The Great Gold Crash of 2013 Has Arrived
How ugly has the gold market gotten? So ugly that even goldbugs are completely dazed and confused.
Here's just a brief summary of their hilarious views over the past few months:
Gold's Uptrend is Still Intact: Peter Schiff - Yahoo! Daily Ticker (Dec.6, 2012)
Dennis Gartman: Gold is Good but Gold Stocks are Even Better - Money News (Nov.28, 2012)
Gold at $5,000 and beyond: Peter Schiff sticks to his call - MarketWatch (Feb.13, 2013)
James Turk ups his $8,000 an ounce peak gold price forecast to $11,000 - Arabian Money (Jan. 6, 2013)
Gold Bets: John Paulson Loses $1 Billion - Hedge Co. (May 6, 2013)
Should it really surprise us the gold experts have been so badly wrong about the direction of bullion prices?
The fact is they ignore every important technical and fundamental data point that contradicts their bullish views.
Plus they have a heavily vested interest in being bullish on gold (GLD - News) and silver (SLV - News) because it's good for their businesses. Schiff and Turk both have large marketing enterprises that sell physical bullion to the public. Paulson rakes in hefty fees for making quarterly appearances about why he's still bullish on gold.
Meanwhile, as their customers continue losing money, gold experts are laughing all the way to the bank. (And the customers that suffer from Stockholm Syndrome don't just enjoy losing money, but they like defending their captors.)
The uncomfortable truth is that gold prices have been in a bear market since 2011 and gold investment demand is down 51% over the past year. (see table)
Anyone that's bought and held physical gold and silver bullion over the past two years probably knows that much. But it gets worse.
Gold Markups Add to Pain
The typical markup that bullion dealers charge customers is between 5% to 8% over spot prices and others (we won't mention any names) skim even higher percentages!
If there's anything that could ever make a ghastly pawn dealer look good, it might be grotesque the food chain markup in the physical bullion marketplace.
Here's how it works:
The U.S. Mint marks up the price of coins it produces (usually around 3%) to cover the value of the metal along with minting, shipping, and other costs. Authorized purchasers who buy from the Mint add their own markup. And if they sell to dealers who sell to the public, another markup gets added. Guess who's at the bottom of the food chain? That's right, physical bullion buyers.
And if bullion buyers are unfortunate enough to purchase fractional coins, they get hammered a little more. That's because the markups for fractional coins, like a half-ounce or quarter-ounce, routinely reach above 10% to 20% of spot prices.
Here's what it means:
In a rising gold and silver market (GLTR - News), rising prices can cover the steep transaction costs for buying and selling physical bullion. Conversely, in a sharply declining metals market - as we have right now - it's impossible for lower prices to cover the ridiculously high transaction costs of taking physical delivery. And if we include the cost of storage and insurance, the pain worsens and that's why owning physical metals are turning out to be a bad investment. Will it match the cold spell from 1980 to 2007?
Profiting from a Gold Shock
Contrary to what the very wrong gold experts have said all along, the ETF Profit Strategy Newsletter alerted its subscribers that the real money in gold and silver would be on the short side.
In our Weekly ETF Pick from Feb.14 we wrote:
"Despite a modestly rising stock market, the Market Vectors Gold Miners (GDX - News) has lagged both the broader U.S. stock market along with the SPDR Gold Shares (GLD) by a very significant margin. At present, GDX trades around $41.50 and is well below both its 50 and 200 day moving average. Buy the Direxion Daily Gold Miners Bear 3x Shares (DUST) at these levels. A double digit slide for gold would likely translate into a 20%+ loss in mining stocks. This scenario offers some big upside potential for bears."
Since then, DUST has surged over +200% while GDX is down -42%.
In that same report, we also told our subscribers to buy JUN 40 GDX put options at $190. We closed those GDX puts for a +525% at $1,200 per contract.
Our GDX trade was a grand slam, but forget about what already happened. What's coming next in the gold market will shock the world. Our current ETF positions in precious metals trades are already up over 100%.
The cute idea that frenzied buying of physical bullion by Chinese and Indian consumers is a bullish event is laughable. Consumer sentiment is always a contrarian indicator, as the gold experts, once again failed to mention. The sign of any market bottom - gold included - isn't panic buying, but panic selling. (See Ezekiel 7:19)
Our examination of the precious metals market points a very high profit opportunity for investors and traders who are 1) on the right side of the market, and 2) who are correctly positioned in the right investments. The gold shock could turn out to be one of the biggest investment themes the experts never saw coming.
The ETF Profit Strategy Newsletter and Technical Forecast cut through the daily reams of misinformation by telling subscribers what to buy, what to sell, and when to do it.
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