Gold, silver, and mining stocks moved higher once again yesterday and the former even managed to move above the declining trend channel. Breakouts are bullish and thus the outlook for gold improved significantly… Or did it? Gold’s price in terms of the euro and gold’s relative performance to silver and mining stocks make replying to the above question quite easily. Looking at the relative price moves on a day-to-date basis doesn’t provide any interesting implications, but who says that it’s the only way in which one can examine them?

Let’s move right into the charts, starting with the gold chart.

Another day, another breakout in gold

Yesterday’s upswing, as encouraging as it may have appeared, was nothing extraordinary. Yes, the price of gold moved above the upper border of the declining trend channel, but the same was the case just several days ago and the breakout was invalidated shortly as gold moved back below $1,290 shortly.

Breakouts need to be confirmed, before they can be viewed as important. If they are not, and are invalidated instead, they become bearish signs. We have just seen an example of this phenomenon in the gold market, and this should make us particularly suspicious to another attempt of gold to move above the declining resistance. This is especially the case since gold moved higher on low volume. Yesterday’s breakout did not represent a fierce battle between bears and bulls that was won by the latter. It was more of a pause during which both sides were hesitating. Consequently, there are no bullish implications of yesterday’s upswing in gold.

This is especially the case if we consider the situation in gold in terms of the euro.

The RSI indicator based on this version of gold’s price has recently indicated a local top by moving above 70 and then back below it. With the exception of early 2016, this signal meant that a bigger decline was starting. We saw a small move higher since this signal became visible, but it’s not close to the sizes of the declines that we saw in analogous cases. Consequently, if history is to rhyme, we could expect gold to fall further in the short run.

Silver’s subtle outperformance

The size of the silver rally doesn’t seem significant at first sight, but the size of the volume in silver suggests that we may have seen something important. It’s not spectacular, but it is big if we compare it to the size of the volume in gold. The yellow metal moved higher on low volume, but what we see above is rather average. Could it be the case that the silver price action is somehow meaningful in relation to gold?

To answer this question, let’s take a look at the chart that features them both at the same time.

On a day-to-date basis, it may not appear significant, but if we consider the last 5 trading days, we’ll see that gold is lower than it was, gold stocks are lower than there were and that they underperformed gold, whereas silver is more or less where it was before.

This means that silver has indeed outperformed gold, while gold stocks underperformed. The signal is not as clear as if we had seen this kind of outperformance and underperformance on a single day, but it’s definitely meaningful.

As a reminder, silver’s outperformance and mining stocks’ underperformance is one of the gold and silver trading techniques that provides bearish signals right before declines.

This brings us to the analysis of mining stocks.