Don't "Trade" Gold And Silver, Advises John Embry

WHAT OTHERS ARE THINKING

In a recent article by John Embry, he advises against trading your gold or silver position:

"I believe it is becoming more dangerous by the day to trade your gold and silver positions at the present time. If you are a believer and share my view that we are heading for very large trouble in the near future, the worst possible outcome would be to be out of gold and silver in a trade at the very moment the crisis arrives. Repositioning would be psychologically difficult, and in a time of rapidly shrinking stocks of physical gold and silver, could prove challenging."

Mr Embry’s approach is to add to one’s position rather than selling up with the expectation of being able to buy more later when the price drops. Even if you aren’t "a believer", the volatility of the gold price has increased over the past decade, making speculative trading more risky. It has long been my view that it is difficult to make consistent profits from short term trading in precious metals:

"Why do I say that the nature of the gold market itself makes profitable day trading difficult? It is all about information, or lack thereof. Apart from pockets of relative transparency like COMEX or ETFs, the vast majority of the market is opaque. The "retail" or "average Joe" trader simply does not have access to the same amount of information about the status of the market and its flows that a "wholesale" trader does (and even they can’t see the entire market). Without understanding what is really driving short term changes in the price, I doubt it is possible even for the most astute and disciplined trader to make consistent profits.

"If you call up The Perth Mint to trade, you are likely to speak to Deniece, the Mint's senior bullion dealer. She has what I would consider probably the best background training for a bullion dealer - croupier at Sun City. When the market is moving you can do any number of deals before you have time to enter them into the system to confirm your position and profit, so you have to be able to run them in your head, to know where all your 'gold chips' are on the 'table'. She has been there since 1994 and every working day she has been sitting in front of a computer screen watching the Reuter’s gold price tick up and tick down, talking to people like you wanting to buy or sell gold – that’s coming up to 4,000 days of trading. And you think you can day trade against dealers like her, with zero information about what’s going on in the market?"

Bron Suchecki

The Perth Mint Blog