Briefly: In our opinion speculative short positions (full) in gold, silver and mining stocks are justified from the risk/reward perspective. We are keeping the stop-loss levels at their current levels, which means that we are effectively keeping some gains locked in and at the same time we’re allowing the profits to increase.

Gold moved a little higher yesterday only to disappoint in the following part of the session. Gold stocks plunged without looking back. The decline continues — will it end soon?

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Our yesterday’s comments remain up-to-date:

Gold moved decisively lower last week and the final closing price of the week was only $2 higher than the lowest weekly close of the entire 2011-today decline. The previous lowest weekly close formed on Nov. 28 2014 at $1,165.80 and last Friday gold closed at $1,168.20. If gold closes just a little lower this Friday, we’ll have a breakdown in terms of weekly closing prices with very bearish implications for the following weeks.

It could be the case that gold bottoms in the May — June time frame close to the $1,000 level.

On a short-term basis, we see that gold dropped sharply and significantly on Friday. The volume was high, so it doesn’t seem that the decline was a fake move. Naturally, we could see some sideways trading here (gold is already moving a bit higher today, which is in tune with the above) as gold is likely to take a breather, but it doesn’t seem likely that the decline is over yet.

Gold remains in a declining trend channel and its likely to continue declining without a bigger counter-trend upswing until reaching our next interim target level based on the previous major lows.

Gold moved a little lower yesterday but we would not be surprised to see a small rally in the coming days, which would not take gold above the declining trend channel and thus would not change the bearish outlook.

Since not much changed in the silver market (the medium-term outlook remains bearish), we will move right to the mining stock sector.

The HUI Index moved lower once again and is even closer to its 2008 and 2014 lows, which has bearish implications as it increases the odds of a confirmed breakdown below them. Our yesterday’s comments remain up-to-date:

Gold stocks plunged sharply on Friday and are now well below their 2013 lows. It seems that they are back in the decline mode and their previous outperformance was indeed a very temporary phenomenon, as we expected. Once miners move below their 2008 and 2014 lows at about 150, we’ll likely see a slide below 120, perhaps even (very temporarily) below 100. Our target area in this range remains up-to-date.

On the above chart we see that the gold stocks’ previous outperformance didn’t invalidate any trends — the decline remains in place and the outlook remains bearish.

Interestingly, given the current value of the HUI to gold ratio, the size of its decline on Friday and the fact that we are likely to see more declines in the coming weeks, it seems likely that the ratio will move below the previous 2000 and 2014 lows. In other words, gold stocks will quite likely be cheaper relative to gold than they were at any point during this entire bull market. It seems that we will have an extremely favorable buying opportunity in the following months — it’s definitely the right time to be paying attention to what’s going on in the precious metals market.

The XAU Index (that includes both gold stocks and silver stocks) is already extremely close to its 2008 and 2014 lows. Only a little more weakness is needed for this index to break below these lows and to move even lower. The next major support is very low — close to the 42 level — so there will be significant downside if the breakdown is confirmed. It will be critical to watch the situation develop in the upcoming weeks and react to breakdowns and their confirmations.

Overall, yesterday’s session confirmed what we wrote previously .

Summing up, the precious metals sector moved much lower on Friday and it seems that it was another step in the current true direction of the market. We are likely to see a small corrective upswing here, but it doesn’t seem that we will see a more visible correction until we see gold close to its 2014 low. Gold stocks are now once again underperforming gold, which serves as a confirmation that the correction is over and the decline will now continue.

Even though the size of the profits on the current short position may suggest that’s it’s worth taking them off the table (we opened the short position on Jan. 23 when gold was at about $1,300), it seems that the risk/reward ratio still favors keeping the position open as it doesn’t seem that the decline is over. Even though gold has already fallen significantly, it’s still likely to decline even more in the coming weeks and it is this outlook that makes us think that the short position remains justified at this time.

To summarize:

Trading capital (our opinion): Short positions (full) in gold, silver and mining stocks with the following stop-loss orders and initial (!) target prices:

Gold: initial target level: $1,135; stop-loss: $1,234, initial target level for the DGLD ETN: $85.48; stop loss for the DGLD ETN $65.45

Silver: initial target level: $15.10; stop-loss: $17.23, initial target level for the DSLV ETN: $74.05; stop loss for DSLV ETN $48.36

Mining stocks (price levels for the GDX ETN): initial target level: $17.13; stop-loss: $21.17, initial target level for the DUST ETN: $23.49; stop loss for the DUST ETN $11.35

In case one wants to bet on lower junior mining stocks’ prices, here are the stop-loss details and initial target prices:

GDXJ: initial target level: $22.13; stop-loss: $27.38

JDST: initial target level: $14.58; stop-loss: $7.10

Long-term capital (our opinion): No positions

Insurance capital (our opinion): Full position

You will find details on our thoughts on gold portfolio structuring in the Key Insights section on our website.

As always, we’ll keep our subscribers updated should our views on the market change. We will continue to send them our Gold & Silver Trading Alerts on each trading day and we will send additional ones whenever appropriate. If you’d like to receive them, please subscribe today .

Thank you.

Przemyslaw Radomski, CFA

Founder, Editor-in-chief

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