Tips for Traders

Gold's Relative Strength and What it Means
Specialty: COMMODITIES
Published: 11/15/2012
By Jordan Roy-Byrne
Tickers mentioned: GLD, GDX, GDXJ, SIL

Technician Jordan Roy-Byrne of The Daily Gold charted gold’s performance against foreign currencies, equities, oil, industrial metals, and bonds and shares his analysis and conclusions.

Longtime readers of our editorials know that we are big fans of intermarket analysis as well as ardent believers in the real price of gold (real POG) or relative gold. No, this has nothing to do with the paper market versus the physical market. The real POG is essentially the POG relative to other assets and markets. There are two reasons why we track this. First, gold priced against the other currencies (specifically the euro) has been a leading indicator for gold in US$ terms.

Second, gold’s performance against commodities (in general) is a leading indicator for margins of the miners. Over the weekend, I reviewed gold’s performance in relative terms and it seems to have reasserted its uptrend.

In the chart below we graph gold against six other markets (foreign currencies, equities, oil, industrial metals, and bonds). Note that gold is in a steady uptrend against each market with the exception of bonds.

chart
Click to Enlarge

Gold priced in the inverse of the US$ basket is only 4% off its all-time high while relative to oil and industrial metals, it just reached a one-year high. Gold has turned down relative to bonds as they are close to testing their all-time high. Meanwhile, the yellow metal just matched a six-month high relative to the S&P 500.

So why should we care about all of this?

First, it tells us that gold is in a healthy bullish position because it’s trending higher against all major markets with the exception of bonds. In other words, gold is showing broad strength and is only being held back by the strength in bonds, which happens to be the largest market by a mile. Thus, when we see bonds soften, gold should have a shot to retest its recent high.

NEXT PAGE: Real Price of Gold Trending Bullish

Page 1 | Page 2 | Next Page

TRADESHOW LOCATIONS

Show Logo
San Francisco
 • August 15 – 17, 2013
Show Logo
Chicago
 • October 3 – 5, 2013
Free eLetters

Receive all-new market analysis and commentary, timely recommendations, exclusive videos, and much more from hundreds of top experts. Subscribe today!

INVESTING ELETTERS

   More Details

Daily Investing Alert

Weekly Investing eLetter

Hot Off The Tape Weekly Video eLetter

TRADING ELETTERS

   More Details

Daily Trading Alert

Trading Lessons

Trader Talk Podcast

Most Popular

Keyword Image 4 Best Next Boom Stocks
There's no denying that the last couple of weeks have been very bullish for stocks with major indices...
The Week Ahead: More Pain or More Gain?
10 Food Stocks with Tasty Potential
A Technical Look at Fundamentals
Sponsored Links

Royal Dutch Shell, plc

The Shell Group, (The Group), is a diverse group of energy companies with around 90,000 employees…