover as can be seen in the chart above and for gold below. 

This is consistent with smart money accumulating long positions. 

The chart below zooms in to gold, which confirms what is being seen in silver:

It is a fact that while speculators in both west and east have been forced out of paper gold and silver, China and allied partners have been accumulating physical. 

The next chart records the PBOC’s increase in reserves during falling prices:

In addition to monetary gold, customs figures show Chinese banks importing far larger quantities of non-monetary gold:

Basically, between the PBOC and China’s commercial banks they have been buying all the bullion on offer. 

And now, they are promoting gold accumulation accounts to China’s household savers.

Securities Daily, one of the major financial newspapers in China reported overnight that “commercial banks are increasing their efforts to promote these retail gold accounts by offering spread reductions, discounts per gramme and coupons”. 

The potential market here is over $5 trillion equivalent.

This tells us that the penultimate insiders close to the PBOC have called the bottom in gold prices, and that the retail demand they are tapping into is far from a trivial number.

We now turn to the changing attitudes in western capital markets. 

Having seen weak holders chased out of the market, we find that gold and silver are now tending to rise in circumstances which recently generated markdowns. 

From mid-July, not only have gold and silver begun to rise, but so too have oil and the yield on the 10-year US treasury note. 

This is a remarkable change which was particularly evident in the last two weeks. 

And it marks the beginning of a change in perception from the risk-free position being holding dollar T-bills to gold bullion.

The same abrupt change in sentiment was obvious in 1973—1974, when OPEC raised its reference prices twice. 

After initially causing gold to be marked down by about 30%, before the second increase the smart money began buying gold and it went on to double in little more than three months. 

This is shown in the chart below:

Today, the oil price has seen an initial and minor increase, contained by the US policy of supplying oil freely from its strategic reserves. 

That is coming to an end so oil prices will now increase and global shortages of derivatives such as diesel, kerosene etc. will end up driving inflation far higher than currently expected. 

We know this for certain from the 1973—1974 oil crisis, which led to consumer price inflation hitting 12% in the US, 30% in Japan, and 25% in the UK.

This is why bond yields are now threatening to go significantly higher, confirming debt traps for government funding requirements in the dollar and all other G7 currencies. 

To add to the sense of a funding crisis, US government debt is only days away from hitting the $40 trillion mark.

We will watch with interest to see whether the rise in gold and silver from here follows the rapid precedent set by the 1970s OPEC crisis. 

One thing is for sure: they are seriously under-owned for such an event.