By Adam Hamilton
The Bull (Australia)
Both gold and silver have enjoyed massive buying by American futures speculators in recent weeks. It all started with Fed chair Janet Yellen’s cavalier dismissal of inflation, but the buying momentum persisted well after that. Happening in the midst of the summer doldrums when global precious-metals investment demand is weak, this is an exceptionally-bullish portent. It is setting up the PMs for a major autumn upleg.
A little over a month ago, I wrote on the record shorting of gold and silver futures by American speculators. This one group of traders utterly dominates gold and silver price action, and therefore the fortunes of stock traders’ flagship GLD gold ETF and SLV silver ETF. Gold futures had just seen their biggest jump in spec shorts, and silver futures their highest levels of spec shorts, in at least 15.4 years!
As I said then with gold and silver loathed and languishing near ugly multi-month lows, extreme shorting is very bullish. Futures shorts contractually have to be covered before expiration, and this is done by buying offsetting longs. The higher speculators’ futures shorts get, the more near-future buying they guarantee. And since futures are so hyper-leveraged, this buying to cover often happens quite rapidly.