Sunday 22 January 2012

Wait for a real gold volatility shake out?

I only ask because before the weekend Bloomberg interviewed currency fund manager and gold bull Axel Merk.

He said: "When gold is volatile, we like it. I don’t like that the volatility is so low now. When volatility is high you have only folks who want to own gold for the long term. The momentum traders get out because they can’t handle the volatility.

"When volatility increases, we tend to go into gold. Last summer we took some profits as gold was going up, and we came back into gold a tad too early."

In this piece back in September 2011 Ben Traynor at BullionVault said: "Back then (2008) you had daily price swings – taken as the difference between the PM London Fix price one day to the next – coming in above 4%...above 5%...and, on two occasions (18 Sep. and 24 Nov.) even over 6%. In a single day."

This chart takes the LBMA gold fix daily percentage changes in 2011 (black dotted line) versus 2008 (red line). When I get a chance I'll try and work out how to calculate z scores and how to interpret them.



In the meantime I'm still waiting for a buying opportunity....