Huge Impact of Low Open Interest in the USDX
Last week, the USD Index stole the spotlight. It truly soared. But… Very few people are actually long.
Last week, the USD Index stole the spotlight. It truly soared. But… Very few people are actually long.
It’s remarkable how some technical techniques work over and over again.
De-dollarization, the BRIC countries are destroying the USD, right?
The USD Index is one of the key markets and it looks like a major shift just happened in it.
Yes, all of them have something to do with gold price and mining stocks…
With over two decades-worth of experience in the precious metals market, this is where I focus my investment and trading efforts. In the future I see great investment potential in the AI sector as well as in sectors related to mental healthcare.
The basis of my portfolio management style is a core-satellite approach. There’s a big “core” section of the portfolio that I call the “investment part”, and a smaller “satellite” section that I call the “trading part”.
There’s also an additional “insurance part”, where I include physical bullion. It serves as insurance against things like World War 3, collapse of a significant part of the financial system, etc. (i.e., so-called systemic risk). That’s the money that is used to buy gold that one hopes will never be useful.
In the investment part of the portfolio I’m not only choosing between being invested vs. being in cash - I’m also choosing which parts of the precious metals sector to focus on. I can’t promise any kind of performance, but based on theory and practice, much can be gained thanks to moving from mining stocks to silver and vice-versa at the “right” times. The key is being able to detect when those right times are.
In the trading part of the portfolio, I’m either long or short gold, silver, and/or mining stocks (seniors or juniors). At times, I’m switching from one part of the precious metals market to another in order to magnify gains thanks to changes in relative valuations. For example, I can enter long positions in miners at the beginning of a given rally, when they tend to move the most, and switch to silver close to the middle of the move, as silver tends to catch up with a vengeance in the final part of the move.
Instead of picking individual mining stocks, I usually focus on timing the entire sector and selecting a part of the sector (gold/silver/senior miners/junior miners) that’s likely to perform best for a given type of move (rally/decline). This means that some might prefer to combine my Gold Trading Alerts with the premium analyses of another professional who focuses on mining stock selection. It’s all a matter of choice, of course. I’m personally often using ETFs for my trades in order to simplify the trades, make them quicker, and keep the intra-sector diversification.
My analyses put big weight on how the price performs given how it “should” perform in normal circumstances. If the price moves too much or too little, it’s often a meaningful indication of the upcoming move. The above tells us in which way the market really wants to move. This can confirm or invalidate more regular technical techniques like price/volume formations, trendlines, indicators, turning points, and many others.
I’m using the above relative strength analysis for the analysis of news and the relative strength of different markets that are correlated, and where it’s likely that one of them impacts the other. On a side note, it’s much more efficient to estimate whether the price reaction was adequate, than to try to guess what a given piece of news will be.
In the case of the precious metals sector, the links that I’m using most are the ones between gold and the USD Index, gold and silver, gold and mining stocks, and mining stocks and the general stock market.
I could go on explaining the myriad of techniques I use, but nothing will be as good as seeing me apply them in practice. I’m putting my strategy and analysis into my Gold Trading Alerts, and I’ll be honored if you consider subscribing to them. I’m also providing free analyses that you’ll find below.
The scope of the free analyses is not as big as the one of my premium publications, and they don’t include trading details, but they should help you see - at least in broad terms – what I’m doing. If you find them useful, I encourage you to try the premium version – that’s where you can really see how useful my approach can be.
Hi, I’m Przemysław Radomski, but please feel free to call me PR. My personal story involves a hard lesson learned. I’ll also let you know what I can do for you.
My adventure with investments began when I was 17 and I received an inheritance, which I then saw as sizable. Knowing I couldn’t waste it, I focused my educational efforts on gaining financial knowledge, even though I had previously been more inclined towards engineering. Studying investment banking at university served the goal I had set for myself.
It might have been overkill to choose advanced volumes on financial markets from the library shelves, but it was simply hard for me to deny myself the pleasure of learning from the best and most well-known investors. I spent most of my free time reading online precious market analyses, and before even graduating, I already had the knowledge required to find errors in the “premium” analyses of other authors. I rounded it all off with a CFA charter and a PhD in economics.
Practice was the key to acquiring more investment knowledge. I had a choice: either work on my own and continue my earlier research, or work for an investment bank. The latter wasn’t really an option as it would require me to surrender my personal life without compromise. Instead, I set up my own business, worked on my own terms, and shared my knowledge about the precious metals market with investors. In the following years the business flourished, and its array of offerings was enriched by many products and services – the key one being a newsletter featuring my opinions on gold, silver, and mining stocks.
Sadly, each business has its lean years – the multi-year stagnation in the gold market resulted in a decline in interest in precious metals, and by extension, in the products of my company. The worsening business environment impacted revenues but not my motivation to work. Instead of complaining, I began preparing for better times and to reap the fruits that stagnation offers – a great boost to returns thanks to starting with obtaining one’s long-term investments at exceptionally low price levels. To make it as easy as possible for investors to seize the opportunity, and after many months of hard work, I formed my own investment fund.
To my utmost surprise, the benefits of the fund (and the managed futures service that I launched in the meantime) were completely different than I expected them to be.
Let me start by saying that the fund’s ultimate performance was a disaster.
It wasn’t a disaster because I didn’t know my craft. I put in countless hours into preparation, including hundreds of hours (and months of work with a dedicated specialist) just to optimize the portfolio rebalancing technique.
It was a disaster because despite mastering multiple technical details, I forgot about one aspect of the whole endeavor – myself.
Let’s take a step back from the story. Investing and trading isn’t that difficult in theory. It’s difficult in practice, because it requires the ability to stick to logic and not give in to emotions. No amount of knowledge will prepare someone for the emotional rollercoaster of the market.
One of my core strengths is the ability to focus on logical facts and analyze a situation without emotion. My secret is that I don’t attach a lot of importance to my money or derive much pleasure from owning things. Money is useful, but what really matters to me is what kind of person I am, the quality of my relationships, and how I’m doing in realizing my why (To provide people with solutions to help them grow, be happier, and make the world a better place.).
The above allowed me not to follow the factors of greed and the fear of losing money, and ultimately got me great results in my investments and trades. Paradox? Yes. But it helped me and many others grow a lot of capital.
I might not be motivated by capital on its own, but I’m highly motivated to do a great job, if I commit to it. That job is to provide a great investment newsletter with successful investment/trading calls.
And here’s the key thing about managing capital for others and myself. While I might not attribute great importance to my own capital, I deeply care about other people and I know that their capital is important to them (even small losses generate a lot of stress). And it was this care about other people that clouded my – otherwise clear and unemotional – overview of the markets. In other words, one of my core strengths no longer applied when I managed the capital of others.
The damage wasn’t limited to just the fund – the period when the fund was operational was the worst performance period of my life. It affected my personal finances, which were in the fund, and it affected the efficiency of my investment newsletter. It also affected my personal life, but that’s another story.
This time the “care paradox” didn’t work in anyone’s favor. The Hedge Fund Owner Who Cared Too Much might be a good title for a book about that period of my life.
So, what did I do next? I did what I do best. I analyzed. The situation, the history… and myself. I realized that I had it all backwards. If I was to grow the newsletter business into something bigger, I had to align it not only with “what’s profitable”, but with what’s in tune with myself.
After closing the fund, I decided not to manage capital for others ever again. That’s just not me. I returned to the newsletter business model, while starting a journey of self-discovery and self-creation. My performance improved practically immediately, which only confirmed that I made the right choice. Focusing on self-growth proved to be very beneficial to everyone – I’m writing this in October 2022 and, so far, all of my 2022 trades have been profitable.
An important part of my self-discovery was in determining my why and my values (Love, Freedom, Justice), and building a very strong foundation in alignment with the Stoic philosophy. I built it not only for myself and those close to me, but also for the business that I planned to lead. I wanted to create a business that wasn’t just focused on “making more money”.
I started my newsletter business, Sunshine Profits, to share with others what I excelled at – investing and trading the precious metals market. Now, after many years, I could help others in something else I excel at - running a successful newsletter business.
Also, I knew what the industry lacked and where it’s problems lay:
I figured that the best way to proceed would be by building an entire platform around what really works for investors, traders, newsletter authors, and educators. All with Love, Freedom, and Justice in mind, and all of it with the goal to provide people with solutions to help them grow, be happier, and make the world a better place.
That’s how Golden Meadow was born.
Earlier I wrote that the benefits of launching my fund were completely different than what I had expected them to be.
The key benefit was that thanks to this Kensho experience, I discovered my life’s mission, and - to a considerable extent - myself. It got me what I needed instead of what I wanted. It was thanks to this that I ultimately put my thoughts into creating a new platform that could transform the way in which people connect and interact with each other in the investment realm.
It’s said that Zeno of Citium, a wealthy ancient Greek merchant, joked that when he suffered a shipwreck, he made a prosperous voyage. Indeed, it was this failure that led him to found the Stoic school of philosophy, one of the greatest intellectual movements in history. I’m too humble to compare myself to this great individual, but I do share his approach. It was when my fund sank that my journey turned towards prosperity.
Thanks for taking the time to get to know me a little better. If you have a specific request or question for me, please let me know by using this contact form.
Przemysław K. Radomski, CFA
Would you like to know how PR can help you make the most of your precious metals investments?
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