GLD: No Particular Place To Go

but it had better move one way or the other pretty soon, as it is running out space to go.

I have DGP (gold double-long ETN), which I have since last year (I accumulated over several months). I can say two good things about my holding gold via this ETN: 1) it is up 15%; 2) it never dipped below my average price. Beyond that, it's been very frustrating, particularly when other commodity stocks that I own have gained at least 70% this year.

Let's look at the chart of GLD (chart pattern is the same as DGP, different scale). This is a 1-year daily chart. It looks like it is still forming a more or less symmetrical pennant, fast running out of space to run. Other technical indicators - RSI, stochastic - are also running out of space. MACD is flat-lining, and volume has decreased significantly.

A pennant formation is usually a continuation pattern, and tends to break in the direction before the pennant is formed. In the case of GLD, that direction is up. The target price of the pennant, I learned, is the length of the "flag pole" added to the place of the breakout; if it breaks out upward from $95, add the flag pole length of about $30, and you get $125. Should it break down from, say $92, then it could go below the November 08 low of $68.


Gold bugs decry manipulation by central banks and gold dealers (many of whom happen to be Treasury Primary Dealers also). I do understand their chagrin. On many days, spot gold price is high before the U.S. stock market opens, and as soon as the market opens the gold price is slammed down (like it happened today 8/26/09). Oh well. This is my "disaster insurance" holding which happens to take up 1/5 of my portfolio. I just have to make more money elsewhere...