Which Month is the Best for Buying Gold?

By Jeff Clark, Senior Precious Metals Analyst

Many investors, especially those new to precious metals, don't know that gold is seasonal. For a variety of reasons, notably including the wedding season in India, the price of gold fluctuates in fairly consistent ways over the course of the year.


This pattern is borne out by decades of data, and hence has obvious implications for gold investors. Can you guess which is the best month for buying gold?

When I first entertained this question, I guessed June, thinking it would be a summer month when the price would be at its weakest. Finding I was wrong, I immediately guessed July. Wrong again, I was sure it would be August. Nope.

Cutting to the chase, here are gold’s average monthly gain and loss figures, based on almost 40 years of data:

Since 1975—the first year gold ownership in the U.S. was made legal again—March has been, on average, the worst performing month for gold. This, of course, makes March the best month for buying gold.

But: averages across such long time frames can mask all sorts of variations in the overall pattern. For instance, the price of gold behaves differently in bull markets, bear markets, flat markets… and manias.
So I took a look at the monthly averages during each of those market conditions. Here’s what I found.

Key point:

The only month gold has been down in every market condition is March.

Combined with the fact that gold soared 10.2% the first two months of this year, the odds favor a pullback this month.

And as above, that can be a very good thing. Here’s what buying in March has meant to past investors. We measured how well gold performed by December in each period if you bought during the weak month of March.

Only the bear market from 1981 to 2000 provided a negligible (but still positive) return by year’s end for investors who bought in March. All other periods put gold holders nicely in the black by New Year’s Eve.
If you’re currently bullish on precious metals, you might want to consider what the data say gold bought this month will be worth by year’s end.

Regardless of whether gold follows the monthly trend in March, the point is to buy during the next downdraft, whenever it occurs, for maximum profit. And keep your eye on the big picture: gold’s fundamentals signal the price has a long climb yet ahead.

Everyone should own gold bullion as a hedge against inflation and other economic maladjustments… and gold stocks for speculation and leveraged gains. The greatest gains, of course, come from the most volatile stocks on earth, the junior mining sector.

Following our recent Upturn Millionaires video event with eight top resource experts and investment pros, my colleague Louis James released his 10-Bagger List for 2014—a timely special report on the nine stocks most likely to gain 1,000% or more this year. Click here to find out more.

The article Gold Is Seasonal: When Is the Best Month to Buy? was originally published at Casey Research.

Check out more "Gold and Crude Oil Trading Ideas"

Are You Trading Gold? Two Compelling Reasons To Consider It

Here's a great trading quote you may not have heard:

"It is better to trade two complementary strategies that make less, than one strategy that makes more"

Yes, it is almost always true. Traders can make more profits (over the long term) by trading two conservative, complementary strategies that have lower, combined profit potential than trading one aggressive strategy that has a higher profit potential.

The reason is not obvious and frequently over-looked until it is too late: The single, higher profit strategy will often endure larger, deeper draw downs (periods of losing trades and unprofitability in which account equity is reduced) in order to achieve the greater returns. Deep draw downs are stressful and cause the trader to second guess his strategy, skip trades, reduce position size, cut winners short and so on, all of which are detrimental to the long term profit potential of the strategy. Dreams of riches often end in a nightmare of losses.

To minimize these self-destructive behaviors and maximize the odds of long term, consistent profitability, it is better to diversify and trade strategies and / or markets that are not related or similar. The goal is to achieve no or low correlation, so that when strategy A is struggling, strategy B is performing and vice versa.

Join us this Thursday for a free one hour educational event where we will discuss not only the power of diversification, but also why trading with historical data is so important.

Diversify, use history, trade Gold!

Applying your favorite strategy to just about any new market will certainly provide many of the benefits of diversification. But to maximize the power of diversifying, it is best to trade a market that "moves to its own beat." Meaning, one that does not move up and down in sync with the equity markets or instrument that you might trade. This is called low correlation.

A great uncorrelated market is Gold. It can be traded using stocks, ETF, options or futures. Furthermore, it moves a lot on a daily basis - much more than the major U.S. indices such as the Dow and S&P.

Want to learn about trading Gold using various instruments, tips for getting started, a simple strategy, etc.?

Check out our free training event next Thursday
 

Diversify, use history, trade Gold!


See you in the market, the gold market!
Ray @ The Crude Oil Trader


Here's our Introduction into Trading the Gold Market


 

Precious Metals: Gold, Silver and Miners Are Trapped

The precious metal market has been stuck in a strong down trend since 2012. But the recent chart, volume and technical analysis is starting to show some signs that a bottom may have already taken place.

This report focused on the weekly and monthly charts which allow us to see the bigger picture of where the precious metals sector stands in terms of its trend. Let’s take a look at a few charts below for a quick overview, but if you want more interesting ...... Click here to Read More.

Andrey Dashkov: Peak Gold

By Andrey Dashkov, Research Analyst

In the mining business, it is said that grade is king. A high-grade project attracts attention and money. High grade drill intercepts can send an exploration company's stock price higher by an order of magnitude. As a project moves to the development stage, the higher the grade, the more robust the projected economics of a project. And for a mine in production, the higher the grade, the more technical sins and price fluctuations it can survive.

It is also said that the "low hanging fruit" of high-grade deposits has all been picked, forcing miners to put lower-grade material into production.

You could call it Peak Gold.....and argue that the peak is already behind us. Let's test that claim and give it some context.

One of the ways to look at grades is to compare today's highest-grade gold mines to those from the past. We pulled grade data from the world's ten highest grade gold mines for the following chart.

As of last year, grades at the richest mines have fallen an average of 20% since 1998. However, except for 2003, when the numbers were influenced by the Natividad gold/silver project (average grade 317.6 g/t Au) and Jerritt Canyon (245.2 g/t Au), the fourteen-year trend is relatively stable and not so steeply declining. The spike in 2003 looks more like an outlier than Peak Gold.

However, these results don't provide much insight into the resource sector as a whole, one reason being that the highest-grade mines have vastly different production profiles.

For example, Natividad—owned by Compañía Minera Natividad y Anexas—produced over 1 million ounces in 2003 from ore grading over 300 g/t gold, while the San Pablo mine owned by DynaResource de Mexico produced only 5,000 ounces of gold from 25 g/t Au ore in the same year.

This made San Pablo one of the world's ten highest-grade operations in 2003, but its impact on global gold supply was minimal. In short, the group is too diverse to draw any solid conclusions.

We then turned to the world's top 10 largest operations, a more representative operation, and tallied their grades since 1998.

The picture here is more telling. Since 1998, gold grades of the world's top ten operations have fallen from 4.6 g/t gold in 1998 to 1.1 g/t gold in 2012.

This does indeed look like Peak Gold, in terms of the easier-to-find, higher-grade production having already peaked, but it's not as concerning as you might think. As gold prices increased from $302 per ounce at the end of 1998 to the latest price of $1,377, both low-grade areas of existing operations and new projects whose grades were previously unprofitable became potential winners.

Expanding existing operations into lower-grade zones near an existing operation is the cheapest way to increase revenue in a rising gold price environment. So many companies did just that.

Indeed, the largest gold operations—the type we included in the above chart—would be the first ones to drop their gold grades when prices are higher, simply due to the fact that what they lose in grade they can make up in tonnage run through existing processing facilities. Larger size allows lower-grade material to be profitable because of economies of scale. New technologies have helped to make lower-grade deposits economic as well.

So, at least until 2011, the conventional wisdom of "grade is king" was being replaced by "size is king."
However, production costs have been increasing as well—and have continued increasing even as metals prices have retreated in recent years. Rising operating costs and capital misallocations (growth for growth's sake, for example) are at least partly to blame for miners' underperformance this year.

Suddenly, grade seems to be recovering its crown. It remains to be seen whether more high-grade discoveries can actually be made, or whether Peak Gold is actually behind us.

The Takeaway

Truth is, there is no king. Grade and size, although among the most important variables in the mining business, tell only part of the story. Neither higher grades nor monster size prove profitability by themselves—the margin they generate at a given point in time is what matters most. And then what the company does with its income matters, too.

Now that the industry has moved on from a period of reckless expansion, we expect investors to become more demanding of the economic characteristics of new projects coming online. Existing mines that processed low-grade ore in a rising gold price environment are now judged by the flexibility they have to cut costs, increase margins, and persevere through gold price fluctuations.

It's true that high enough grade can trump all other factors in a mining project, but it's the task of a company's management to navigate the changing environment, control operating costs, and oversee the company's growth strategy so that it creates shareholder value.

The resource sector has had a sober awakening, and now we see many companies changing their priorities from expansion to profitability, which depends on many parameters in addition to grade. This is a good thing.
As for Peak Gold, if that does indeed turn out to be behind us, the big, bulk-tonnage low-grade deposits that are falling out of favor today will become prime assets in the future. It'll either be that or go without.

Times may be tough, but the story of the current gold bull cycle isn't done being written. The better companies will survive the downturn and thrive in the next chapter. Identifying these is the ongoing focus of our work.

How about a project that's high grade and big? We recommended a new producer that has such an asset, and it hasn't been this cheap since its IPO. Find out who it is in the August issue of Casey International Speculator. Start your risk-free trial with 100% money-back guarantee here.