Martin Pring/Marketwatch/6-18-2013

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“Our strategy has been to partially position the portfolio to take advantage of an expected commodity rally and to take a far more aggressive stance in this direction when more evidence in this direction comes to the fore. You might consider taking similar action.”

MK note: Often the contrarian and often ahead of the crowd, Martin Pring has always been one of my favorite technical analysts. Here via a series of charts, he explains why he believes commodity prices might be about to explode — quite a different scenario than the one being painted by a good many in the mainstream — and one that deserves a closer look.

David Mazza/State Street Global Advisors/6-18-2013

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“In conclusion, gold may see near-term volatility as the market reassesses the level at which gold should be priced, today. Drawdowns of this nature have occurred before, and with little change to the underlying supply and demand characteristics that underpin gold’s price, gold may see better days ahead. Based on historical performance, which isn’t necessarily predictive of future results, this period may serve as a buying opportunity similar to those in past cycles. In the meantime, investors may be well served by using a pullback in an individual asset, such as gold, to review their entire portfolio and look to construct one with a combination of the best expected future risk-adjusted returns.”

MK note: This advisory piece provides a balanced look at gold since the April price jolt. Mazza’s conclusions fit in with the kind of reasoning we have heard often from investors buying since the drop: This correction amounts to an opportunity for those who understand gold’s long-term portfolio role (as outlined briefly by Ron Paul immediately below), and want to build up their personal holdings. Mazza discusses gold’s “evolution” over the past several years in some detail, but skips over what I believe to be the most important and surprising evolutionary change of all — strong global demand and price appreciation under essentially disinflationary/stagflationary conditions.

CNBC Video/6-18-2013

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MK note: It’s always good to hear from Ron Paul. Here he offers a cogent, common sense argument in gold’s defense in which he states that the gold market is actually performing as it should. Says Paul, “As long as we have excessive spending, and excessive computerized money, we are going to see gold go up.”

China Daily/6-12-13

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MK comment: Worth the visit to see the photos. We keep saying it: Gold is divided into two realms — one governed by the supply of paper; the other by demand for the real thing. The East continues to capitalize on the price drop of mid-April.

“The twain were woven–gold on sackcloth–twined
Past any sundering till God shall judge
The evil and the good.
Now it is not good for the Christian’s health to hustle the Aryan brown,
For the Christian riles, and the Aryan smiles and he weareth the Christian down;
And the end of the fight is a tombstone white with the name of the late deceased,
And the epitaph drear: “A Fool lies here who tried to hustle the East.”

– Rudyard Kipling, The Naulahka (Jewel beyond price)

Arthur Laffer/Daily Reckoning/6-14-13

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“There was one person whose side I was on. Paul Volcker and I worked on going off gold — that was our task — but both of us shared a view that we needed to keep on the gold standard to provide discipline to the monetary authorities. And unfortunately, we lost the battle. They went off gold and you can see the consequences: the devaluation of the dollar back in the early 1970s.”

MK comment: This is the first indication I’ve seen that former Fed chairman, Paul Volcker advocated the gold standard. Arthur Laffer is a good source — a former chief economist at the Office of Management and Budget and proponent of the famous Laffer Curve on the relationship between tax rates and government revenue. A good read…..

In researching a recent article for USAGOLD News, Commentary & Analysis, we took note that there really wasn’t a solid, one-stop listing of the annual mintages for the world’s top five bullion gold coins — the American Eagle, the Canadian Maple Leaf, the South African Krugerrand, the Austrian Philharmonic and the Australian Kangaroo. To fill that void, we announce a new page — Annual Bullion Gold Coin Sales.

As an additional feature, we have compiled a bar chart that shows the mintages of all five mints together (shown below) — a first, we believe, for the internet. We are now in the process of assembling a similar page for silver bullion coin sales globally and it will be posted in the near future.

Bullion gold coin sales have become a bellwether for overall global physical demand. Below the American Eagle graph on our new page, you will find an additional link to monthly charts for both gold and silver Eagle sales. As a result, interested visitors can monitor current demand patterns readily.

We hope you gain from this new page.

MarketWatch (June 14th) by Mike Paulenoff —

All of which brings us to the present, where we see that the April 16, 2013, low at $1321.50 and the May 20, 2013, low at $1338.05 have straddled the May 2 date for an optimal cycle low. All of the action off of a potential double bottom that straddled the optimal timeframe for a major cycle low is, if nothing else, a major “warning signal” that the decline from the October 2012 high at $1796.30 is complete and that spot gold is bottoming in preparation for a surprisingly powerful advance.

From a cycle perspective, the main question is what characteristics the new cycle will display: Left (bearish) or Right (bullish) Translation? In that the cycle that just ended exhibited acute Left Translation, there is an overwhelming likelihood that the current cycle (starting May 2013) will alternate toward a definitively Right Translation.

With the new cycle about 22%-24% complete (since its May 2 optimal low date), some fireworks could start any hour now, which will inaugurate the initial up-phase of the new cycle. This period should be very supportive of gold prices at the very least, and possibly will propel gold — and the SPDR Gold Shares (GLD) — considerably higher during the next 6-8 weeks.

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JK Comment: Powerful technical analysis in support of the previous post

Posted June 14th, released June 13th – King World News

“The bottom line, and my message, is that investors have to be positioned, despite the pain, in order to capture the repricing of gold, which could be very, very sudden. And I’m not talking about $100. I’m talking about another $1,000 on the upside.”

Read the whole interview here.

JK Comment: We’ve often spoken of buying during times of relative quiet/price stability in our video series, and written about it in our newsletters. Sometimes, those who want to buttress their positions in gold look at range bound trading like we’ve seen and remark, “I’m going to wait to see what direction this is going to go.” If you agree with what Hathaway is saying, such a strategy might prove very expensive.