Peter Grandich on gold

The snippet below is taken from today's Peter Grandich Special Alert newsletter.

...I haven’t witnessed a more pronounced bearish mood in the gold market given the least amount of price decline since this secular bull market began five years ago. Not a day goes by where I don’t read yet another formerly bullish forecaster painting a gloomy outlook for gold for the foreseeable future.

The mood among retail speculators is so thick with pessimism you can cut it with a knife. Yet, here we sit this morning with gold still north of $650 and above key support of $640.

One shouldn’t simply discard this marked increased in bearishness. For starters, gold is now in the historically weakest seasonal period of May through August. It’s also been absolutely hammered – not only by aggressive central bank selling, but by a continuing pattern of strange selling on the Comex that almost always is concentrated around the 11 a.m. time frame. The fact that this is when most of the physical buying worldwide shuts down until later in the evening in Asia is no coincidence.

It’s easy to see why gold bulls like me may be scratching their heads wondering why the bullish boat has thinned out, especially when you read so much double-talk like we are currently hearing from a so-called gold expert on one of the most read gold bullion websites. This gentleman can not only talk well from both sides of his mouth, but I often wonder if he and I are looking at the same market?
Make no mistake about it; we remaining gold bulls are on the defensive until such time that gold breaks above the all-important $700 level. Gold must hold above $640 or we are all but certain to see a test of $600 or even $575. (Please put down the gun).
But even if that were to occur (though extremely unlikely), the fundamentals remain solid for gold and by sometime in 2008 (if not sooner), we should be testing the old highs of around $875.

I continue to like the bullish side of silver, platinum, palladium, uranium and cobalt. I’m now firmly on the bearish side of most base metals.