Avoid regret: accumulate gold bullion now

All markets have various factors pushing them. As a contrarian investor, you want to look at taking profits during periods when investor sentiment has become extremely bullish, and accumulate positions as investor sentiment gets too pessimistic.

Why are these turning points?

If everyone is bullish, then there is little new money left to pile into an investment. Conversely, when everyone is bearish and has sold their holdings, there’s very little selling pressure left, which creates a floor—at least over the short term.

Ultimately, the fundamentals of the market will come through, but the gyrations and oscillations are driven by investor sentiment.

Take gold bullion, for example. I recently read a very interesting article stating that currently, 18 out of 31 Wall Street analysts expect gold bullion to fall this week, continuing their negative investor sentiment outlook on the precious metal. As of the end of October, hedge funds held the lowest level of long positions in gold bullion since July 9. (Source: “Gold Bears Persist as Prices Near Year’s Low on Fed,” Bloomberg, November 29, 2013.)

Both the short-term prediction by analysts and the long-term forecast by hedge funds are expecting gold bullion to remain weak. It’s interesting to note that we are now getting a convergence in investor sentiment over a variety of timeframes. It’s also interesting that July was the last time investor sentiment was this low.

So what happened to gold bullion prices before July and the months immediately after?

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