Gold a Go Go or a No Go?

There've been quite the array of excitable headlines running across the spectrum by our great and good Gold writing colleagues these many weeks -- and rightly so -- the yellow metal (were we are year's-end today) having put in its best performance (+18.1%) since 2010 (+29.5%).

And yet from the "Au Contraire, Mon Frère Dept." in looking at the above Gold Scoreboard, price in the broad sense has the appearance of merely flatlining across the last 13 weeks (should you be so inclined to count the weekly dots on the line).

Moreover, we've penned ad nausea -- since Gold achieved our aggressive forecast high for this year back on 12 August at 1526 -- that such price has become Gold's trading centerpiece. Or some might more negatively couch it as trading resistance, because for the 58 trading days since then, Gold has settled above 1526 but 13 times and below that level 45 times, including yesterday (Friday) with price closing out the week at 1517.

Still, with 10 months plus one trading day now in the books for 2019, one can't complain about Gold's performance this year, in spite of (also per the above Gold Scoreboard) the supply-adjusted, currency-debased valuation now being 2981, nearly double present price ... and exclusive of the usual overshoot upon the inevitable regression to that "mean". But until the wee percentage of Gold owners expands, we ought accept a year like this one as pretty darn good.

To be sure, there've been ruminations of Gold tapping 1600 by this year's-end -- that'd be another +5.5% run from here -- yet there are but eight full trading weeks remaining in 2019, the technical resistance of 1526 seemingly keeping the lid on price and further fundamental impetus (beyond now being the so-called start of the "Gold buying season", let alone Gold being excessively undervalued as noted) not as yet driving new buyers to the fore. That stated, from this time a year ago into 2018's end, Gold ran up nearly 100 points (from 1192 to 1285, i.e. +7.8%); but hardly was that on the heels of a robust year to such point. Then fast-forward to just two weeks ago when we cited price as perhaps coiling to spring higher. And yet Gold's journey since then has been only from 1493 to today's 1517: not much impressive boing in that spring.

So given all of that, plus it being month's-end and one trading day, we find the order of the BEGOS Markets by their standings essentially unaltered since their end-of-September rankings, (only Copper and the Swiss Franc having meekly swapped positions). Thus again there is Gold in third place on the podium with Silver on the steps thereto. And "Oh, that Dollar strength!" which is so bandied about: what are they tawkin' about? Look at the standings, chump:



To Gold's weekly bars we go. And from one year ago-to-date, obviously the two blue-dotted parabolic Long trends have been the power moves, whilst the two red-dotted parabolic Short trends rather appear as shallow pauses. And Long or Short, they've all been lengthy, which -- should such typical duration continue for this current Short trend -- Gold ain't goin' nowhere for awhile, barring the kicking in of seasonal buying and/or coily-springy-boingy and/or "The World Ends; Dow Up 2":

What does appear on track to ending is the economy, if solely by the track of the Economic Barometer. Now obviously the StateSide headline numbers are fairly sound stuff given "much-better-than-expected" readings of +1.9% for Q3's first read on Gross Domestic Product and October's payroll data, plus prior months' upside revisions thereto. Also, September's Construction Spending improved. 

But the "inside-the-numbers" data isn't as pretty. For October, readings from both the Institute for Supply Management on manufacturing and the Chicago Purchasing Managers Index continued in contraction mode; the Federal Open Market Committee's favourite read of inflation -- Core Personal Consumption Expenditures -- was one big zero; and September's growth in Personal Income slowed whilst Personal Spending didn't increase its pace. 

As well, a fresh survey by the National Association for Business Economics indicates that business hiring is at a seven-year low ... although a key phenomenon therein is that essentially full employment is making it difficult to find folks not already working.

- Source, deMeadville, read the full article here