Here’s something I wrote at TSI last April:

“In a market environment where debt and equity financing is often either expensive or difficult for a junior gold (or silver) miner to obtain, a streaming deal can look attractive. This is a deal whereby a miner sells the right to purchase part of its future production at a very low price (usually no more than $400/oz for gold) in exchange for an upfront payment, with the upfront payment generally being used to finance the development or expansion of a mine. The company buying the future production “stream” will typically be Franco Nevada (FNV), Royal Gold (RGLD), Silver Wheaton (SLV) or Sandstorm Gold (SAND).

While a “streaming” deal can look like a reasonable way for a junior miner to meet its short-term financing needs at the cost of reduced future profitability, the risk is that by entering into the streaming deal the junior miner has completely relinquished its opportunity to make a profit in the future. This is because most gold mines have slim profit margins after all costs are accounted for. Due to these typically-slim margins, a miner that agrees to sell 10%-20% of its future production to a royalty or streaming company at a nominal price could end up with nothing for its own stockholders even if it doesn’t encounter major operational problems. In effect, the mine could end up being operated solely for the benefit of the royalty/streaming company.

The upshot is: beware of junior mining companies that have entered into streaming deals. Before you invest in such a company, make sure that there will be plenty of money left over for the stockholders of the junior miner after the royalty/streaming company has taken its share and ALL costs are taken into account. And bear in mind that Franco Nevada, Royal Gold and Silver Wheaton have very high valuations for a reason. The reason is that they tend to get the better of these deals.”

I was reminded of this by the “streaming” deal announced by True Gold Mining (TGM.V) last week. TGM is a stock I’m long. The stock market is less concerned than I am about the negatives of streaming deals, but I wish that TGM’s management had opted for a different method of financing the construction of the Karma gold mine.

In the gold market, the Commercials are NOT the proverbial “smart money” with respect to forecasting price direction. If they were then they wouldn’t have been net-short gold futures, to one degree or another, during the entire 2001-2011 upward trend in the gold price.

The Commercials are also not the “dumb money” with respect to forecasting price direction. This is because, as a group, they do not bet on price direction. Instead, they generally attempt to make money on spreads and commissions, regardless of price direction. Furthermore and as previously explained, the Commercial position in the futures market is simply the inverse of the Speculative position. In order for speculators, as a group, to increase their long exposure and drive the price upward, the Commercials, as a group, MUST increase their short exposure. A rise in the Commercial net-short position to a high level is therefore a function of basic mathematics — a necessary offset to a rise in the speculative net-long position to an equivalent high level. We realise that this assessment has the disadvantage of being nowhere near as interesting as the idea that Commercial traders are conspiring to keep a lid on the gold price, but it has the advantage of being factually correct.

Recently, the relatively high speculative net-long position (and the offsetting relatively high Commercial net-short position) in gold futures has been acting as a bearish hook. The problem for the short-term bears who are ‘hanging their hats’ on the COT data is that while it is correct to view a sharp rise in the speculative net-long position as a sign that the market is short-term ‘overbought’ and vulnerable to a significant pullback, there are no absolute benchmarks when it comes to the COT sentiment indicator (that’s all it is: a sentiment indicator). So, although the recent peak of 166K contracts in the total speculative net-long position in Comex gold futures is high relative to where this indicator has been over the past year, it could be low relative to where this indicator goes over the next two months. It’s possible, for example, that a rally in the gold price to the low-$1400s within the next two months will be accompanied by a rise in the total speculative net-long position to 250K contracts. Imagine how bearish the COT-focused analysts will be if that happens!

Speculators, not commercial traders, drive price trends in the gold market. The proof of this is the simple fact that the speculative net-long position in gold futures almost always trends in the same direction as the gold price (an increase in the speculative net-long position almost always accompanies an increase in price and a decrease in the speculative net-long position almost always accompanies a decrease in price). It is therefore fair to say that in the gold market, speculators are price makers and commercials are price takers.

An example is the 2-week period ended 1st July 2014. During this period a definitive upward reversal in the short-term price trend coincided with a large increase in the speculative net-long position. Specifically, the price quickly rose from $1272 to $1328 while the speculative net-long position in COMEX gold futures jumped by about 80K contracts.

As dictated by basic arithmetic, the 80K-contract increase in the speculative net-long position during the 2-week period ended 1st July went hand-in-hand with an 80K-contract increase in the commercial net-short position. These changes in the speculative and commercial positions are two sides of the same coin. One would not be possible without the other.

In general terms, speculators, as a group, could never increase their long exposure to gold futures unless commercial traders (primarily bullion banks), as a group, were prepared to take the other side of the trade and increase their short exposure to gold futures, and speculators could never reduce their net-long position (or become net-short) unless commercials were prepared to reduce their net-short position (or become net-long). This means that those commentators who rail against the short-selling of gold futures by bullion banks and other commercial traders are effectively railing against the buying of gold futures by speculators.

Moving on, a superficial comparison of the gold price and the commercial net-position in gold futures could lead to the conclusion that the commercials are always on the wrong side of the market, except at short-term price extremes. For example, ‘the commercials’ were relentlessly net-long during the final six years of gold’s 1980-2001 secular bear market and have been relentlessly net-short since the beginning of gold’s secular bull market. Looking only at futures positioning could therefore lead to the impression that the commercials have lost a fortune trading gold, but such an impression would be wrong. The reality is that the bullion banks (the biggest commercial traders) generally don’t care which way the gold price trends, because they generally don’t make their money by betting on price trends. Instead, their goal is to make money regardless of price direction by taking advantage of spreads (for example, spreads between the cash and futures prices and spreads between different futures contracts) and the charging of commissions.

The following chart from Kitco.com shows how gold traded during three 24-hour periods: 4th August, 5th August and 6th August. The green line shows the 6th August trading and is the line in which we are interested.

Notice the near-vertical surge beginning at 8.00am NY Time on 6th August. This represents a sudden increase in buying from ‘out of the blue’.

When this type of price action happens in the opposite direction, that is, when a sudden increase in selling pressure causes a near-vertical price drop, it is always cited by some commentators as evidence of manipulation, but when the sudden price change or price acceleration is to the upside it is never cited as evidence of manipulation. Instead, it is supposedly due to gold’s bullish fundamentals coming to the fore. The logic (using the word very loosely) goes something like this:

1. Markets that are free of manipulation always move in synch with the fundamentals. (Reality: No, they don’t.)
2. Gold’s fundamentals are always bullish. (Reality: No, they aren’t. For example, gold’s fundamentals were bearish from mid-2012 through to mid-2013 and only turned unequivocally bullish in April-2014.)
3. Therefore, whenever the gold price falls it must be due to manipulation. (Reality: Two wrongs don’t make a right.)

The fact is that there are just as many sudden, ‘inexplicable’ price rises in the gold market as there are sudden, ‘inexplicable’ price declines, but the manipulation-centric bloggers and newsletter writers only tell you about the latter. Also, experienced traders know that these sudden and often-unpredictable price moves happen in ALL commodity futures markets.