Will Silver Outperform Gold Immediately or Wait a Little Longer?

By: Przemyslaw_Radomski

The recent huge purchase of gold by the Indian central bank triggered a substantial rally that took gold to new (nominal - !) highs gathered a lot of attention and generated a substantial rally. I’ve touched this subject in my previous essay, but since this topic is so popular, I would like to put additional comments this time, but from a different point of view.

In the following essay I would like to comment on the negative impact that the future government sales may have on the price of gold. After all, that is a wide-known argument against investing in the precious metals. It is said that gold is not a good investment, because governments and central banks around the world will at some point flood the market with their gold reserves and thus cause a massive plunge in the price of gold and silver (correlated with gold).

Think about it – governments are institutions, so they cannot be “emotional”, but it is ultimately an (emotional) individual (or a group of them), who make decisions regarding selling and buying precious metals. Sounds evident, but the implications are not that obvious. The more price of an investment asset goes up, the more attractive it becomes to buyers, as they project the same pace of growth in the future (by the way, this is the psychological mechanism that causes speculative bubbles). Consequently, when gold rises high (and silver even higher on a relative basis), it would not surprise me to see governments / central banks decide to purchase even more metals. The key implication here is that often repeated bearish argument - that monetary authorities will dump their gold on the market thus causing massive plunge in the metals – should not make you overly concerned.

Moving on to the technical situation on the precious metals market, this time I will provide you with my comments on the silver market (courtesy of http://stockcharts.com).

It was a week ago when I wrote the following:

The reliability of the seasonal tendencies on the silver market is quite amazing - not only did the top materialize in the mid-September, almost exactly on the day it was predicted, but the price also rose on average up to the point where it was closer to the "bottom" part of the cycle. This pattern currently suggests that the next bottom will be put around the first days of November, which means that we are either behind one already, or are getting very close to it.

It seems that the bottom materialized a few days before the exact date marked with red horizontal line – thus it was indeed “close to the bottom”. The action in the volume is just as positive as it is the case on the gold market, and both: RSI and Stochastic Indicator are not in the topping area. Several silver stocks are lagging their underlying metal but it seems that this is a temporary reaction to the weakness in the general stock market. Therefore, we will need to wait for a decisive action in either direction in the general stocks market, before making final calls here. For now, it seems that a sell-off in the main stock indices would cause the rally in silver and silver stocks to be weaker. Speaking of the main stock indices, please take a look at the chart below.

The SPY ETF (proxy for the general stock market, which allows me to analyze the volume) has failed to move above any of the rising trend lines. Moreover, the volume has been visibly high during the late-October decline, and relatively low during yesterday’s rally. The Relative Strenght Index appears to have formed a bottom, but that is the only thing that is bullish on the above chart – too little to make me state that a decent rally from here is the most probable outcome.

Additionally, several other main stock indices do not confirm this week’s upswing in the U.S. stocks. As you may see on the above chart, I’ve marked the performance of other stock indices (Nikkei, DAX, FTSE, TSX, HSI) using the semi-transparent lines. Clearly, the action in these indices does not confirm the rally in the SPY ETF.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not suggesting that we are not going higher – it is possible, especially since the general stock market has been rallying so far this week (not visible on the chart). What I’m saying is that unless we move at least above the thin resistance line, lower values of the general stock market are likely.

Summing up, the fact that governments and central banks are buying precious metals is bullish, not the other way around. The short-term situation on the metals market is also favorable, although much – especially in case of silver and PM stocks - depends on the general stock market and the USD Index. The former had been rallying recently, but it finally topped and moved once again lower as indicated earlier - once it moves below its long-term support level, it’s likely to plunge. The situation on the general stock market remains mixed. Consequently, we will need to wait for additional signals to estimate if silver is likely to outperform gold in the near future, or will we need to wait a little longer.

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Thank you for reading. Have a great and profitable week!

P. Radomski
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