Wednesday, January 2, 2013

Sell at highs and buy at lows: Revisiting the Nov 28 Gold crash


Last Updated : 02 January 2013 at 14:40 IST
Centuries after the French Revolution, Chinese comrade Mao Zedong said it was too early to pass a judgment on the same. However it is pretty much the time to judge the gold crash that occurred on November 28, 2012.
Total recall
On the said day February gold last traded down $26.00 at $1,718.80 an ounce even as spot gold was quoted down $25.20 at $1,717.25. Silver shed 1% and was seen at $33.725 an ounce. It recovered later on.
This was deemed pretty unusual as no news came in, that could become an explanation for the said price action.
I seriously doubt the issue has got something to do with fiscal cliff. The ones who carried out sell orders must have got some reliable information regarding US fiscal cliff talks...
The talks could have a positive outcome: this is no insider information, but any sensible market-watcher could reach this conclusion. No member of US Congress would let a recession creep in by making the fiscal cliff talks a complete failure. The disgruntled Americans would never forgive them for that.
However there is some stark contrast. There always exist a possible risk that things could go wrong, anywhere, anytime.
But risk could be insured against. How about uncertainty? One cannot insure against uncertainty, unless one gets concrete and reliable information that could demystify the ambience. My point is, somehow or other, some of those who placed sell orders in gold could probably had some positive information that the cliff issue will be addressed in a sound manner.
This in turn caused some selling which also triggered algorithmic stop loss attempts aggravating the bloodbath. Movement in one commodity can substantiate my point. Silver: the commodity gained after it dropped initially (following the trend in gold) making a comeback and closing with minimal losses.
And silver is an industrial metal. Industries use a major chunk of silver mined. If the fiscal cliff issue could be avoided, then that may prove to be beneficial for silver as a recession could be averted and as the recovery would continue; but the same could prove to be bad for gold, which some of those sellers averted by selling.
So much for the history.
Since November 28 gold started behaving like a commodity that was somehow or other got cursed.
The fact of the matter is that since then gold continued to plunge even as silver remained relatively steady. Gold started behaving like silver and silver like gold.
In no time gold came below $1700 and as fiscal cliff talks showed signs of fizzling out, gold prices came down yet again. Meanwhile, the selling continued and gold hit a bottom at $1636 on December 20. This January in 2013 may see gold going to as high as $1720, our analysts say.
Thus the picture becomes clear. It is a strategy as old as the commodity markets. Sell at highs and buy at lows.

But out there somebody sold so that he could take the prices down at the wee hours when the London markets would be closed and Asian markets would not be open; when volumes would be relatively thin creating maximum impact. And then buy back the same before the prices would begin to climb; which is happening now.
Worst over?
Gold and silver would still be working out its magic, but may not be on the scale as one may think it would. A chunk of uncertainty is off the markets, but still a chunk remains. In fact,debt ceiling debate could turn out to be the new fiscal cliff...
And who knows, the history could still repeat. Now, who has that priceless info on debt-ceiling debate? 

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