Jerry Aguirre

Introduction to Trading Gold A FOREX.com Educational Guide

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educational guide FOREX.com is a registered FCM and RFED with the CFTC and member of the National Futures Association (NFA # 0339826). Forex trading involves significant risk of loss and is not suitable for all investors. Spot Gold and Silver contracts are not subject to regulation under the U.S. Commodity Exchange Act. *Increasing leverage increases risk. Contents 1 So everyone’s talking about trading gold. What is it all about? 3 Factors that influence gold’s price 5 What is the correlation between gold and the U.S. Dollar? 7 Gold trading strategies 11 Trading gold with FOREX.com So everyone’s talking about trading gold. What is it all about? Human beings have long valued and treasured gold for its inherent luster and malleability. In fact, gold has been used in human commerce since the societies of the ancient Middle East over 2,500 years ago, making it the oldest form of money still recognized today. Gold’s long track record as a store of value despite wars, natural disasters, and the rise and fall of great empires means that it is generally seen as the ultimate “safe-haven” asset. While gold has generally held its value for centuries, traders’ interest has waxed and waned in recent years. From the early 1980s until the early 2000s, there was little interest in trading safe￾haven gold amidst the strong, stable economic growth and high-flying stock markets. As a result, gold generally consolidated between $300/oz and $500/oz for twenty years, from 1982-2002 Interest in gold grew slowly through the 2000s before exploding with the onset of the Great Financial Crisis in 2008. Gold prices rose in sympathy, hitting an all-time high above $1900 in late 2011. In this guide, we will discuss the major forces that drive gold prices, along with some ideas for trading strategies and some of the most common methods for trading gold. Factors that influence gold’s price Gold is one of the most difficult financial assets to value. Gold is similar to a currency like the U.S. dollar or the euro because it is durable, portable, uniform across the world, and widely accepted; however, unlike these more commonly traded currencies, gold is not supported by an underlying economy of workers, companies, and infrastructure. In other ways, gold is more similar to a commodity like oil or corn because it comes from the ground and has standardized physical characteristics. Unlike other commodities, though, the price of gold often fluctuates independently of its industrial supply and demand 10% In fact, only about 10% of the world’s gold is used in industry: primarily in electronics, due to its conductivity and anti￾corrosive properties. 90% The rest of the world’s gold is either made into jewelry or held for investment purposes. Because of this dynamic, the emotions and behaviors of traders tend to drive major trends in the yellow metal. With gold more than any other asset, traders seem to be polarized between diehard “gold bugs” who believe that gold should be worth $10,000 an ounce because central banks around the world are debasing their currencies and bearish traders who assert that gold is a “barbarous relic” of the past that should be worth closer to $100. As the chart above shows, the gold bugs’ view developed into a bit of a mania back in the mid- and late-2000s, though the more recent drop suggests gold may be losing some of its previous luster. GOLD AND U.S. INTEREST RATES Historically, one of the most reliable determinants of gold’s price has been the level of real interest rates, or the interest rate less inflation. If you think about it, this relationship is straightforward. When real interest rates are low, investment alternatives like cash and bonds tend to provide a low or negative return, pushing investors to seek alternative ways to protect the value of their wealth. On the other hand, when real interest rates are high, strong returns are possible in cash and bonds and the appeal of holding a yellow metal with few industrial uses diminishes. One easy way to see a proxy for real interest rates in the United States, the world’s largest economy, is to look at the yield on Treasury Inflation Protected Securities (TIPS) One of the biggest points of contention for gold traders is on the true correlation between gold and the U.S. Dollar. Because gold is priced in U.S. Dollars, it would be logical to assume that the two assets are inversely correlated, meaning that the value of gold and the dollar move opposite to one another. In layman’s terms, it takes fewer dollars to buy an ounce gold when the value of the dollar rises, and it takes more greenbacks to buy an ounce of gold when the value of those dollars is lower. Unfortunately, this overly simplistic view of the correlation does not hold in all cases. The chart below shows the rolling

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