Exploring Leverage in Gold and Forex Trading 💰
Leverage is an essential tool in trading gold and forex. It enables traders to control larger positions with minimum initial capital. However, it also carries a high degree of risk as one can experience significant losses if the market moves against them. Here are some things to consider about leverage in trading gold and forex:
• Leverage is the ratio of the amount one can borrow and the amount of capital invested. For instance, if a trader chooses a 50:1 leverage, then they can trade up to 50 times more than their initial capital.
• While leverage allows traders to profit immensely from small market moves, it also magnifies losses if the market goes in the opposite direction.
• Even experienced traders can fall prey to leverage's pitfalls, so it's crucial to understand the risks and manage them effectively.
• Traders must calculate their risk-reward ratio before initiating a trade that involves leverage to help minimize losses and improve returns.
• Stop-loss orders can help traders to manage their risk in case of unexpected market movements.
• It is essential to have a solid trading plan that includes entry and exit strategies, trading goals, and risk management strategies.
• Traders should choose a broker that offers favorable margin requirements and instant trade execution.
In conclusion, leverage can be a useful tool in trading gold and forex, but it is not suitable for everyone. Traders must carefully evaluate their risk tolerance and have a well-defined trading plan before employing leverage.
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Metals
My simple 1 minute strategy (tutorial) My super simple 1m chart hyper scalping strategy that has been killing it for the last couple of weeks .. enjoy.
Whats up gold gang .. thought id hop on here with a tutorial on how i trade my key levels on the 1 min chart.
Firstly, this is a no bias strategy .. so we can take buys or sells depending how price reacts at the levels. High volume is a must here so around market opens is best.
1. Let price hit the key level.
2. if price is breaking through, wait for a 1 min candle to close and enter in that direction.
3. 10 pip TP 10 pip SL (or as close to the top of the previous candle as possible)
4. SL to BE if you like and hold for runners to target. I like to come out fully at 1:1
5. reversals .. price must print a candle in the opposite direction engulfing the previous. Enter on the break of the previous. 1:1
thats it. Super simple. It sounds dumb and too good to be true but i have been collecting the data and its working so far. I cant post a chart example on the 1m time frame to show you but ill post elsewhere so you can see.
Try it yourselves with low lot sizes and see how it works for you. If not, you can trade the way i normally do waiting for 30m candles to close in the zones.
Have a great holiday weekend .. please like this and comment if you need further help. Dont forget to follow along for constant XAUUSD updates
tommy
My A+ Trade Set Up when trading XAUUSD (Educational)Whats up gold gang! .. thought id drop in to show you how i enter my trades when they enter my zones. I set alerts here on trading view, then when price is approaching my zone, i get to the computer and lock in
Im looking for a clean break into the zone with a strong candle on the 15/30/1h
That candle must close
Next candle to open and do a small pull back to create a wick. This says to me no buying pressure is present.
Entry on the flip of the candle and break of previous candle
Target is placed.
Stop loss above previous candle high. Anything above that is invalid.
Of course i do things to manage risk and increase reward as the trade is moving, but they are personal to me. You will all have your own risk parameters im sure.
Thats it gang .. very simple, but as you can see .. very effective.
My zones work on any strategy, you could us smart money concepts, fibs, support resistance etc .. they will all work with my directional bias.
Hope this was helpful .. leave a like if it was and follow along for more XAUUSD updates
tommyXAU
GOLD vs CRYPTOAre you an investor looking to make the best of your money? If so, you may be wondering if gold or cryptocurrency is the right investment for you. In this article, we will take a look at both gold and cryptocurrency and compare their pros and cons for investing. We will begin by defining and characterizing each asset, followed by examining the reasons to invest in them. Finally, we will provide a comparison of the pros and cons of investing in gold versus cryptocurrency, helping readers make an informed decision on which asset to invest in. So let’s get started!
Definition and Characteristics of GOLD
Gold is a precious metal with a yellow hue that is used for jewelry and coins. Its chemical element is Au (Aurum), and has an atomic number of 79. Gold is a soft metal, with a melting point of 1064.43 degrees Celsius, making it relatively easy to work with when crafting into jewelry or coins. It also has the distinct advantage of being chemically inert, meaning it resists corrosion and tarnishing over time, which allows it to retain its original beauty even after years of use.
The price of gold can be influenced by many factors, such as supply and demand in the market, as well as geopolitical events. For example, when there are wars or political unrest in certain regions of the world, investors tend to flock to gold as a safe haven asset which drives up the price due to high demand. Conversely, when markets are stable and economies are doing well, investors may prefer other assets such as stocks or bonds since they provide higher returns than gold does during these times. Furthermore, changes in technology can influence the price of gold; if there is an advancement that makes extracting gold easier or more efficient then this may result in lower prices for consumers due to increased supply.
In conclusion, gold has stood the test of time as one of the most valuable commodities on earth thanks to its characteristics such as its yellow hue, softness and resistance against corrosion and tarnishing. Additionally, its price can be influenced by various factors such as supply and demand in the market or geopolitical events. Investors should take all these factors into consideration before deciding whether or not to invest in gold.
Reasons to Invest in GOLD
Gold has been a reliable source of currency and value for centuries, making it a desirable option for those interested in diversifying their portfolios and protecting their wealth. With its intrinsically high liquidity, gold is also an excellent safe-haven asset that can provide stability in times of economic or political unrest. Additionally, gold often does well during periods of high inflation, providing investors with the means to safeguard themselves from financial losses in volatile markets.
Moreover, gold offers diversification benefits due to its low correlation with other assets such as stocks and bonds. This allows investors to spread out their risk across different types of investments while still maintaining strong returns on investments. The convenience to buy and sell gold quickly makes it an attractive asset for those seeking rapid access to cash without having to divest from other holdings first.
Furthermore, gold's accessibility makes it suitable for all kinds of investors regardless of budget size or experience level. There are many ways one can invest in gold including physical bullion coins, ETFs (exchange traded funds), or even owning stock in companies involved with mining or processing precious metals such as gold and silver. All these factors make investing in gold a viable choice for anyone looking for long-term portfolio growth and protection against market volatility.
Definition and Characteristics of CRYPTO
Cryptocurrency is a digital or virtual currency that is secured by cryptography, making it nearly impossible to counterfeit or double-spend. It uses decentralized control, with no central authority or government controlling it. Cryptocurrency transactions are secure and anonymous, making them attractive to investors who value privacy.
The most popular cryptocurrency is Bitcoin, created in 2009. Other cryptocurrencies use blockchain technology and are often referred to as altcoins. Blockchain technology provides a secure and transparent way of storing transaction records which cannot be modified or tampered with. Transactions are also processed quickly and securely due to the distributed ledger system used by many cryptocurrencies.
Cryptocurrencies have several unique characteristics that make them an attractive choice for investors. They are highly liquid assets as they can be bought, sold, and exchanged for other currencies at any time of day. They also have low transaction costs compared to traditional payment methods such as credit cards and bank transfers. Additionally, since cryptocurrencies are not tied to any country’s economic conditions or policies, they provide greater stability than fiat currencies can offer in times of economic unrest or political turmoil.
However, there are some drawbacks associated with investing in cryptocurrencies that should be taken into account before investing in them. Cryptocurrencies are highly volatile assets due to their speculative nature; prices can rise and fall sharply at any time without warning as traders attempt to profit from short-term price movements rather than long-term trends. Additionally, cryptocurrency exchanges do not offer the same level of consumer protection as traditional financial institutions; if you invest in a cryptocurrency exchange you should ensure it has sufficient security measures in place before entrusting it with your money. Finally, because of their pseudonymous nature – meaning users’ identities remain anonymous – cryptocurrencies can be used for illegal activities such as money laundering which could put off potential investors from entering the market altogether.
Reasons to Invest in CRYPTO
Cryptocurrency has become an increasingly sought-after investment option due to its unique properties. Decentralization of the network allows users complete control over their funds and transactions, making it more secure than traditional methods. Low transaction costs and fast processing times give cryptocurrencies an edge in terms of efficiency compared with other payments systems.
By investing in crypto, investors can diversify their portfolios and reduce the risk of market volatility associated with physical commodities like gold or silver. Moreover, depending on timing and individual decisions, cryptocurrency can offer high returns; many digital coins have seen huge gains due to their limited availability and strong demand.
Finally, there is potential for impressive capital appreciation in cryptocurrency due to its global acceptance and capacity for growth. Open markets around the world make price movements accessible at any given time - allowing savvy traders to capture profits from various markets if managed correctly. As a relatively new form of investment asset, those who choose to invest early are presented with greater opportunity for growth compared to other options available.
In summary, investing in cryptocurrency provides investors with a range of advantages that could lead to long-term portfolio growth or protection against inflationary risks. As such, it is important that all prospective investors conduct thorough research before committing funds into this asset class as there are both risks and rewards involved in this type of investment.
Comparative Pros and Cons of Investing in GOLD vs CRYPTO
Weighing up the pros and cons of investing in gold or cryptocurrency is a key factor to consider when it comes to making an informed decision on which asset type would best suit one's individual needs. Gold has traditionally been seen as a reliable source of currency and value, offering stability during times of economic or political unrest. Additionally, gold provides diversification benefits due to its low correlation with other assets while also having high liquidity and accessibility for all types of investors.
Conversely, crypto investments have become increasingly popular due to their unique properties such as decentralization of the network, low transaction costs, fast processing times, and potential for high returns. Investing in cryptocurrency can help diversify portfolios and reduce risk associated with market volatility; furthermore, crypto is not affected by inflationary pressures like gold is.
However, it's important to be aware that both gold and cryptocurrency have their own set of drawbacks that should be factored into any investment decision. For example, gold prices are more volatile than cryptocurrencies but also more stable over long periods of time; additionally, gold has higher liquidity than crypto meaning it’s easier to liquidate investments quickly if needed.
Ultimately investors should conduct thorough research into both asset types before deciding which will best meet their own personal goals when investing money. By being aware of the advantages and disadvantages outlined here they will be able to make an educated choice when selecting either gold or cryptocurrency as part of their portfolio.
Traders, if you liked this idea or if you have your own opinion about it, write in the comments. I will be glad 👩💻
TommyXAU Educational - What i mean by clean rangeGood afternoon gold gang, hope you're having a good weekend.
I thought id hop on to share with you a piece of information of what i mean by clean range. Ok ..
Say you have 2 key levels in price .. we have had a big news event causing a big red candle to the left hand side. This has left what is called an imbalance. An imbalance is where the wicks of the previous and after candle don't meet. Backtest that one yourself and see how many times these imbalances get filled.
Price is coming back up and closes above the key level .. it is now a high probability that price will come up and fill that imbalance and the clean range.
I call it clean as there is no traffic or hurdles that should stop price on its way up. Again, adding to the probability.
Simple as that really guys ..
Please leave a like if it was of any help to you and ill see you this evening for market open!
TommyXAU
How to Build Wealth (Even During Monetary Tightening)One question that many investors are asking right now is: How can I build wealth during monetary tightening?
To answer this question, one must understand how the money supply works.
The Money Supply
The money supply refers to the total amount of currency held by the public at a particular point in time. M2 is one of the most common measures of the U.S. money supply. It reflects the amount of money that is available to be invested. M2 includes currency held by the non-bank public, checkable deposits, travelers’ checks, savings deposits (including money market deposit accounts), small time deposits under $100,000, and shares in retail money market mutual funds.
The chart above is a time-compressed view of the money supply. The time scale has been compressed such that the money supply appears as a vertical line with clusters of dots. Each dot represents a quarter (or 3-month period).
During periods of monetary easing, when the central bank accelerates increases in the money supply, the dots stretch wider apart, as shown below.
During periods of monetary tightening, when the central bank decelerates increases in the money supply, the dots tighten together. In rare cases, the central bank can reduce the money supply to fight inflation, in which case the dots can retrograde.
The central bank rarely reduces the money supply because it usually results in economic decline.
The Money Supply and The Stock Market
Since the money supply reflects the amount of money that can be invested in the stock market, the stock market tends to track the money supply. As the money supply (M2SL) grows so too does the stock market (SPX).
The chart above shows that despite the stock market’s oscillations, over the long term, the growth rate of the stock market tends to track the growth rate of the money supply. The stock market goes up, in large part, because the money supply goes up.
The chart below is from the book Stocks for the Long Run by Jeremy Siegel, Professor of Finance at the Wharton School. The chart shows that compared to other asset classes, stocks generally perform the best over time.
Stocks generally perform the best over time because the growth rate of the stock market generally tracks the growth rate of the money supply fairly well. Investing in the stock market is therefore an efficient means of preserving wealth over the long term.
One will always be better off investing in assets that grow in price at a faster rate than the rate at which the money supply grows than investing in assets that do not. When the money supply decreases during periods of monetary tightening, as is happening right now, only assets that outperform the money supply can produce positive returns.
Knowing these facts, we can reach the following conclusion: Generally, investing in the stock market does not intrinsically build wealth, it merely efficiently preserves wealth over time against the perpetual erosion of an ever-increasing money supply. To build wealth one must invest in assets that grow in price faster than the rate at which the money supply grows .
Preserving Wealth vs. Building Wealth
As noted, to build wealth one must invest in assets that move up in price faster than the rate at which the money supply moves up.
Investing in assets that move up in price over time, but at a rate less than that which the money supply moves up over time may seem like a good investment to an investor if the investor is making money, but such investments are not typically wealth-building. These investments are merely some degree of wealth-preserving.
When the price of an investment increases over time at a rate less than the money supply, that investment causes a loss of wealth, despite giving the investor the perception of increased wealth. A loss of wealth occurs because the investor’s purchasing power is decreasing over the period of time which the investment is held.
Purchasing power is the value of a currency expressed in terms of the number of goods or services that one unit of money can buy. It can weaken over time due to inflation. To keep things simple, let’s assume that other elements of inflation, such as money velocity, remain fairly constant and that an increasing money supply is the main cause of inflation.
Let’s consider some case studies.
Case Study #1: REITs
Suppose an investor, John, invests his money in real estate investment trusts (REITs), specifically BRT Apartments Corp.
John is a smart investor and does research before investing. In his research, he sees that BRT has decent profitability and a fair valuation. He also sees that BRT has decent growth potential.
After analyzing fundamentals, John does technical analysis. He sees the below chart which shows a decades-long bull run.
(Chart has been adjusted to include dividends)
He thinks to himself: This asset is a money maker. Despite periods of corrections, price generally goes up over time.
John then buys shares of BRT as part of a long-term investment strategy. John has done his due diligence and indeed he is right that, over the long term, his investment is likely to make quite a bit of money.
However, if John invests in this asset, although he will make money, he will lose wealth or purchasing power. That’s because the Federal Reserve is increasing the money supply at a rate that is faster than John’s investment grows.
Here’s a chart of BRT adjusted for the money supply (and adjusted to include dividends).
Adjusting the price of BRT by the money supply shows a clear downtrend over time. This means that while BRT is growing in price and its investors are making money, BRT’s investors are generally losing purchasing power over time by investing in this asset because the central bank is increasing the money supply at a faster rate than the rate at which BRT's price grows.
By increasing the money supply exponentially over time, central banks trick people into believing that they are building wealth by investing when in fact most investments are, at best, some degree of wealth preserving. Only a minority of assets outperform the money supply, and usually, that outperformance is temporary.
In the era of monetary easing, during which central banks drastically increased the money supply using various monetary tools, perceived wealth skyrocketed. However, actual gains in purchasing power or improvement in living standards, as measured by increased productivity, largely did not occur.
You may be thinking that I simply chose a bad investment to demonstrate my point. While BRT is actually a great investment relative to most other assets, let's move on to the second case study: an asset that has skyrocketed in price in recent years.
You will find that even for assets that have outperformed the growth in the money supply, the period of outperformance is usually temporary.
Case Study #2: Microsoft (MSFT)
Microsoft is an example of a stock that has outperformed the growth rate of the money supply in recent years. Below is a chart of MSFT adjusted for the money supply.
The chart shows that although the growth in MSFT's price generally outperforms the growth rate of the money supply, it undergoes prolonged periods of underperformance when investors can lose wealth. This wealth loss effect cannot be fully ascertained by looking only at a chart of just MSFT's price. It only becomes fully apparent when one compares the stock's price to the money supply.
Tech stocks have generally outperformed the money supply since the Great Recession. They were excellent wealth-building investments. However, now that the central bank has begun monetary tightening, interest-rate-sensitive tech stocks are especially likely to decline. Investing in these assets while the money supply is decreasing, and while interest rates are surging, may result in loss of wealth.
Case Study #3: Utilities (XLU)
The chart below shows how well the utilities sector performed over the past two decades.
Let’s adjust the chart to the money supply. (See chart below)
You can see that XLU moved horizontally relative to the money supply, meaning that it merely preserves wealth to varying degrees but does not generally build wealth over the long term.
By including the money supply in our charts, we remove the confoundment of monetary policy and elucidate the true intrinsic growth potential of assets.
Case study #4: ARK Innovation ETF (ARKK)
Look at the chart below which shows ARK Innovation ETF (ARKK), managed by Cathie Wood, relative to the money supply.
Cathie Wood’s investment choices have actually caused a loss of wealth since the fund’s inception in 2014. You can see in the above chart that price is slightly below the center zero line, which means that wealth has been lost by those who invested in ARKK in 2014 and held continuously to the current time.
Finally, check out the below chart of SPY relative to the money supply. The entire post-Great Recession bull run in SPY was merely a recovery of the wealth lost since the Dotcom Bust, over 2 decades ago. The stock market is ominously again being resisted at this peak level.
The below chart shows that the stock market has given back much of the wealth built since the pre-Great Recession peak.
In summary, wealth-building requires investing in assets with a growth rate that is greater than the growth rate of the money supply. To accomplish this, an investor should compare an asset against the money supply before choosing to invest. Assets that continuously outperform the money supply over the long term are better investments than those that do not. One can use standard technical analysis on the ratio chart to determine candidates that are most likely to outperform the money supply.
In the face of high inflation, central banks must reduce the money supply. A decreasing money supply pulls the rug out from under the stock market. When the money supply is falling, corporate earnings and the stock market typically fall as well.
Inflation
When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, the Federal Reserve and central banks around the world increased the money supply by an unprecedented amount.
Throughout the course of its entire history up until the pandemic, the U.S. money supply moved up predictably within a log-linear regression channel, as shown in the chart below. Before the pandemic, the log-linear regression channel had an exceptionally high Pearson correlation coefficient (over 0.99), which suggests that the regression channel was reliably containing the money supply’s oscillations over time.
When the pandemic hit the global economy came to a halt. The Federal Reserve increased the money supply by a magnitude that was so astronomical that it went up vertically even when logarithmically adjusted. (See the chart below)
As a thought experiment, let’s assume that the log-linear regression channel above is valid and that data are normally distributed (typically they are not in financial markets).
If it were the case that such a sudden, astronomical increase in the money supply occurred totally randomly, the event would be a 10-sigma event (meaning 10 standard deviations away from the mean). The chance of such a rare event happening totally randomly is so small that it would occur about once every 500,000 quadrillion years. Since this is much longer than the age of the known universe, a 10-sigma event is essentially equivalent to an event that will statistically never happen. Thus, no one was prepared for the action that the Federal Reserve took.
By exploding the money supply by this extreme amount and flooding the market with so much newly created money, central banks instantly made everyone feel wealthier by giving them more money, but this action would eventually make everyone less wealthy by destroying their purchasing power as inflation ensued.
Once high inflation begins, it can be hard to stop. When inflation stays high for too long the public begins to expect more of it. The public then alters its spending and saving habits. The public also begins to demand higher wages to keep up with high inflation. This creates a negative feedback loop: When workers receive higher wages to keep up with inflation, workers can afford to pay inflated prices which keeps inflation higher for longer. As workers get paid more, keeping demand high, companies also charge more for their goods and services. Eventually, workers again demand higher wages to keep up with yet even higher prices.
At every stage of inflation, the best strategy for central banks is to downplay its true severity. This is because the easiest way to control inflation is by managing the public’s perception of it. The hard way to control inflation is to raise the cost of money – interest rates – which in turn induces economic decline, and which can cause financial crises as highly indebted consumers, companies and governments cannot afford higher interest payments.
Bonds
Government bond yields reached a record low during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The chart below shows that interest rates – or the price of money – reached their lowest level in the nearly 5,000 years for which records exist.
Since the start of 2022, interest rates have surged higher, breaking a multi-decade downtrend, and ushering the market into a new super cycle where interest rates will likely remain higher for the long term.
Interest rates and the money supply are inextricably linked. Few people know why an inverted yield curve predicts a recession. An inverted yield curve reflects the destruction of money. When the yield curve is inverted, banks can no longer profitably borrow at short term rates and lend at long term rates. Bank lending creates the most amount of money. An inverted yield curve is a market perversion that does not occur naturally but occurs only through central bank action. Inverting the yield curve is a highly obfuscated tool that central banks use to decrease the money supply. Furthermore, as we discussed before, since the stock market generally tracks the money supply, an inverted yield curve is a warning that the stock market will fall in the future. Recently, the yield curve (as measured by the 10-year minus the 2-year U.S. treasury bonds) inverted by the most on record.
Below is the chart of iShares 20+ Year Treasury Bond ETF (TLT). TLT tracks an index composed of U.S. Treasury bonds with remaining maturities greater than twenty years.
As you can see from the chart above, which excludes the past two years, it looks like TLT has been a great investment over the past two decades. (For this chart, I included dividends. TLT pays out dividends that derive from interest payments on its bond holdings.)
Look at the chart below to see what happens when we adjust the chart for the money supply.
In the chart above we see that since its inception TLT moved horizontally relative to the money supply. What this means is that holding TLT over this period was not wealth-building, but it was good at preserving wealth. Its price moved up in perfect lockstep with the money supply.
Now, let’s see how TLT performed in the past two years.
As we see in the chart above, until 2021, an investor who held long-term U.S. government bonds would have been preserving their wealth and shielding it from the erosion of perpetual increases in money supply. However, as interest rates on government debt surged higher as central banks fight high inflation, bond investors are now seeing major wealth destruction. In a stable monetary system, investing in government bonds should preserve wealth, since if it fails to do so, no one will buy bonds to finance the government.
The situation is also concerning when we examine investment-grade corporate bonds (LQD) relative to the money supply.
This chart of investment-grade corporate bonds adjusted for the money supply shows that we should be concerned about the current state of even the most high-grade corporate bonds. We see that the value of investment-grade corporate bonds over time, inclusive of their interest payments, has fallen off a cliff relative to the rate at which the money supply is increasing. This chart suggests that those who invested in corporate bonds have recently lost a lot of wealth. Until the current trend reverses, who would want to invest in corporate bonds? This is a problem for corporate finance.
Below is a chart of high-yield corporate bonds (HYG), (which are riskier than investment-grade corporate bonds), as compared to the money supply.
You can see from the chart above that all the wealth built by investing in high-yield corporate bonds since the Great Recession has been completely wiped out.
What I am about to explain next will be somewhat dense. Look again at the two charts below which show investment-grade corporate bonds relative to the money supply and high-yield corporate bonds relative to the money supply.
Recall that bond prices move inversely to bond yields. Thus, if we flip these charts of corporate bond prices, we will get corporate bond yields relative to the money supply.
Now let’s think. These charts show that the yields on corporate bonds are moving up faster than the supply of money. Corporate bond yields reflect the amount of money that corporations must pay on their debt. In other words, the amount of money that corporations will have to pay to service their debt is moving up faster than the money supply. As noted previously, the money supply speaks to corporate earnings since corporations can only ever earn some subset of the total supply of money in the economy. Thus, if the money supply decreases, as it is now, corporate earnings will likely decrease as well. If the interest on corporate debt is moving up much faster than the money supply, and the money supply which reflects corporate earning capacity is decreasing, what might this say about the future?
Mortgages
In the chart below, I analyzed the current median single-family home price in the United States adjusted by the current average 30-year fixed-rate mortgage (as a percentage). I then compared this number to the money supply.
This chart gives us a sense of whether or not the Federal Reserve is supplying enough money to the economy to support the current expense of home ownership. As you can see, price is rapidly approaching the upper channel line (2 standard deviations above the mean), which signals that home ownership is the least affordable it has been since the early 1980s – the last time the upper channel line was reached.
If one believes that the 2 standard deviation level is restrictive, then one may conclude that there is not enough money being supplied by the Federal Reserve to sustain such high home prices as coupled with such high mortgage rates. If the Federal Reserve does not pivot back to a less tight monetary policy soon, then there is a high probability that a housing recession will occur in the coming years.
Perhaps what is more alarming is the below chart, which shows the EMA ribbon. The EMA ribbon is a collection of exponential moving averages that tend to act as support or resistance over time. When the ribbon is decisively pierced it reflects a trend change.
We can see in the above chart, that for the first time since the mid-1980s, we have pierced through the EMA ribbon. This could be a signal that a new super cycle has begun, whereby a higher interest rate environment will persist alongside high inflation for the long term, potentially making homes less affordable for the long term. This is one of many charts that seem to validate the conclusion that inflation will remain persistently high for the long term.
Commodities
In the below chart, the price of commodities is measured as a ratio to the money supply.
This chart informs us that commodity prices have broken their long-term downward trend relative to the money supply.
The chart above shows commodities as a ratio to the money supply side-by-side an inverted chart of the S&P 500 as a ratio to the money supply. It appears that the ratio of commodities to the money supply reflects an inverse relationship to the S&P 500 and the money supply. Think about what these charts may be indicating. Could they suggest that in the face of a shrinking money supply, more money will flow out of the stock market into increasingly scarce commodities? In a deglobalizing world facing conflict, climate change, and declining growth in productivity, it’s unlikely that commodity prices will return to the extremely undervalued levels seen in 2020.
One commodity, in particular, deserves its own discussion: Gold.
Gold
During a monetary crisis, the usual winner is physical gold.
Since the dawn of human civilization, gold has played an important role in the monetary system. As a scarce commodity gold is often perceived as inherently valuable.
In his 1912 book, The Theory of Money and Credit, Ludwig von Mises theorized that the value of money can be traced back ("regressed") to its value as a commodity. This has come to be known as the Regression Theorem.
Once paper money was introduced, currencies still maintained an explicit link to gold (the paper being exchangeable for gold on demand). However, the U.S. abandoned the gold standard in 1971 to curb inflation and prevent foreign nations from overburdening the system by redeeming their dollars for gold.
Currently, gold is extremely undervalued when priced in U.S. dollars. The current fair dollar-to-gold ratio is currently about $7,200 per ounce of gold. This number is produced by dividing the year-to-year increases in the money supply by the yearly production of gold in ounces.
Eventually, a monetary crisis will occur, and according to Exter’s Pyramid, investors will scramble for gold, which may force fiat currency to regress back to a gold standard to stabilize markets.
Bitcoin
In this final part, I will give a few thoughts on Bitcoin, as it relates to the money supply.
Below, you will see that when charted as a ratio to the money supply, Bitcoin formed a nearly perfect double top in 2021.
This chart could have warned traders that Bitcoin had topped in November 2021 given Bitcoin's inability to achieve a new high relative to the money supply. This shows that one can use the money supply in their charting as an additional layer of technical analysis.
In the below chart, we see how Bitcoin's market cap is moving relative to the U.S. money supply.
Bitcoin’s yearly chart is a bull flag relative to the money supply. There are very few assets outside of the cryptocurrency class that present as a bull flag relative to the money supply on their yearly chart. What might this chart reveal about Bitcoin's tendency to disrupt central banks' ability to conduct monetary policy?
The Federal Reserve’s inability to stop people from converting dollars into Bitcoin to store wealth is a problem that will likely result in Bitcoin and other forms of decentralized finance coming under the greater scrutiny of the U.S. federal government. In the future, I plan to write a post on investing in cryptocurrency. In that post, I will explore Bitcoin and blockchain technology in much greater depth.
Final thoughts
To build wealth one must invest in assets that grow in price faster than the money supply erodes purchasing power. To become a successful investor, one must revolutionize one’s perception of money and understand that cash – or central bank notes – are worth nothing more than the belief that the government will persist and remain solvent. To build wealth an investor’s goal should not be to make as much cash as possible, rather an investor’s goal should be to convert cash into assets that grow faster than the money supply and to accumulate as much of such assets as possible.
How Much Gold Does Your Portfolio Need?Economists make forecasts to make weathermen look good. Trying to forecast trends in complex systems is never easy. As with weather, financial markets are influenced by a myriad of factors which can make prediction akin to gambling. Time in the market beats timing the market so a far safer bet is building a diversified and informed portfolio.
As mentioned in our previous paper , gold is a crucial addition to any well-diversified portfolio. Gold offers investors the benefits of resilience during crises, diversification, and low volatility while also being a good hedge against inflation.
With crisis ever-present, from pandemics and geo-political conflict to financial instability and recession, uncertainty is on everyone’s lips, including central banks which bought a record 1,135 tonnes of gold last year. Central Banks have shown no signs of slowdown going into 2023, buying 74t in Jan and 52t in Feb, the strongest start to central bank buying since 2010. It is clear why, with rising global inflation due to 2 years of unprecedented QE. A decade of cheap money has its costs which are coming back to bite both consumers and central banks.
This is now being played with collapsing banks and crumbling businesses. Though governments may term these exceptions, they’re the inevitable consequence of hiking rates too fast. And even though inflation has now started to cool, it is proving stubborn and the risk of recession looms. In crisis, institutions and individuals rush to gold.
It’s no wonder then that gold prices spiked in March nearing an All-Time-High above USD 2,000/oz. Gold continues to trade above the key 2000 level even in April. Even now crises show no sign of slowing. Recession talks have become commonplace and phantoms of 2008 haunt with bank collapses. The world is increasingly moving towards reshoring and friendshoring, and de-dollarization is talked about more and more. It is almost inevitable that gold will break its all-time-high soon.
But, buying gold is the easy part, in fact, our previous paper covered 6 Ways to Invest in Gold. Managing gold as part of a larger portfolio is more nuanced. Allocating the right amount, finding the right entry, and knowing when to cash out are all critical.
This paper aims to address two questions –
1. What are the key drivers of gold prices in this decade
2. How should investors use gold in balancing portfolios to navigate turbulent times?
What Propels Gold After Its All Time High?
SVB and Credit Suisse pushed it to its brink. In fact, spot prices in India, Australia, and the UK sailed even above their All-Time-High. But what propels gold now?
Financial Instability
Was Credit Suisse the End?
“The current crisis is not yet over, and even when it is behind us, there will be repercussions from it for years to come.” - Jamie Dimon
Unfortunately, Credit Suisse was likely just a symptom of the larger problem. 2-years of near-free money has inevitably led others to make risky bets which catch up to them during periods of QT.
Additionally, Credit Suisse and SVB’s collapse were both set off by an unprecedentedly aggressive rate hiking cycle. Fed is stuck between a rock and a hard place as they try to control runaway inflation with aggressive rate hikes. Higher rates for longer increase the risks of financial instability.
Stubborn Inflation and Recession Risks
Stubborn inflation? Wasn’t inflation on its way down after almost a year?
Yes and No. Although yearly inflation has definitely cooled in most countries from their peak last year, inflation continues to tick up month-by-month above the targets that central banks have set for themselves. It is not expected to reach below their targets even before 2025 in many countries.
This is because although energy and commodity prices have cooled with demand waning, core inflation continues to remain stubbornly high. Additionally, food and energy prices are still volatile.
On the back of this, recession risks remain high. Recently released FOMC meeting minutes showed that officials expect a recession in the second half of the year. A recession in many countries now seems inevitable. Gold shines during recession and high-inflation environments.
High Interest Rates
Wasn’t the Fed done hiking?
Currently, CME’s FedWatch tool shows a ~72% chance of another 25bps hike next month despite the surprisingly low US CPI print.
Does another 25bps matter?
What’s more important is that 25bps is the peak rate and most central banks are calling this summit a pause and not a pivot. As such, rates will likely remain high for the remainder of 2023. Gold tends to perform well during high interest rate and risk-off environments.
Escalating Tensions, Friendshoring, and De-Dollarization
Last but definitely not least are central banks and their gold-buying binge. Though some of this can be explained by the ultra-high inflation. It is undeniably also driven by rising political tensions. The conflict in Ukraine continues to rage and the US extend its trade war against China with the CHIPS act. This is driving many of the largest economies to reshore and friendshore key supply chains.
This also means relying less on the USD which can be weaponized by the US. De-dollarization has been underway for the last 23 years as the share of USD holdings in foreign exchange reserves has declined from 71.5% to 58.3% over the past 23 years. Current conditions make it more likely that the trend will accelerate. Gold inevitably benefits from all of this as it is one of the only assets that no other central bank can print or freeze.
All of these factors will likely drive gold in the coming decade. But instead of setting a price target, investors can be prudent and methodical by properly allocating it as part of a larger portfolio.
Using Gold in a Portfolio
From 2000 until now, the following portfolios would deliver:
Since 2000, gold has been the best performing asset out of the 3 main components of a basic portfolio – Large Cap stocks (SPY), Treasury Bonds (10Y), and Gold. Gold price has risen 609% compared to SPY at +193%. Investing in 10-year maturity treasury bonds would have netted investors 110% during these 23 years.
As such, larger portfolio allocation towards gold would have yielded investors far more during this period. However, this comes at the downside of higher volatility. Gold has had an average 12-month rolling volatility of 15.8% over the last 23 years, slightly higher than SPY’s 14%.
Still, not all volatility is bad, especially if the returns outweigh the risk. Volatility to the upside can be beneficial to investors. In order to measure the returns from the portfolio after accounting for higher volatility-associated risk, investors can measure the risk-adjusted returns using the Sharpe Ratio and Sortino Ratio.
Sharpe Ratio measures the amount of excess return generated by taking on additional volatility-related risk. The higher the Sharpe Ratio, the better the portfolio is performing relative to its risk. The figure below contains the Sharpe Ratio for each of the portfolios across the last 23 years.
Since each year had a different risk-free rate due to changing monetary policy, the Sharpe ratios vary for every year and there are periods during which gold-heavy portfolios have highest Sharpe ratios and others where it has the lowest. This highlights gold's sensitivity to changes in monetary policy.
Sortino Ratio also measures risk-adjusted returns like the Sharpe Ratio however it only considers the risk of downside volatility. In other words, it measures return for every unit of downside risk. The figure below contains the Sortino Ratio for each of the portfolios.
A key difference between the Sharpe and Sortino Ratios can be seen in the readings for 2009. Sharpe Ratio for a gold-heavy portfolio is the lowest in 2009 due to high volatility in gold prices. However, since this was volatility to the upside, the Sortino Ratio for a gold-heavy portfolio in 2009 is the highest.
In 2023, a Gold heavy portfolio has performed the best and has the highest Sharpe and Sortino Ratio due to gold's relative overperformance amid the banking crisis.
DISCLAIMER
This case study is for educational purposes only and does not constitute investment recommendations or advice. Nor are they used to promote any specific products, or services.
Trading or investment ideas cited here are for illustration only, as an integral part of a case study to demonstrate the fundamental concepts in risk management or trading under the market scenarios being discussed. Please read the FULL DISCLAIMER the link to which is provided in our profile description.
XAUUSD How to enter on the retest (tutorial)Whats up gold gang! hope you have enjoyed your weekend .. its nearly market open .. so lets get ready.
This weeks educational post is talking about the retest .. so what is a retest. When price breaks a banking level .. i normally enter on the break out .. but if i miss that .. you can wait for the retest. This is where price comes back to the level to collect more orders before shooting off in the direction of the current trend.
Wait for a wick rejection at the banking level and a bullish candle to follow .. on the hour or 30m is the best .. then you can enter on the break of the previous bullish. Make sure this is at volume time around the opens.
As anything .. it sounds simple .. but tricky to get right .. and is a lower probability set up compared to the standard breakout.
Hope this was helpful guys .. please leave a like if you did. Ill be back tonight for the open and asian outlook going into tomorrow
tommyXAU
Producing Recurring Income in GoldGold has long been a darling of investors. Its holders - whether households or central banks - seek refuge in the yellow metal in times of crisis. Gold is a resilient store of wealth, offers durable portfolio diversification, exhibits lower volatility relative to equities & bonds, and serves as an inflation hedge.
But it has a big downside. As mentioned in our previous paper , gold pays zero yield. Shares pay-out dividends. Debt earns interest. Property delivers rents. But gold? Zero!
There are multiple methods of generating yield from gold. This paper illustrates a risk-limited, easy to execute, and capital-efficient means of producing yield by investing in gold.
Innovation in financial markets enables even non-yielding assets such as gold to produce regular income. A class of derivatives known as call options can be cleverly deployed to generate yield.
Call options are derivative contracts that allow its buyers to profit from rising prices of the underlying asset. When prices rise, call option holders earn outsized gains relative to the options price ("call premiums"). Unlimited upside with limited downside describes the call option holder's strategy in summary.
What has that got to do with generating yield in gold? Everything. For every buyer, the market requires a seller. Options sellers collect call premiums which comprise the income.
Many widely believe that options are weapons of mass wealth destruction. Not entirely wrong. Used poorly, options devastate investors' portfolios. Deployed wisely, options help astute traders to better manage their portfolio, generate superior yield on their assets, and construct convexity (disproportionate gain for fixed amount of pain) into their investing strategies. Fortunately, a covered call is a strategy which uses options prudently. As the strategy involves holding the asset whose prices are expected to rally, the risk of the strategy is hedged with risks well contained.
Gold Covered Call involves two trades. A long position in gold and a short position in out-of-the-money gold calls. In bullish markets, investors gain from call premiums plus also benefit from increase in prices. Covered calls not only enable investors to generate income but also reduce downside risk if asset prices tank.
A covered call trade in gold can be implemented in a margin efficient manner using CME’s Gold Futures and Options.
A long position in CME’s Gold futures (“Gold Futures”) gives exposure to 100 troy ounces (oz) of gold per lot. Combining long futures with a short call option on Gold Futures at out-of-the-money strike allows investors to harvest premiums.
Selecting an optimal strike and an expiry date is critical to successfully execute covered call strategies. First, Strike. It is the price level at which the call option transforms to be in-the-money. Strikes which have daily volumes & meaningful open interest enable options to be traded with ease and provide narrow spreads. Strikes that make options expire worthless benefits the covered call options holder.
Second, Expiry. Options have expiry. Options sellers thrive on shrinking expiry for generating yields. Investors selling call options optimise their risk-return profile by selecting an expiry with higher implied volatility (IV). Option prices are directly proportional to IV. Higher IV leads to larger premiums enriching returns.
SIMULATION AND PAY-OFF MATRIX
This paper illustrates a covered call strategy in gold using the CME Gold derivatives market:
1. Long one lot of Gold Futures expiring in Oct (GCV3) at $ 2,050/oz.
2. Sell one lot of Call Options on Gold Futures expiring in Oct at a strike of $ 2,275 collecting a premium of $ 40/oz.
The pay-off matrix simulates the trade P&L under four likely outcomes among many possibilities at trade expiry:
a. Gold rises past the strike ($ 2,400): Options get assigned to the buyer. Covered call option holder incurs loss of $ 85/oz (=$ 2,400 - $ 2,275 - $ 40) from short call offset by profits from long futures ($ 350 - $ 85) = $ 265/oz. Each GC contract has 100 troy ounces of gold, so total profit will be $ 265 x 100 = $ 26,500.
b. Gold rises but remains below the strike ($ 2,250): Options expire worthless to the buyer. Seller retains premium in full. Covered call option holder profits from long futures + call options premium ($ 200 + $ 40) = $ 240/oz. Each GC contract has 100 troy ounces of gold, so total profit will be $ 240 x 100 = $ 24,000.
c. Gold price falls marginally below the entry price ($ 2,030): Options expire worthless to the buyer. Covered call option holder loses money from long futures and thankfully the loss is offset by call options premium (-$ 20 + $ 40) = $ 20/oz. Each GC contract has 100 troy ounces of gold, so total profit will be $ 20 x 100 = $ 2,000.
d. Gold price falls ~5% below the entry price ($ 1,950): Options expire worthless to the buyer. Covered call option holder loses money from long futures and the loss is partially offset by call options premium (-$ 100 + $ 40) = -$ 60/oz . Each GC contract has 100 troy ounces of gold, so total loss will be -$ 60 x 100 = -$ 6,000.
The chart below describes the pay-off from Gold Futures (Long position), Gold Call Options (short position) and Covered Call (combination of the two trade legs).
MARKET DATA
CME Real-time Market Data helps identify trading set-ups and express market views better. If you have futures in your trading portfolio, you can check out on CME Group data plans available that suit your trading needs www.tradingview.com
DISCLAIMER
This case study is for educational purposes only and does not constitute investment recommendations or advice. Nor are they used to promote any specific products, or services.
Trading or investment ideas cited here are for illustration only, as an integral part of a case study to demonstrate the fundamental concepts in risk management or trading under the market scenarios being discussed. Please read the FULL DISCLAIMER the link to which is provided in our profile description.
XAUUSD How to define the trend (educational post) Good afternoon gold gang! i hope you are all well and enjoyed your bank holiday weekend.
This weeks educational post is based on trends and how to define them. The example above is of an up trend. You can follow this example in a down trend situation also, just in reverse.
Ok so what do i look for .. on the 4hr chart .. im looking for my key levels as always. When price breaks a key level .. it will come back to retest it .. in normal market conditions. When price comes back to test it .. i am looking for price to respect that level by the way of a wick, and a close above it (in this case) .. this is where i can say the market has made a higher low and then to push on up to retest the previous higher high.
In a case of the trend braking .. a change in structure .. i would like to see price at least break the previous key level (one below it) and then i can say the trend has changed.
You can also take a trade at these levels .. after the retest. Just wait for a candle close confirmation after the liquidation wick and target the high/low.
I hope this was educational to you, its very basic but its nice to go back and drill them from time to time.
Stay tuned for market open updates guys .. until then .. please like this post and follow along for more XAUUSD updates.
tommyXAU
Five Reasons and Six Ways to Invest in Gold"Gold is money. Everything else is credit.", said John Pierpont Morgan. When borrowers default, markets collapse and banks run into crisis, gold prices skyrocket. Gold is trading at a 12-month high on March 18th.
Gold has been valued for thousands of years. Gold has unique properties. It has been enchanting women and men since humans set foot on the planet.
Polycrisis. That aptly describes the current times. The US regional bank crisis haunts markets. Credit Suisse - the bank to the wealthiest was so frail that Swiss National Bank had to step in to provide liquidity backstop. Regulators worked over the weekend to broker an acquisition by UBS to prevent a banking crisis from spreading. Inflation is raging hot at levels unseen in 40+ years. Compounding Chair Powell's quagmire, the US Fed has been forced to switch from QT to QE by providing support to its regional banks from collapsing under crisis of confidence. Geo-politics remains tricky.
In times of crisis, investors seek flight to safety. Safest of all assets since civilisation began has been gold.
This educational piece provides an overview of (a) physical gold market dynamics, (b) largest holders of gold reserves, and (c) gold price behaviour against other asset classes. It also describes five primary reasons for investing in gold, contrasts six methods of doing so, and highlights the downsides of holding gold.
PHYSICAL GOLD DYNAMICS
Gold performs multiple functions. It is a currency to some. Store of wealth to others. It is an industrial metal used in consumer electronics. The rich love gold in clothing and food.
A bird's eye view of physical gold can be summarily described in three parts:
1. Consumers : Gold is used in consumer electronics due to its high conductivity and low corrosive properties. Gold used as industrial metal represents 6%-8% of total demand. Unsurprisingly, >50% of global gold demand is for jewellery. Jewellery is a multi-tasker. It meets aesthetic goals, serves as a status symbol while also being a form of investment.
2. Gold Reserves : Central banks hold gold as reserves. They are the most significant holders of gold. The haven nature of gold compels central banks to increase holdings during economic uncertainty, high inflation, or currency devaluation. Central Banks added >382 tonnes to their reserves in 2022.
3. Producers : Gold mining is a cyclical industry. Mining output has been in decline over the past decade as major gold producers shift to mining minerals and other metals like copper with the proliferation of lithium-ion batteries in EVs. Gold mining took a huge output hit during the pandemic and may not recover any time soon as capital expenditure into new gold mines is limited.
GOLD RESERVES - THE MOVERS AND SHAKERS
According to the World Gold Council, as of end 2022, central banks in Western European (11.8k tons) have the largest gold reserves followed by North Americans (8.1k tons), Central & Eastern Europeans (3.5k tons), and East Asians (3.4k tons).
Last year, central banks of Turkey, China, Egypt, Qatar, and Uzbekistan were the largest buyers of gold.
FIVE REASONS WHY GOLD SHOULD BE IN INVESTMENT PORTFOLIOS
Gold is a resilient store of wealth, provides meaningful portfolio diversification, has limited price volatility, extends benefits of hedge against inflation & currency debasement, and is limited in supply.
1. Resilient Store of Wealth
Gold outperforms equities during periods of economic instability. Due to its material properties and scarcity, it can even become more valuable during such periods as investors seek shelter in classic risk-off assets such as gold.
2. Portfolio Diversification
Gold can have both positive and negative correlation with other asset classes during different periods. This makes it an attractive addition to a diversified portfolio.
3. Limited Volatility
Due to its large market size and diverse supply origins, gold is less volatile than equities and other asset classes making it a safer asset class for investors.
4. Inflation Hedge
Gold is often seen as an inflation hedge. Which means that it can maintain its value or appreciate during periods of high inflation due to its scarcity and safety.
However, in some cases monetary policy changes like interest rate hikes may make gold a less attractive investment compared to treasury yields during inflationary periods.
5. Limited in supply
Gold is a finite resource, that too, one of the rarest precious metals in the world. Moreover, more than 200,000 tonnes of gold have already been dug up.
This represents more than half of the total reserves. The gold that is yet to be mined is much more difficult to extract economically.
Scarcity creates rarity, which in turn drives the value of the existing gold higher.
Many governments, banks, and people also use gold as a long-term investment, which means a huge portion of the gold supply is taken out of circulation, shrinking available supply even more.
SIX WAYS OF INVESTING IN GOLD
There are multiple ways of investing in gold. Six primary ones are:
1. Physical Gold : Gold can be bought and stored in the form of jewellery or gold bars. Costs of storage, insurance and making charges can be substantial and also inconvenient. Investing in physical gold is not optimal for reasons of poor convenience and higher transaction costs.
2. Gold ETF : Exposure to gold can also be acquired through buying exchange traded funds (ETF) backed by physical gold. There are multiple ETFs that track physical gold prices. The SPDR Gold Shares ETF (GLD) was the pioneer and began trading in 2004. It has an expense ratio of 0.4% and tracks gold bullion prices. GLD holds both physical gold bullion and cash.
GLD provides a liquid lower-cost method to buy and hold gold. Gold can be bought and sold during the trading day at market price. Investors must pay heed to taxation as gains from ETFs in some jurisdictions can be treated differently compared to other forms of gold.
3. Gold Futures : CME’s COMEX Gold futures is the world’s most liquid derivatives which enables capital efficient exposure to Gold. With round the clock liquidity, tight bid-ask spread and benefits of a cleared contract, investing through COMEX Gold futures is widely popular.
Each lot of COMEX Gold Futures provides exposure to 100 oz of Gold. Enabling affordable access to investors and to facilitate accurate granular hedging, CME also offers Micro Gold Futures. Each lot of Micro Gold contract provides exposure to 10 oz of Gold.
4. Gold Options : CME also offers options on Gold Futures. Gold options is a useful investing and hedging tool. Using options, investors can lock in unlimited upside potential of price moves while limiting the adverse impact of downside price moves.
5. Shares of Gold Producers : Gold mining is an international business. Gold is mined on every continent except Antarctica. Top gold miners include Newmont (USA), Barrick (Canada), Anglogold Ashanti (South Africa), Kinross (Canada), Gold Fields (South Africa), Newcrest (Australia), Agnica Eagle (Canada), Polyus (Russia), Polymetal (Russia), and Harmony (South Africa).
As is evident from the chart above, investing in gold miners for exposure to gold is a poor proxy as most of them have underperformed relative to gold prices. Furthermore, FX exposures must be hedged separately for some stocks which trade in emerging markets. In summary, securing gold exposure through miners is not optimal relative to other alternatives.
6. Gold CFDs : CFDs also known as contract for differences allows for synthetic access to the price of spot gold. These CFDs are OTC derivatives contracts which carry non-trivial counterparty risk with investors being exposed to the credit risk of the CFD provider.
The table below summarises the merits of various gold investment instruments across key investment attributes.
GOLD TOO HAS ITS DOWNSIDES
Gold is a non-yielding asset. Shares of profitable companies pay dividends. Holding debt earns interest. Real estate delivers rents. But gold provides zero yield.
For every problem, innovation in markets provides a solution. In a future paper, Mint Finance will demonstrate how gold can be transformed into a yield generating asset.
Rising interest rates are headwinds to gold. As rates on treasury, bonds and deposits rise, investors rotate their money out of gold and into yield generating assets.
Not only is gold non-yielding, but the returns also fade into insignificance relative to gains from innovation. In times of crisis, gold is a great hedge. However, while positioning portfolios for the long term, investors must astutely balance between safety versus growth.
GOLD RETURNS IN RELATION TO OTHER ASSET CLASSES
1. US Equities and Emerging Markets
Gold outperforms equities during periods of crisis. During equity bull runs, gold underperforms equities. Cumulatively, over the last 20 years, Gold has outperformed Dow Jones, S&P 500, and MSCI Emerging Markets. Only Nasdaq, which represents tech, innovation and growth has surpassed gold returns.
2. Treasuries with 2-Year and 10-Year Maturities
Unsurprisingly, when sovereign risks rise and treasury yields fall to zero, gold shines. Between two non-yielding assets, investors prefer to take shelter in gold as a preferred haven. However, when rates rise, investors rotate out of gold and into treasuries.
3. Crude Oil, Copper, and Silver
Over the last two decades, Gold has outperformed crude oil, copper, and silver.
4. Dollar Index, Bitcoin and Ethereum
While US Dollar and gold are both global reserves, gold has outperformed the Dollar Index which is the value of the USD against a basket of six international currencies.
However, relative to bitcoin and ethereum, gold pales into insignificance. Bitcoin is perceived as millennial gold and ethereum is the millennial oil. Both assets have obliterated gold in terms of price returns.
5. Major Currencies
Over the last 3 years, as markets emerged out of the pandemic, gold has outperformed all the major currencies. Yen, under the influence of Governor Kuroda’s liberal QE program, has depreciated 63% against gold.
Indian Rupee has deflated 47% while Euro and Sterling have shed 38% and 32% against gold.
The US Dollar, Chinese Renminbi, and Aussie Dollar have depreciated 31%, 29% and 20% against gold, respectively.
Key Takeaways
Gold is money. Everything else is credit. Gold glows in crisis. It is a knight in shining armour for investors. Gold is the only asset which exhibits negative correlation.
These are times of polycrisis. As investors seek flight to safety from banks even, gold is the safest among the few remaining alternatives.
Gold is a resilient store of wealth, offers durable diversification within a portfolio, exhibits much lower volatility relative to equities, and serves as an inflation hedge albeit with less than a perfect record.
Clients can invest in gold in multiple ways. Gold futures is the most convenient and optimal among the six alternatives.
Gold has its downsides. It is a non-yielding asset and performs dismally against innovation and growth.
Except for Nasdaq, bitcoin and ethereum, gold has outperformed currency majors, equity indices, US treasury, and commodities.
In a future paper, Mint Finance will explore ways in which gold can be transformed into a yield generating asset.
MARKET DATA
CME Real-time Market Data helps identify trading set-ups and express market views better. If you have futures in your trading portfolio, you can check out on CME Group data plans available that suit your trading needs www.tradingview.com
DISCLAIMER
Trade ideas cited above are for illustration only, as an integral part of a case study to demonstrate the fundamental concepts in risk management under the market scenarios being discussed. They shall not be construed as investment recommendations or advice. Nor are they used to promote any specific products, or services.
This material has been published for general education and circulation only. It does not offer or solicit to buy or sell and does not address specific investment or risk management objectives, financial situation, or needs of any person.
Advice should be sought from a financial advisor regarding the suitability of any investment or risk management product before investing or adopting any investment or hedging strategies. Past performance is not indicative of future performance.
All examples used in this workshop are hypothetical and are used for explanation purposes only. Contents in this material is not investment advice and/or may or may not be the results of actual market experience.
Mint Finance does not endorse or shall not be liable for the content of information provided by third parties. Use of and/or reliance on such information is entirely at the reader’s own risk.
These materials are not intended for distribution to, or for use by or to be acted on by any person or entity located in any jurisdiction where such distribution, use or action would be contrary to applicable laws or regulations or would subject Mint Finance to any registration or licensing requirement.
Brokers who don't charge swaps and fees? Are they Legit?If you sign up with a broker that states they don't charge fees, swaps, commissions i.e - everything is for free with us, you WILL pay them a lot more than if you were to sign up with a company that clearly says - no free lunch here, you will pay! Simple as that.
Remember a saying - the stingy pay double the money!
XAUUSD How to deal with fake outs (tutorial) Good morning gold gang! Im back with another educational piece this weekend getting ready for market open.
In this weeks i want to look at the fakeout. The fakeout is a false breakout of the key level. When price moves and closes outside of the level, the next step is to enter the trade. Sometimes what happens is price will close then shoot back up into the range. This is a fakeout.
The way i deal with them is i always make sure my entry is a pip or 2 after the wick of the previous candle .. normally what happens is the next candle will open before the wick and saving you from the entry. If this doesnt happen, then you take the loss like a man/woman/person and move on.
What NOT to do is change bias and take buys (in this case) as you can get faked out this way too .. a change in bias would be above the next htf resistance or key level.
Hope this was educational guys .. please like and follow along for more XAUUSD updates. I post daily and you dont want to miss them.
tommyXAU
tommyXAU simple entry model. Good morning gold gang! I thought id hop on here and post my super simple entry method for you to see.
Its no SMC or ICT model that turns your brain in knots trying to figure out .. its simple, as trading should be. I look at some strategies on here and think to myself .. wow, that would turn me into an emotional wreck with my finger on the button.
Ask yourself this .. do professional traders in banks use trading view and mark up charts? Its all time and price.
Here i am looking for strong breaks of my banking levels in high volume times with a strong closure (30m/1h) preferably.
Then an entry on the break of that candles wick. Target is always the next banking level but be very savvy with your risk management.
Other areas play a factor too you cant just blindly jump in here .. but this is the exact model i use to execute.
Hope this helps guys, drop a like if it did. See you tonight for market open
tommyXAU
A reasonable trading plan is the starting point of successA reasonable trading plan is the starting point of success
An excellent investor never trades aimlessly. Before making a trade, they always have their own trading plan to help them identify trading opportunities and avoid chasing market trends. Developing and executing a trading plan is an important component of trading success. So, how do you develop and execute a trading plan? To answer this question, I think it is necessary to understand the following concepts:
What is the meaning and characteristics of a trading plan? What elements should a qualified trading plan include? What obstacles are there to executing the plan?
1.Meaning of a trading plan
A trading plan refers to the measures, methods, and steps that a trader develops to achieve trading goals within a certain period of time. As the author of "High Probability Trading" said, a trading plan is like a business plan for a merchant, and the content of the plan must be clear and concise. Although it may not necessarily be in writing, it is recommended that traders use written form to better follow the plan and facilitate regular evaluation.
1.Characteristics of a trading plan
First of all, a plan must be forward-looking. We develop a trading plan based on our anticipation of the future, so before making a plan, we must have a clear understanding of the various possible scenarios and have a correct idea of the trading goals, measures, and methods. Therefore, without foresight, there is no plan, and foresight is the main characteristic of a plan.
Secondly, a plan must be procedural. In developing a trading plan, there must be a meticulous time schedule and requirements for what to do first and what to do later. When executing the trading plan, there should be stages and priorities. Therefore, in developing a trading plan, there must be time requirements and corresponding arrangements for each stage to reflect the meticulousness and procedural nature of the plan.
1.Components of a Trading Plan:
Which markets will you trade in?
What analysis tools will you use?
What is your market analysis before entering the trade?
What are the entry requirements?
How much risk will you take on?
What is your exit strategy?
What are your expected trade duration and performance?
What possible market developments could occur?
How will you achieve your trading goals?
Choosing the markets to trade in depends on your capital and trading strategy. For example, if you are a trend trader, you cannot choose to trade in volatile markets. Of course, the prerequisite for this work is to establish your own trading strategy in advance.
Which analysis tool to use
When it comes to analysis tools, perhaps you're using some kind of technical or fundamental analysis, but regardless of which one you use, you need to understand the principles behind it and conduct sufficient research and testing on its feasibility and success rate before applying it.
What is the market analysis for your entry into trading?
Through analysis, you need to understand what the current state of the market is and whether it meets your trading conditions. What are your expectations for the future direction of the market? What do others think about the current situation?
What are the entry trading conditions?
The entry trading condition, also known as a trading signal, must be based on a firm, logical theoretical foundation, must be clear and unique, and cannot be ambiguous. Like the analysis method, it also needs to be thoroughly evaluated and tested. You need to understand the development of successful trading signals and the development of failed trading signals.
How much risk are you willing to take?
In trading, the most important thing is to learn to protect yourself. Therefore, before any trade, you must be clear about how much capital you will invest in this trade and how much risk you can bear. In other words, if you make a wrong judgment, what is the maximum loss you can tolerate? Can you bear the losses caused by a failed trade? Will it have a negative impact on you?
What is your exit strategy?
The exit strategy includes three aspects: a stop-loss strategy, which is the exit strategy for misjudgment; a profit-taking strategy, which is the exit strategy for successfully completing a trade; and a strategy for exiting when the price does not move as you expected over a period of time. The most difficult part is the formulation and execution of the stop-loss strategy. The premise for setting a stop-loss is to understand when your judgment is wrong, so we mentioned earlier that you must understand the principles of the judgment tool. The difficulty of executing a stop-loss is because it involves denying your previous judgment and accepting the reality of financial losses, which is obviously a huge challenge for traders. Therefore, executing a stop-loss is far more difficult than executing a profit-taking strategy.
What are your expected operation time and performance?
When you start a trade, you should have an expectation of the time and price movement target for its future development, which is crucial for your future monitoring.
What are the possible developments in the market?
We know that market development is uncertain, so we must have a foresight of how many possibilities there may be in the future. On the one hand, this involves your capital management. If you can always keep the uncertainty of market development in mind, then you will never fully invest because no one can ensure that accidents will not happen. On the other hand, multiple expectations can reduce the possibility of emotional and sudden decision-making trades.
How to achieve trading goals
In this trading task, do you plan to increase the trading results by adding positions? If so, under what circumstances do you plan to add positions? If adding positions fails, what kind of exit strategy will you adopt? Will you exit the trade with a partial or full position?
After clarifying and completing the above work, the trading plan is basically completed. However, this is only a good start for a trade. The most important work is to resolutely and quickly execute the trading plan you have formulated. Although some traders have never formulated a trading plan...
The logic and laws of the marketBefore entering the market, we knew about the Pareto principle in the trading field. But after studying it for a while, you may enter the market with confidence, thinking that trading is not that difficult and that you are superior and can beat the so-called "housewives." This is the human tendency to overestimate oneself and be overconfident.
After entering the market and making a few trades recklessly, you will soon find yourself with bruises and swelling. Your confidence will be shattered, and you will begin to realize that even though you are a genius, you still need to learn.
So, the two major factions in the speculative field, fundamental and technical, are waiting for you.
During this period, which faction you join is entirely determined by your "destiny." If everyone around you is focused on fundamentals, you will join the fundamental camp; if everyone around you is focused on short-term, technical analysis, you will join the technical camp.
This is almost the inevitable path for every investor and trader.
In these two factions, the vast majority of investors are eager to elevate their skills to the highest level in this field. If you choose fundamental analysis, you should become a person who has a mastery of fundamental analysis. If you study technical analysis, you should push various technical indicators, trading volume, open interest, and other factors to the extreme.
We may experience losses, but the reason for our losses is that our research and development capabilities are not strong enough to prevent them. We will continue to work hard until we have the ability to grasp the overall trend at the highest level and achieve stable profits in the end. This is what most investors pursue.
However, most investors fail in this process because they are surrounded by too much noise that distracts them. After joining the fundamental or technical camp, they often lose control. They often find that their precise control of the future seems a bit self-deceptive, but they only doubt it because everyone around them is doing the same thing.
They occasionally shout in anger because of continuous losses, which is impossible. As a result, they will find a group of people who have made huge profits by accurately predicting the market. They will also feel helpless due to heavy losses. They want to cut their losses, but they find that losses are incurred by stop-losses. Only those who hold on to their losses and make more bets can make big money.
Every time they try to break free, they are dragged back by endless reality. They feel like they cannot predict the market, but countless people are making accurate predictions and making money. They feel that they should cut losses, but reality often does not give them positive feedback. They feel that they should manage their funds, but they find that those who make big money are all making big bets. They think that fundamental analysis is useless, but a bunch of people will tell them, "I make a profit with fundamental analysis!" They believe that technical analysis cannot predict the future, but someone who has made a hundredfold return will tell them that it was all due to the exclusive MACD strategy.
And just when you've struggled and managed to understand a little bit of the logic, you meet a friend who has a funding curve that never retraces and has multiplied his wealth by 8 times in just 2 months, generously sharing his experience with you... Just as you're about to start thinking about how to build a trading system, your wife's friend's boyfriend is hailed as having an unbeatable market sense. It is said that when he places an order, the mountains shake and the heavens weep... True or false, an endless stream of information bombards you. You look at various platform analysis reports every day, listen to the legends of celebrities making huge profits, watch videos on how to analyze and predict, read books, and everyone around you is giving you their "secrets"...
Your mind is filled with countless pieces of knowledge and information. And you, in this ocean of information, piece together your own trading cognition. This cognition contains too much content, and you believe it to be correct, but in reality, you cannot imagine how far it is from the truth.
This is the fundamental difficulty of trading: insight into the truth of trading. The reason why it is difficult to gain insight into the truth of trading is not only because the truth itself is very secretive, but also because you have to complete this task under endless distractions.
Why is this so?
Because trading is a field where the ratio is 28:1 or even 19:1, the vast majority of people, including traders, analysts, professionals, media personnel, and XX personnel, fundamentally misunderstand it. However, they do not know that they are wrong. Most people are likely to sincerely and wholeheartedly share their knowledge, but the key is that their understanding of what is correct is itself wrong. Therefore, the market is filled with endless noise and fallacies. These things are mixed together with the truth, forming an endlessly complex information flow. Here, the halo effect, survivorship bias, and unfalsifiability illusions form a maze, making it difficult for people to find a way out.
For a trader who wants to become a master trader, their only mission is to extract the truth from this endlessly complex information flow through their own experiences and independent thinking. They need to simplify the complex and unravel the threads in the endless flow of information, identify and discard everything that is incorrect, and form their own trading philosophy. Then, resist endless temptations and execute with consistency.
That is why it is said that the core of speculative trading has long been established, and what we need to do is not to innovate, but to understand and execute. This is the difficulty of trading. Therefore, what the trading test is actually testing is a person's trading cognition and understanding of the market. If the cognition is wrong, it is impossible to escape the maze. The trader's entire trading career will be a continuous interweaving of hope and powerlessness, ultimately leading to their downfall. Only when the trading cognition is correct can they truly understand and execute, and eventually reach the end.
As the recent popular saying goes, it also applies to the trading field: you can never earn money beyond your trading knowledge range, unless you rely on luck. But the money earned through luck often ends up being lost due to lack of skill, which is inevitable. Every penny you earn is a manifestation of your trading knowledge, and every penny you lose is due to a deficiency in your understanding of trading.
The biggest fairness in the speculative world lies in the fact that when a trader's controlled funds exceed their trading knowledge, there are 10,000 ways for the uncertain market trend to harvest them until their knowledge and fund curve match. In the long river of time, real trading knowledge is the only answer.
Non-farm payrolls data is about to bearish the gold market!Today, the U.S. February quarter-adjusted non-farm payrolls data will be released. Everyone knows that this data will play a key role in the gold market, because the performance of non-farm payrolls will directly affect the fundamental sentiment, which will determine the direction of the gold market in a short period of time.Does the non-farm payrolls data to be released today benefit the gold market or suppress the gold market?Let us make a bold prediction.
On Wednesday, the announced value of ADP employment in the United States in February was 242,000, the previous value was 119,000, and the forecast value was 200,000, while the actual announced value of 242,000 was much higher than the previous value and the forecast value. To a certain extent, it shows that the U.S. economy is strong and supports the dollar, thereby suppressing the gold market.
On Tuesday, Fed Chairman Powell's hawkish speech suppressed the gold market. However, after Fed Chairman Powell mentioned on Wednesday that the rate of interest rate increases in March depends on the data, the number of initial jobless claims in the United States released on Thursday was 210,000, higher than the previous value of 190,000 and the forecast value of 195,000, reflecting that the tight job market in the United States has still not eased, causing the market's expectations of the Federal Reserve raising interest rates by 50 basis points in March to cool down, US bond yields fell sharply, and the dollar was dragged down, which benefited the gold market.
And today's non-farm payrolls data show that the market expects the number of new jobs to be 205,000, compared with the previous value of 517,000. Judging from the ADP data guidance, the non-farm payrolls data show that the market expects the number of new jobs to be higher than the expected value of 205,000, and the number of initial jobless claims in February remained at a comparable level. Although the number of people applying for unemployment benefits at the beginning of the week was as high as 210,000, overall, the number of new jobs in the month will not have much impact, so I think the non-farm payrolls released today will be higher than the expectation of 205,000, thereby suppressing the gold market.
It should also be noted that the position of SPDR, the world's largest gold ETF, decreased by 3.47 tons to 903.15 tons on Thursday, a new low since the end of January 2020, suggesting that institutional and professional investors are still inclined to bearish the gold market.
It can also be seen from the trend of gold. Although gold has recorded a strong rise in the short term, the strong pressure above still exists. Therefore, the early rise of gold is most likely to be to prepare for non-farm payrolls data and reserve room for the decline of the gold market.Then everyone thinks that the non-farm payrolls data to be released today will benefit the gold market or suppress the gold market?Everyone is welcome to come and discuss.
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NFP: are you readyWhat is the impact of non-farm data on the gold market?
Non-farm data actually consists of two sets of data, the major non-farm data and the minor non-farm data. As these two sets of data reflect the development of the US economy, they not only affect the US dollar index but also often impact the ups and downs of the gold market.
Good non-farm data indicates a strong economy and is bearish for gold, while poor non-farm data is bullish for the gold market. The major non-farm data is composed of three indicators published by the US Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics: non-farm employment, the employment rate, and the unemployment rate. Compared to minor non-farm data, the major non-farm data more directly reflects the current economic situation in the United States. Non-farm data is usually released on the first Friday evening of each month, two days later than minor non-farm data. Investors typically wait for the release of the data and make judgments about the specific trend of gold prices to earn profits.
The impact of non-farm data on the gold market is mainly concentrated on these two points in time. The non-farm employment, employment rate, and unemployment rate can directly reflect the development and growth of the manufacturing and service industries in the United States. The better the economic development, the more likely it is to lead to a decline in gold prices, while poor economic development can lead to a certain degree of increase in gold prices.
Overall, non-farm data is just one set of data, so in practical operation, major and minor non-farm data can influence the trend of the gold market, but cannot truly determine the trend of the gold market.
Are you ready for the upcoming non-farm data release tomorrow?
Join the discussion channel to discuss together! Catching the opportunity is key.
A focus on the importance of support and resistance levelsSupport and resistance levels are the lost art of trading any market. In using support and resistance zones, I also use various MA's (Moving Averages) to assist me in finding the perfect entry. Now no trading strategy is completely waterproof. The market will act and react however it wants to, and a multitude of factors can drastically alter price action so take this advice at your own risk. I'm looking to provide a series of videos to assist me in providing this information in a more clear and more concise manner. Support is a zone at the bottom of a trend or series of trends that acts as a trampoline, or (support) to the upside. Resistance acts as a ceiling, or (resistance) that favors movements to the downside. Draw these zones using either a rectangle on higher timeframes or two horizontal lines. There's not a single price that can act as either support or resistance. To create a larger margin of error, we use these zones. These zones usually make up anywhere from 20-30 pips, depending on the symbol in question. Use the MA's to show you where the trend is heading. Bring in other factors such as market sentiment, geopolitics, economic statistics, news breaks, and anything else that can act as confluence in determining where the market may go next. I use anywhere from 3 to 5 levels of confluence before I even think about entering the market. NEVER impulse trade. I also suggest never trading pre-news. When a red folder news event occurs, the market can shake, or "whipsaw" causing price action to rubberband in either direction. These moves are aimed to close retail traders' accounts, and the market wants nothing more than to take your money.
More to come in a future idea - stay tuned.
Happy trading, and as always, use responsible risk management when trading any financial market.
Swindle
The Seven Major Factors Affecting Gold.Firstly, the demand for gold commodities affects the price.
In addition to its use as a daily decorative item, gold plays an important role in industry, occupying an irreplaceable position in industries such as dentistry, electronics, and others. As a hedge tool, the price of gold is influenced by demand, and the supply and demand relationship directly affects the price of gold. Changes in production will also affect the gold price, such as the demand for teeth in Japan and the demand for jewelry in India, both of which directly affect the monthly price trend of gold each year.
Secondly, the gold output determines the supply-demand balance of gold.
The production of gold-producing countries directly affects the supply-demand balance of gold. Currently, China has the largest gold production, followed by South Africa. Any unexpected event, such as strikes and other special situations, will have an impact on the gold price.
Thirdly, international interest rates and exchange rates directly affect the gold price.
Interest rates and exchange rates have a direct impact on the gold price, especially the trend of the US dollar. The international status of the US gold price directly determines the status of the country's international finance, and the price of the US dollar also directly affects the price of gold. As the US dollar, which also has investment functions like gold, it directly affects the gold price. If the investment trend of the US dollar is strong, gold investment will be relatively less, while the opposite is true for the US dollar in a weak investment market, where the role of gold as a reserve asset and a hedge will be stronger.
Fourthly, inflation stimulates the gold price.
When the consumer price index rises and inflation affects investments, gold is no exception. When the price fluctuation of a country is severe, and the inflation rate is high, and the price fluctuation is severe, people's panic will intensify. When purchasing power declines, people will worry about future security and choose to buy gold to hedge, which will cause the gold price to continue to rise. Although the current role of gold in fighting inflation is not as significant as before, high inflation will still stimulate the gold price.
Fifthly, political situations such as wars can stimulate the gold price.
Political instability promotes the rise of the gold price, and war causes a rise in commodity prices, leading to a rise in gold prices. Similarly, as a critical strategic material, the price of gold has a remarkable correlation with the price of oil. When the price of oil rises, the gold price rises as well. Conversely, when the price of oil falls, the gold price also falls.
Sixth, as a safe-haven demand, gold is the first choice
Due to the small total reserves, the price of gold is relatively stable, and because it has served as a currency, it is an excellent tool for hedging and hedging. As an important hedging tool, gold has strong political sensitivity. Jewelry in prosperous times, gold in troubled times, when the economy is in recession, investment will favor gold more, and it will also directly affect the price of gold.
7. Investors’ psychological expectations
The psychological expectations of investors are an important factor affecting the price of gold, but they usually do not act alone. Instead, they often change in conjunction with the variations in the aforementioned factors, amplifying or reducing the expected value of gold and causing significant differences in its price.
Following the footsteps of the market, respecting the market, and aweing the market is to follow the market
Pay attention to me and you will discover that trading is so simple and enjoyable!