Now that we've had the big gold breakdown and the first bounce out of it, I guess its time to collect my thoughts on where we stand. Maybe you can help me with your own thoughts.
As you perhaps recall, I've been very, very heavily invested in precious metals including some long-dated gold call options (now out of the money), a good-sized chunk of semi-paper gold (Sprott's PHYS) and a bunch of junior producer gold mining stocks.
In addition to this, I'm holding some gold-money bullion, an expensive paid-off-house and am maintaining my quite lucrative CTO-level high-tech day-job. I've basically held over the last month with a little shifting around of the gold stocks. I didn't want to sell out at the bottom.
Clearly I have been long and wrong.
Now, I have a much higher risk tolerance than I would recommend to anyone
else. I think that wealth is accumulated in investing thru concentration and is
maintained by diversification. I'm still trying to accumulate. Despite the action of the last month my investing returns over the last 10 years remain over 200%. They were up nearly 600% when the all time gold price peaked in 2011.
I'm still at the point where the day job is "for fun" and not needed to make ends meet. I do not have to work another day for the rest of my life. For me, that is the line that my risk management has to hold and I've held it. So, I've taken a bigger hit than anyone would want to take, but have not "blown up".
I hope, dear reader, that you appreciate this candor which I don't think you'll find most other places.
So, that's where I stand. Now, to my question: "Is The Gold Bull Market Over?". This is a critical question for me because I've been convinced that the Gold Bull Market was a singularly good place to concentrate investments. This was based on the idea that the manipulation of the gold market caused short term high-volatility (to manage mainstream investor sentiment to keep it out of precious metals) while managing a rise in the price of the metals resulting from the managed plunder of savings via negative interest rates. Nearly all of my short-term analysis was based on the idea that this managed trend was intact and that parallels from earlier in the bull market provided insight into what was coming up yet.
Let's start with a review of this piece from March 8, 2012: The Primary Trend... There's Nothing Like Gold. Here's the key chart from the piece:

Here's the summary of the post: "Rising consistently for a decade with just a minor downturn for the 'global financial crisis'. The 75 week EMA barely turned down during the
crisis. There's nothing else like it."
So, let's see how that chart looks now:

Clearly the recent downturn is unlike anything else in the bull market except the 2008 global financial crisis. Unlike 2008, this current downturn is specific to gold.
PRELIMINARY CONCLUSION: The gold bull market may not be over, but it is clearly not the steady, reliably rising market that it once was.
Feel free to leave me a comment with your thoughts, especially if you can link to a relevant chart or other empirical data to support your thinking.
Best wishes,
MontyHigh, www.worldofwallstreet.us
Here's the links to earlier posts of mine that I'll probably be referring to in upcoming posts in these series. These are mainly provided here to help me author those posts.
http://www.worldofwallstreet.us/2013/02/gold-situation-arguably-worse-than-2008.html
http://www.worldofwallstreet.us/2012/12/once-again-is-the-gold-bull-market-over-and-what-if-it-isnt.html
http://www.worldofwallstreet.us/2012/11/chart-of-the-week-about-due-if-gold-bull-market-is-intact.html
http://www.worldofwallstreet.us/2012/09/is-gold-overbought-and-what-is-the-two-month-outlook.html
http://www.worldofwallstreet.us/2012/03/best-of-the-boards-danstraightmans-chart.html
http://www.worldofwallstreet.us/2012/03/gold-recent-work-revisited-with-updated-charts.html
http://www.worldofwallstreet.us/2012/03/the-primary-trend-theres-nothing-like-gold.html
http://www.worldofwallstreet.us/2011/11/letting-the-charts-talk.html
http://www.worldofwallstreet.us/2011/09/a-study-of-gold-bull-market-corrections-through-the-50-day-moving-average.html
http://www.worldofwallstreet.us/2011/09/current-gold-price-action-anybody-seen-this-before.html
http://www.worldofwallstreet.us/2011/09/a-study-of-gold-bull-market-corrections-through-the-50-day-moving-average.html
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