The Bearish Gold Bull

The Bearish Gold Bull was the title of my presentation last weekend at the Metals Investor Forum in Vancouver, British Columbia. While the title could be ascribed to me personally for my recent tendency towards conservative and cautious views, it more importantly describes the current dichotomy in the gold sector. The mining sector saw its fundamentals hit rock bottom in 2014-2015 and became ‘bombed out’ at the end of 2015. However, while parts of the industry have performed well, as a whole it has been unable to push higher after a torrid recovery in early 2016. A big reason is the outlook for metals prices suggests lower prices before any large advance. Until metals prices are ready to rise, the miners may find themselves in a bearish bull.
The mining stocks have fallen below their 50 and 200-day moving averages and are even struggling around their 400-day moving averages (which provided support in December 2016) but this does not threaten the epic 2015-2016 bottom. There are a plethora of valuation metrics from January 2016 that are unlikely to be seen again. That time marked the worst 5 and 10-year rolling performance for gold stocks in 90 years. Gold stocks relative to the S&P 500 hit an all-time low and Gold stocks relative to Gold hit a 90 year low. Gold stocks price to book and price to cash flow valuations were the lowest in 40 years. (The data does not go back farther than that). Finally, January 2016 marked the end of the worst bear market ever. Remember this chart?

This post was published at GoldSeek on 12 May 2017.