Alf Fields: Gold Correction is Over

Legendary gold analyst Alf Fields who Jim Sinclair looks to for TA expertise has called the end of the current gold correction which saw gold dip below its 200DMA.
Alf's latest thoughts are an absolute MUST READ!!

There is a strong probability that the correction in the price of gold has been completed. This article has four separate sections. They are:

1.    The Elliott Wave (EW) justification for thinking that the correction in gold is over.

2.    Why corrections happen in gold from a fundamental viewpoint.

3.    The extent to which manipulation affects the gold price.

4.    A possible “black swan” event that could trigger a gold price surge.

To achieve the EW target of $4,500 on the next upward move will require something to trigger substantial new buying of gold. What could that event be? By definition, it will be a surprise to all market participants, a “black swan” event. That doesn’t prevent us from making a guess.

One likely area from which problems could emerge with very large numbers are derivatives. The Bank for International Settlements produces a list of outstanding derivatives twice a year. The latest report can be found at: http://www.bis.org/statistics/otcder/dt1920a.pdf. This reveals that the total notional value increased from $601 trillion (with a “t”) at December 2010 to $707 trillion at June 2011. Nearly all of the increase was accounted for by interest rate contracts which now have a notional value of $553 trillion, some 78% of the total.

As we discovered in 2008, derivatives are benign until losses occur. Once losses emerged from credit default obligations, it was game on for the GFC. Interest rate derivatives protect banks from interest rate rises. Most banks borrow short but have large loan books at fixed rates for long periods. Thus a big rise in interest rates could trigger claims on these derivatives.

For the time being, rates seem to be locked at virtually zero in the USA, but this is not the case in Europe. Europeans are learning the lesson that rates rise when investors become concerned that the borrower can’t repay the amount borrowed, let alone the interest on the capital. When we drill down further into the BIS statistics at http://www.bis.org/statistics/otcder/dt21a21.pdf we discover that $219 trillion of the interest rate derivatives are denominated in Euros, compared with $170 trillion denominated in US Dollars.

If just 10% of the interest rate derivatives in Euro’s produce losses, the world’s banking system would be looking down the barrel of a loss of $22 trillion. That is enough to bankrupt the entire world’s banking system, something that the politicians of the world could not tolerate. What would a bail out of $22 trillion do to financial markets? What would it do to the gold price?

If it is not interest rates, there are $64 trillion of foreign exchange derivatives and a “mere” $32 trillion of credit default swaps outstanding that could produce “black swan” surprises.Read more: