At one point in history, the SPDR Gold Shares (NYSEArca: GLD) was the world’s largest ETF.
Courtesy of a massive gold bull market and the accompanying hysteria, GLD’s assets mushroomed to $77.5 billion. That was in August 2011.
Back then, the S&P 500 traded around 1,100. Gold traded near 1,900. How the roles have reversed (Gold at 1,100, S&P at 2,050).
The SPDR S&P 500 ETF (NYSEArca: SPY) is now $205 billion strong, while GLD amounts to ‘only’ $27 billion, the 12th largest ETF in the world.
This data may be of some use to contrarians on gold bugs.
In fact, back in December 2013 I used official data from iShares and State Street on the SPDR Gold Shares, iShares Gold Trust (NYSEArca: IAU) and iShares Silver Trust (NYSEArca: SLV) for very insightful sentiment analysis.
The data (tons of gold/silver held, and trading volume) helped me come to the conclusion that gold and silver were still miles away from a major low (view original SLV analysis or GLD analysis).
Unfortunately, iShares does not offer that data anymore (I send an e-mail every month to bug them, but it hasn’t helped).
Other sentiment data and technical analysis triggered a buy signal (sent to subscribers of the Profit Radar Report) for gold in November 2014 at 1,140 (111 for GLD).
We’ve been holding on ever since, but gold needs to surpass strong overhead resistance to give the preferred bullish scenario some teeth.
The fact that GLD has fallen out of favor with investors is a check mark on the bullish side of the ledger.
Simon Maierhofer is the publisher of the Profit Radar Report. The Profit Radar Report presents complex market analysis (S&P 500, Dow Jones, gold, silver, euro and bonds) in an easy format. Technical analysis, sentiment indicators, seasonal patterns and common sense are all wrapped up into two or more easy-to-read weekly updates. All Profit Radar Report recommendations resulted in a 59.51% net gain in 2013.
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