Miners boosted

American stock markets rallied towards the Friday close, the late recovery however didn't make up for prior losses culminating in the Thursday slide.

Precious metals retreating push miners down the cliff

By mid October miner sentiment had improved as gold broke above $1180, but there's little left of that optimism. With gold closing October at $1141.7, down 1.9% over the week, the yellow metal has given back about half of its October gains.  Silver at $15.535 (-1.7%) doesn't do much better. The white metal only briefly regained $16 by mid October.

Sluggish East-Asian economies keep the lid on precious metals

From September until the end of the year is repeated over and over to be the seasonally strongest period of the year for precious metals. Such statistics however are averages and calculated standard errors are considerable. Yet we now face the fifth consecutive year with precious metals unable to uphold any gain during autumn. A worsening economic outlook for East-Asian economies keeps the lid on precious metals.

Elite miners and explorers ... or what's left of them

Since almost five years, I've been monitoring how the precious metal miners and explorers covered in the Gold Miner Pulse database fluctuate up and more often down. From a majority of gains over losses few months after the start in Nov 2010, we have evolved to only five long term gains left.

The bear market logic for gold miners: Continuation and Analysis

The summer slump for precious metals has turned into a nightmare, with gold breaking below $1100, platinum into the triple digits and silver well below $15. While the July slide is pretty bad, what makes it worse is precious metals setting fresh multi-year lows.

Review of gold price volatility

You find the newest article on this subject at: Review of Gold Price Volatility: 1973-2017

It’s often heard that gold takes the staircase up, but the elevator down. A gold rally would then consist in a gradual process of relatively small but consistent daily upward moves. The gold cartel (bullion banks and investment banks, backed by the FED) would not allow gold to rally over 2% daily.

Once ignited, swoons in precious metals are thought to aggravate by forced liquidation of future long positions and the redemption of leveraged products and bullion ETF’s...

All of this is a mixture of facts and myths, causes and consequences, hidden motives and secrecy, misinformation, manipulation and opportunism. While I can do very little about most of those, I will try to clarify some of the facts in order to eliminate a few of the myths.

Gold and the miners: identifying the bear market logic

Irrespective whether the latest precious metal recovery sets off a miners rally or is just another dead cat bounce, it 's important recognizing the underlying logic in the trends of gold miners (the HUI index) relative to gold.

Global mine production of precious metals

On April 27, 2016 a new article on this subject was published:
Worldwide mine production of Gold and Silver
A commonly stated explanation for low (or high) precious metal prices is that "low prices are the cure for low prices".

SPDR Gold ETF - GLD: adding to demand... or to supply?

The decision of the London bank HSBC plc to close its gold vaults, as revealed by Andrew McGuire, has been the talk of the weekend. HSBC is the custodian of the SPDR Gold ETF - GLD. Last year GLD has transferred most of its gold to these vaults.

Crédit Suisse Global Investment Returns Yearbook 2015

Note: Latest update on the topic of Crédit Suisse Global Investment Returns Yearbooks:
Abnormal Returns (2017)

Every year in February, this much appreciated publication finds its way among investors. A short introduction to the main subjects covered:

Miners relative to gold: Long term charts on HUI

Miners and Gold bullion

There clearly is a good correlation between miners and gold bullion, which doesn't come as a surprise. However, when the much claimed leverage is concerned, it seems to get a bit tricky. There sometimes is upside leverage with miners outperforming a rising gold price. We've also witnessed miners lagging gold in its ascent. Yet invariably, gold retreating implies an ugly decline for gold miners. 

Gold miners: three decades for naught

The Philadelphia gold and silver mining index (ticker symbol XAU) has been around since Jan 19, 1979, initiated at 100 with gold quoting $230.5. Fast forward to 2015 January 22: Gold topped $1302 (after the long anticipated QE-bazooka by the ECB), while the XAU closed at 81.12. Even though revenues per ounce are more than fivefold higher, the mining index lost 18.88% in 36 years.