Consider that the Hulbert Gold Newsletter Sentiment Index (HGNSI) collapsed 14.3 points on Wednesday to just 9.2%, or just 9.2 points from indicating most gold timers are actually net short gold. The last time this sentiment index was this low was on August 28, 2009, which was just two business days before gold exploded on September 2 and rallied $200 over the next three months.
Even Market Vane’s bullish consensus has collapsed to 63% after never even sniffing the levels that it normally does at typical intermediate peaks in gold. And by what I suspect is
not a coincidence, the last time this particular sentiment indicator was at this level was
also August of 2009.
In other words, we may actually surprise a large number of veteran gold bulls that are currently underexposed to the gold complex due to their reliance on seasonal tendencies for gold that are normally a function of the seasonal nature of Indian jewelry demand. However,
investment demand is currently the primary driver of the gold market, not Indian demand. Indian demand has actually been weak all year, just as it was last year.
Combine all of that with a weak
dollar and a Fed that's going to need to start printing money again soon (see the
Washington Post for another not-so-subtle hint from
Bambi as to what is coming), and we have all the ingredients for an upside explosion to develop in gold much sooner than most are expecting (including myself).
I hadn’t actually expected any sort of wild upside for gold and gold stocks until after the FOMC in August, where presumably the Fed would indicate that it was returning to more money printing operations, even though my expectation was that gold and gold
stocks would likely move higher in anticipation of that Fed announcement.
However, in light of all this new information regarding sentiment and the fact that forced sales by this single hedge fund may have been largely responsible for gold’s recent divot, upside acceleration for gold and gold stocks could come a lot sooner than I've been expecting.