GATA’s Total Incompetence

The Entry Points

How or where or when did this theory become institutionalized in the gold community – “gold is the answer to the world’s problems”. We see numerous articles, like this one from the stopped clockers at King World News, consistently touting this theory/belief/(hope?).  They believe it’s mainly (only) gold which can extract us from this global debt and economic disaster. Where did this come from? GATA, which somehow became the respected leader of all gold bulls, almost seems to believe the world revolves around gold. And you can’t make this stuff up – GATA started in the Fall of 1998, writing about the gold market manipulation. Yet despite GATA’s weirdness and protestations, gold bottomed less than a year later, and rallied from around $250 in 1999, to around $1925 in 2011. So that whole time with the bear market in gold from the start of 1980 to the summer of 1999, GATA apparently sat around collecting “hard data” (evidence) of the manipulation, and they decide with less than a year left in the bear market to start informing the world. This group has done their best to make PMs a “fringe” asset class. Which is fine, because just as in 2011, a massive rally will suddenly make PMs less fringier, and allow for some profit taking for those who’ve used the big weakness to buy. But GATA wants us to believe gold should only go up. I asked them a question several years ago and amazingly never received a response. My inquiry was attempting to get an explanation as to how it was that both gold and the general commodity index (Monthly Nearby Goldman Sachs Index courtesy Moore Research Center, Inc.) had a major top in and around 1980. And then the index (and gold) generally traded in a range until they bottomed in and around 1999. There were certainly exceptions to this, but in general this was the situation, with some topping/bottoming earlier and some later.  So gold traded along with the commodity index. Therefore, numerous other commodities were manipulated for about 19 years, just to hold down gold also? Is there another explanation as to why so many commodities were generally down. Or maybe gold was down, because of the explosion in the 1970’s and the general love affair with financial assets in the 80’s and 90’s. There are several “reasons” for the bear market/trading range if you will – mainly due to supply and demand.

Is gold manipulated – of course it is, as are all markets. But there’s nothing new there, it’s been going on as long as there have been markets. But the belief that somehow gold needs special attention is absurd. I have a suggestion for GATA. Stop getting folks emotional about gold, resulting in buying it at the very worst times. Stop claiming that every selloff in gold is manipulation. Start educating people about the most appropriate times to buy gold. Like when the sentiment is awful and the weak hands have been selling to the strong hands persistently en masse for weeks, or months. But that’s when GATA is usually the busiest with their press releases which only scares people into believing it’s hopeless to buy gold. And when gold is soaring is when GATA becomes boisterous about “commercial signal failures”, etc. Like last August, GATA leader Bill Murphy timed the top beautifully in this interview. But gold will have its’ day again certainly. And despite GATA’s total incompetence, gold will help many people to increase their wealth (only when bought well).

About

Trader Scott has been involved with markets for over twenty years. Initially he was an individual floor trader and member of the Midwest Stock Exchange, which then led to a much better opportunity at the Chicago Board Options Exchange. By his early 30’s, he had become very successful in markets, but a health situation caused him to back away from the grind of being a full time floor trader. During this time away from markets, Scott was completely focused on educating himself about true overall health and natural healing which remains a passion to this day. Scott returned to markets over fifteen years ago where he continues as an independent trader.