Depressive June ending with a manic gold miner recovery rally

Precious metal investors have been watching in disbelief how gold tumbled through all resistance levels eventually bottoming well below $1200 in European trading and during the NYMEX morning session, yesterday June 28. The recovery rally however was written in the stars:

• On Thursday, precious metal miners followed the stock market recovery, ignoring the continuing plunge of the yellow metal;
• While gold continued the last stage in its race to the bottom, silver upheld well on Thursday and both platinum and palladium reverted course and started recovering; the proverbial "bridge too far" for gold bears...

Investing in gold miners and getting out alive (?)

When plotting the HUI index (basket of unhedged gold miners) relative to gold, we've been witnessing an almost uninterrupted slide since nearly three years. HUI/gold made a post Feb 2001 low last month (well below the crisis bottom level of 2008). As gold held above $1400 a couple of weeks ago, HUI/Gold was flirting with its 0.200 resistance. Until few months ago it was difficult to conceive HUI/Gold ever breaking below that 0.200; yet it has and is again challenging its 0.181 bottom.

Leveraged Exchange Traded Funds: a trader's tool

Among the ever growing family of exchange traded funds (ETF's), there are quite a few leveraged products. Direxion probably is the larger distributor of this particular type of ETF's.