Friday, January 17, 2014

"Gold Breaks Downtrend, Sort Of"

A more accurate headline I've never seen. Still looking for $875 late Q3.
Front futures $1252.80 up $12.80 on the day.
I had a problem with one of Mr. McClellen's calls and had quit linking for quite a while, story below the jump.

From the McClellen Market Report:
January 16, 2014 
Which of these statements is true:

1.  Gold is still in a downtrend.
2.  Gold has broken its downtrend.

It turns out that they are both true, but only if viewed from the proper perspective.  The price plot of gold as priced in dollars is still below the declining tops line which dates back to late August 2013.  But the same line drawn on the plot of gold priced in euros has already been broken.

So who's right?  The short answer is that the euro price of gold has nearly always proven to be "right" when there is a disagreement between the two plots.  Such disagreement can appear in a few different forms, but the two I pay most attention to are (1) divergences, and (2) different trendline behavior.  It is the second category which is of interest now.

Gold prices have just started the process of building a pattern of higher highs and higher lows to define an uptrend.  But we already have a broken downtrend line on the plot of gold priced in euros....MORE
Chart In Focus

HT: Pragmatic Capitalism

From our July 22, 2013 post "Oil Looks Extended: "Huge Backwardation In Crude Oil" (and what it means for equities)":
Major caveat:
On March 31, 2012 we posted "Lumber Says This Is A Top For Housing Stocks" (ITB; XHB) because we agreed with the premise.
As can be seen in this comparison of the iShares Homebuilder ETF, the SPDR Homebuilders and the S&P500 that was an awful call:
Chart foriShares Dow Jones US Home Construction (ITB)
The link was to McClellen Financial (yes, he of the oscillator).

It was so bad that two months later we posted "Our Worst Call of the Year and How Tight Stops Can Save the Day (XHB, ITB)":
Embrace your losses. Booking your losses should be a joyful thing. The first loss is the best....aw screw it. 
The worst call post goes on to look at one of the masters of the Chicago pits and his thoughts on taking losses, swung by London to see  HOW THE RICHEST ECONOMIST IN HISTORY GOT THAT WAY and ended up back at the homebuilders.
Quite a romp.

With all that in mind we return to McClellen Financial for the first time since that March 2012 post....