By David Galland, Managing Director, Casey Research
Today I’d like to share a couple of thoughts on the matter of the correction in commodities about which we have been so vocally warning, and which has now occurred.
After having written in early April about the possible market response to the end of QE2, specifically about it knocking the legs out from under the overbought precious metals and other commodities, the metals continued higher, causing some readers to express concern that we had led them astray. And any number of analysts opined that the market had already priced in the end of QE2 and thus, even after Bernanke’s press conference, had decided it was go, go, go for higher commodity prices.
Yet, I think it is always a mistake to credit “the market” with any real predictive value. Reactive, yes. Predictive, no. Benjamin Graham had it right when he first penned the profile of Mr. Market as being a maniac, as likely to overpay for an asset as he is to sell too soon.
Put another way, if Mr. Market were actually in possession of a crystal ball, then gold would already be at $2,000 and silver at $75, and higher – because that’s where the underlying fundamentals of the economy will eventually drive them. Just not quite yet.
So, what do I think about the current sell-off? First off, it was way overdue, and anyone who wasn’t leveraged to the wrong side of the sell-off and who had built some cash should be thrilled that it has happened.
Silver, in particular, has been hammered – down over 30% at one point. Now that’s what I call a proper correction. Is it safe to go back into the water? I have to believe that the speed and depth of the sell-off makes it all the more likely that we’ll see a pretty quick bounce back.
While no one can know when, or perhaps because no one can know when (and we still have yet to see the actual economic consequences of the end of QE2), my suggestion would be to start buying in weekly or bi-monthly tranches of somewhere between 25% and 33% of the total cash you intend to reinvest in the metals and related investments. Already, the metals appear to stage something of a comeback, but that doesn’t mean it’s all blue sky from here.
By buying in tranches, you might not hit the exact bottom – but trying to hit the bottom is a fool’s game.
If you didn’t raise cash as the metals spiked higher over the month of April, or even paid up for gold, silver etc., don’t kick yourself (unless you were leveraged to the upside, in which case I can only empathize and wish you luck). Even if you paid $50 an ounce for your last ounce of silver, you will come out just fine in the end, because the monetary system of the U.S., and the world, is corrupt and degraded beyond redemption. It will falter and likely fail, and in time everyone will be scrambling to pick up their precious metals at substantially higher prices.
We’ll have more on this topic, and on what the future holds, in the brand-new edition of The Casey Report, which will be released this week. Renowned financial experts like John Williams of ShadowStats, James G. Rickards, Mike Maloney and others give their take on what to watch for. You can read it fresh off the press with your risk-free 3-month trial, with full money-back guarantee.
