Trader’s Narrative

With US dollar sentiment at historic lows, the dollar continues to be about as popular as a leper. In contrast, the yellow precious metal continues to be the belle of the ball. Today it closed at a new, all time high at the Comex. The December futures contract closed at $1045, decisively higher than even the intra-day high in March 2008 (when the fall of Bears Stearns lead to a panic).

Here is a short video covering the recent move and a look ahead at what’s coming up at the hard right edge of the chart (make sure to watch till the end for a bonus):

It wasn’t too difficult to anticipate a successful break above the hitherto challenging $1000 level. An analysis of the investor sentiment in gold revealed a mostly bland response to its advance this time around. Unlike previous rallies.

As well, gold’s seasonality was the wind at the back of its uptrend. However, as you’ll notice from the seasonality chart in the previous link, a pull back is to be expected for gold in October. At least, that’s what has been average historical pattern.

Checking in with the K-Ratio (the ratio of the price of gold to the Philadelphia Gold Bugs index), we see it in neutral territory:

This recent move helps to cement the long term uptrend for gold, however it isn’t smart to chase it higher. Once a decisive break through tough resistance like this is made, it is typical to see a pull back to that level again as it acts as support. With the seasonality weakness about to kick in, that’s what I’d expect to happen. So keep watching this market for a good opportunity.

Also keep in mind that there are many ways to play this. You don’t have to buy gold futures or the Gold ETF (GLD). There are many highly leveraged mining companies that provide a fantastic proxy for this precious metal. The K-ratio still has room to move higher, which means that relative to gold, gold equities are not expensive.

Finally, the bigger picture is the slow decline of the dollar. I expect a rally in the US dollar, especially as the sentiment is so extremely pessimistic. But the long term trend is clear. There are some rumblings in the background that oil producing Middle Eastern countries, along with China and Russia are working together to stop pricing crude in US dollars. As well, the Reserve Bank of Australia wins a gold star for being the first among industrialized nations to start on a tightening cycle.

As gold bullion made a third attempt at the round number $1,000 there is a rush to feed a seemingly insatiable demand for gold securitization:

The most recent related IPO was the Claymore Gold Bullion Trust (CGL.un) on the Toronto Stock Exchange. Claymore is a small but innovative Canadian based asset manager and they’ve created a unique product. For starters, the fund will hedge almost all of its currency exposure to the US dollar. So Canadian investors will hold gold in Canadian dollars, not against the US dollar. Second, although structured as a closed end fun initially, if there is a persistent discount to NAV, it will convert to a ETF at the NAV (and therefore, eliminate discounts/premiums that plague all CEFs).

The Claymore Gold IPO was oversubscribed ($460 million Cdn) with over half being taken by large institutions. What really made Claymore’s product attractive to US institutions especially is the different in taxation schemes. By investing in an ‘offshore’ security, US investors can avoid the 28% luxury tax they would normally have to pay for holding gold and instead pay a much smaller 15% tax rate.

In the end, I can’t help but remember what we should have learned long ago: Don’t Buy What Wall St. Sells.

So is Claymore’s Gold IPO a signal for a top in gold?

Consider that the Claymore Gold CEF (probably ETF in due time) joins a quickly crowding field. Sprott Asset Management launched their Sprott Gold Bullion Fund, an open ended mutual fund earlier in the year. These join the existing two gold funds: the Central Fund of Canada (CEF) and Central Gold Trust (GTU) - both of which took advantage of the appetite for gold to raise $200 million each via a secondary offering last month. Even more interesting, the secondary offerings for both of the existing gold CEF’s were done at premiums to NAV.

But all of these funds pale in comparison to the SPDR Gold Shares ETF (GLD), which believe it or not, holds more gold than the Swiss central bank.

Those who bought this IPO placement (Thursday May 28th, 2009) from their brokers at $10 were immediately underwater:

Right now there is a small discount to NAV and the only consolation is that Claymore will convert from a CEF to a ETF if it persists for a few more months. But of course, the value of gold will play a much more important role in whether this was a smart investment or not.

Remember that last year Sprott flagged the top of the commodity bull market by issuing their own IPO. If we’ve learned anything about market timing, it is that when the ducks quack, Wall St. feeds them.

Here’s a trading opportunity you don’t see every day!

On March 31st 2007 Uranium Participation Corp. (U) had a NAV of $12.38, while it traded for $16.00 on the Toronto Stock Exchange. After a spike up to a high of $18.76, it is now back to $16 a share (all amounts Canadian). That represents a premium of approximately 23% to the underlying commodity.

Since Uranium Participation represents actual uranium (the commodity), I’ll be going short the Uranium Participation Units and long the upcoming NYMEX UxC Uranium futures to arb out this premium. My only risk will be currency exposure between the US and Canadian dollar but since this should be a short term trade, that’s acceptable to me.

As of April 13th 2007, the short position of U on Toronto Stock Exchange, was 2,479,300 shares. This was a reduction from the 3,416,000 sold short on March 30th, 2007. I wish the exchanges would release this info with less time lag!

This trade is a great example of a non-directional trade. Although both positions are in uranium, the actual price of uranium doesn’t have to move for the position to be profitable. All that has to happen is a collapse of the NAV premium in Uranium Participation Units (U) to reflect the real uranium prices on the NYMEX.

By the way, this happened before when Central Fund of Canada Limited (CEF.A) - a closed-end fund in Canada investing in gold and silver - had its premium collapse after the introduction of the streetTRACKS Gold Trust ETF (GLD) and the iShares Silver Trust ETF (SIL).

Watch Out!
Historically, the introduction of a new contract has usually meant an intermediate high in prices. But since this is non-directional, it won’t affect me. If you’re long uranium or uranium stocks though, we could be in for a rough patch as this is a reliable contrarian indicator.

The other dark cloud on the horizon is that according to inflation adjusted prices, we are almost at the previous high (~$115/lb) last seen in the late 1970’s. After a parabolic move up within a few short years, I won’t blame anyone for being nervous to see prices at previous resistance levels.

Cheatsheet for the upcoming NYMEX UxC Uranium futures contract:

• U₃O₈ (yellowcake) is concentrated uranium oxide produced from uranium ore and is the most actively traded uranium-related commodity. Its primary use is as fuel for nuclear reactors.
• NYMEX UxC Uranium U₃O₈ futures will be launched at 6:00 pm May 6, 2007 (Sunday) for the trade date of May 7, 2007 (Monday).
• Contract symbol will be UX
• Contract size is 250 pounds of uranium U₃O₈ (currently spot price: $113/lb.)
• Minimum tick size is $0.05
• It will be a financially settled contract with each month settling on the corresponding spot month-end U₃O₈ price published by The Ux Consulting Company.
• Trading hours are 6:00 PM through 5:15 PM, New York time, Sunday thru Friday, with a 45 minute break each day between 5:15 PM and 6:00 PM.
• Initially, 36 consecutive months will be listed. The first listed month will be June 2007.

There is a well worn adage on Wall Street that says, when the ducks quack, feed them.

Want to see it in action?

Here’s the gold ETF from its IPO in November 2004:

And here’s the recent silver ETF: