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it has now failed at this level 4 times in the last few months. Is that a warning of trouble ahead ? Maybe Mnuchin and his elves can keep it up through to the Trump-Xi trade summit and maybe through to June's FOMC meeting. Meanwhile Asian,European and US data continue to disappoint. The next four weeks has plenty of potential for fireworks:

19-20/3 FOMC meeting
26/3 CEY AGM
27/3 Trump-Xi trade summit
29/3 Brexit
3/4 CEY Q1 Prelims

HQ is in Jersey.

The quote below is from Rick Rule not Rick Reid.

The quote is from Rick Rule

I haven't much time this week. But just read a few posts and heartily second both of yours. I think it was Rick Reid the billionaire mining investor who said :

"the cure for low prices is low prices"

Rebess i feel as though I have lent you my anxiety- you put it so well. Better times will return my friends.

While Centamin is still licking its wounds it's worth looking at other drivers of gold and gold stocks over the next few days.

Firstly GDX the ETF for major and medium gold miners bottomed in September at $17.28. GDX broke out and above its 4 month bullish channel on the same day that the Jan Comex gold option expired on 28/1. GDX closed 28/1 at $21.45 and gold that day $1303.

GDX now forming a second 10 day or so bull flag around $22.5-23.5. Next target $24.

Comex gold options expiry is tomorrow 28/2. Post the Jan Options expiry spot gold ran up $40 in 3 weeks which also helped the Centamin share price rally through Jan and three weeks of Feb.

Agreed repression it would be good to see some Director buying some shares here. I'm not sure that our CEO has bought any shares. His activity in the Directors deals box above over the last couple of years seems to consist of transfers of share options and some sales.

The late Harry Michael when he was CEO in 7/9/11 he bought 0.5m shares at around 105p p share. Two weeks later on 22/9/11 Josef bought 0.5m shares at 111p.

Today's price is even more of a bargain for the Directors to show confidence in Centamin with an investment.

I didn't buy at 136.75p the 9 month high on Friday nor would I sell down here now 38p below Friday's high. That's the whole market range for the last 11 weeks traded in just one day today !

The shorts, the algos and 3x leveraged ETF's like DUST have cleaned up today but the "news" can't be sold twice and the stops have been triggered.

Over the last 3 years anything below 100p has been a price point in the key buyer zone. Institutional investors like to trade on reporting days. Is it better to gamble short when the gold price is rising or pick up a few cheap shares at the day's lows ?

At 107p CEY was down -20.5%.

Surprising overreaction or understandable ?

In comparison the % decline on last May's production cut RNS 25/5/18 was -18.29% at the close.

We've only had 3 intraday closes of more than -20% since Centamin was listed. Today's decline is of a similar order of the -20.46% decline of 2/8/11 when the Q2 production was below forecast and blasting was restricted.

Bear in mind : the gold isn't lost it's still in the ground in Egypt and W.Africa. Owning gold miners at this stage of the economic cycle is still prudent. Gold is just $30-40 below the breakout level that has held since 2013. We've got Brexit, US-China trade and Basel 3 all to add to the mix in the next few weeks that should be gold positive.

Cowichan is it all part of softening up key large institutional shareholders ? In terms of an immediate temperature reading one day after the scoop Barrick is -0.97% on TSE, Newmont is +5.59% and Goldcorp is -2.04%. When the Newmont /Goldcorp deal was announced last month it got a distinctly muted reception vs Barrick/Rand merger.

Perhaps some major Newmont shareholders would rather join up with Barrick and ditch Goldcorp ?

At the very least the report out just before the Metals and Mining Conf will get the debate going which may suit Barrick just fine.They may even be able to make it friendly rather than hostile if major shareholders warm to the idea.

Hi Cowichan we live in interesting times indeed. It just shows how if a sector is unloved and scorned for long enough under a cloud of negative sentiment and a sideways gold price for 5 years everyone else has given up on the sector. Until the major constituents of the sector start to find value for themselves.

The largest gold co's still have a lot of debt on their balance sheets so they have to do stock not cash deals. But they need to do something now to replace their declining reserves and their minimal exploration budgets after the indigestion they inflicted on themselves with their last cycle mad buying spree with cheap credit much of which has been wasted.

They need to do this before gold breaks out above $1400 when these low share prices will be gone. They need to do this before the general stock market corrects in the next recession as then speculative hot money will come pouring back into gold and gold miners as a safe haven investment like 2009-2011 an the brief romance in H1 2016.

Just reading the Reuters report about the potential hostile deal shows you the sense of urgency going on under the radar in the major gold sector. If Newmont agreed to terms the Goldcore deal would lapse and Barrick would be liable to pay a $650m break fee. Barrick would likely want to sell non core assets in Australia to Newcrest to help reduce the net cost.

That's a lot of negotiating and scheming in a sector that few investors own at the moment. When will institutional and general investors take notice that something is brewing for the gold price, gold miners and the sector sentiment ?

As JIMBOWEN says below get above $1360 and take out the 6 year high of $1400 and things will likely get very interesting for those of us who have been patiently buying cheap.

As ever we're talking about the possible and the probable. My take is that the pool of geologists with 25 years operational experience is not large and they know their value in a sellers market. Like a striker for a Premier football team some of them will move regularly to advance their career and benefits.

Evidence here. Mark Morcombe was only with Acacia for 20 months before joining Centamin and he's only been here for 13 months. Endeavour is arguably a move higher on the gold mine greasy pole: 615k-695k oz forecast for 2109, 4 W.Af producing mines and 2 projects. Market cap CAN$2.37bn. The last COO of Endeavour was paid $1.1m salary in 2017.

Centamin pledged him 880,000 share options to vest in 2021 if he stayed with the company. His cv when he was announced seemed a good fit with experience in W.Af seemed ideal to help roll out Centamin's expansion.

If Morcombe was let go then wouldn't it be a good idea to announce your even better new "striker" for your team on the same day his departure was announced 21/2.

Another point of Interest is that Egyptian billionaire Sawaris's La Mancha Group is a major shareholder of Endeavour.

Has a rival mid cap just swiped our striker ?

You make a fair point. I was just talking about the relative recovery from their recent 2.5 year lows. Of course Centamin would also be boosted if it's own court case uncertainty was finally concluded for the good of all stakeholders which is precisely the proposition being made by Barrick for Tanzania and Acacia.

Using Acacia as the nearest comparable on the LSE to CEY with mines in W.Africa and similar production of around 500,000 oz per year, how is Centamin doing and what might happen next ?

Yesterday Centamin's +6.78% rise was the biggest since before the 25/5/18 production cut RNS. Yet ACA outperformed CEY on the day with a +12.8% rise. The outperformance can be explained by its 64% major shareholder Barrick reporting that it has a potential deal to resolve their Tanzanian tax dispute.

But ACA has actually been in full on recovery mode arguably one Qtr ahead of Centamin and I wonder whether after FY results CEY will start its own acceleration of both positive sentiment and price like ACA.

You see ACA and CEY both hit their 2.5 year lowest share price on 11/9/18. But look at what they respectively have done since:

ACA low 11/9/18 93.56p recovery to date at 263.8p +170.24p +182% in just 5 months

CEY low 11/9/18 84.74p recovery to date at 134.2p +49.46% +58.3% in 5 months

ACA got a number of positive developments right after it's low: the Barrick/Randgold merger, Fed less hawkish autumn comments which drove gold back through $1200 then $1250 and upward through $1300; a Q3 report which revised up FY forecast production to 500k oz despite the ongoing Tanzanian dispute. Overall sentiment turned strongly positive on ACA hence the +182% rally from September's low.

Is it now Centamin's turn to accelerate it's price recovery and positive investor sentiment ? What could make it happen ?

FY results clearing the way for solid production growth and expansion in 2019.
Rising gold price now with support above $1320 could arguably support a 7.5c FY Divi costing $86.7m out of the cash pile.
A firm commitment to a mine plan in W.Africa would likely delight all long suffering shareholders and bring in new investors.
Basel 3 is an admission from the central banks that physical gold with no counter party risk is actually their only real insurance asset at Tier 1. The US Treasuries and US$ have never looked so vulnerable in a world of gigantic debt levels.
Gold analyst Grant Williams video "Nobody cares" last year posited that speculative investor demand could finally snap the fragile paper precious metal pricing game. But judging by the fact central banks bought more physical gold last year than any year in the last 40, they obviously know something bad is coming our way. Might the central banks, especially China and Russia finally set the gold price free ?

Happy to hold Centamin.

Rank % from 2018 low to 1/2/19

1. CEY 40%
2. FRES 36 %
3. HGM 31.5%
4. GDX ETF 30.5%
5. HOC 29%
6. GDXJ ETF 26.75%
7. HUI ETF 26.3%
8. Gold 13.7%

Compared to gold's rally from 2018 low of $1161 of 13.7% CEY alone is the only major which has almost achieves x3 leverage to gold's recovery, with Fresnillo's +36% close. Note how CEY is comfortably ahead of both the GDX ETF which it is a junior constituent of and GDXJ where it is one of the largest weightings.

I would argue that the leading recovery performance of CEY is very encouraging as is the fact that it is leading both major ETF's which it is part of. For the last 3 months CEY has tended to have 3 to 5 days of intense progress and then it backfills and goes into a basing action waiting for the next trigger for the next step up. YTD we produced the whole range 107.3p low to 125.75p high in just 3 days 2/1-4/1.

Maybe we'll just have to be patient until 25/2 FY results for February's share price run or will Trump oblige us with something at his State of the Union address tonight.

In my opinion Centamin is well placed to move higher when it is good and ready.

Hi there goldgnome. Last week some posters on here wrote about their disappointment with the relative share price performance of Centamin. So let's look at the evidence.

Yes CEY was the laggard of all the LSE quoted gold co's last week rising a measly 1.5% vs peers
HGM +4%, ACA +4%, FRES +6%, HOC +9%. Gold rose +1.37% so normally in a gold uptrend all things being equal gold co's rise at least x2 the gold rise. They all did except CEY. Why is that ?

A few posters posited that there might have been a "big" seller of CEY stock in the week which suppressed the price. Firstly one would have to ask why sell now when gold is in uptrend and secondly the volume for YTD has been below the 3month average of 5.8m for 2/3 of days traded. So no unusual high volume footprint.

Looking over months is CEY lagging ? Despite our parochial focus on CEY most gold co's had some kind of production/profit downgrade in either Q2 or Q3 2018. So if instead of looking at last week's relative % move let's look at the % recovery from 2018 low. Leaving out ACA with its +108% recovery as special beneficiary of Barrick/Rand merger.

Compare % recovery from 2018 low incl gold & leading ETF's to give an Average index

See next post...

Thanks for your comments. I'm not on this blog for praise or to start fights or censor other posters. I am here to debate and to learn.Speaking for myself Sotolo should stay and not scuttle off again. Is that the third time ? I am not censoring his view, I am questioning it and questioning his analysis and judgement. He could become humble and learn rather than run away.

On Friday Sotolo could have written : Investing is humbling, I now realise that past is not prologue and that when I noted on here that "the trend is your friend" I should have made a clear mental note of the whole maxim: "the trend is your friend until it ends".

With hindsight I was wrong about my forecasts between September and November for the Centamin share price; the gold price and the dollar. I now know that they had changed even while I kept repeating my outlook."

But really Sotolo doesn't do humble. Oh no. " I made a fortune on the 45% CEY price crash and then bought back again when I was telling you the share price was stalling to go lower. Aren't I clever, Happy days. Have I told you before that I have 500k shares ?"

On Friday Sotolo could have said and backed up with empirical reasoning:

"CEY, other miners and gold have had a good run up since the Dec Fed rate rise, and we may be due a pullback for the same reason as last year. This week is the Chinese New Year Spring festival 4/2-8/2. With China on holiday the physical gold market is usually slow. Last year gold pulled back $30 to $1325 during that week and CEY eased 5.5p -3.4% to 154.15p.

However as I now know any pullback is likely to be modest as the trend is definitely up."

Best regards Sotolo

Friday evening and time to relax. Sotolo you've got some chutzpah.The OED definition of chutzpah : shameless audacity; cheek.

Remember how in Sept/Oct you told us that the CEY price was going back to 60p; that gold was going to "continue to go lower" - even when it had clearly already bottomed weeks before and had by then recovered $80 from the August low and today it's +$160; and thirdly you forecast that the dollar was going to carry on rising- it hasn't. In your latest trading advice you make no mention of your 0 out of 3 score on your previous advice.

In today's post you again rope in Uncertain as a fellow sage trader, but was that wise? It was Uncertain who advised when CEY was trading at 90p "I wouldn't buy here". What would either of you say to someone who took your advice and closed out and lost money on your advice ? That's when an investor blog becomes dangerous ground.

If in doubt then discretion is the better part of valour. Food for thought. But if you insist on giving trading advice in future at least add :

1) this is for entertainment purposes only. It is not financial advice.
2) my forecasting is as bad as the Federal Reserve
3) seriously consider doing the opposite of whatever I recommend

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-01-14/newmont-mining-buy-goldcorp-10-billion-deal-create-worlds-largest-gold-miner

is key is down to price history. Ever since the Comex paper gold market was used to drive the dollar gold price sharply down in 2012-2013 every single counter trend rally has failed between $1360 and $1393.

2014 first counter trend rally top $1393, 2nd rally top $1347
2016 rally top $1375 with 4 attempts to break out higher
2017 from rally top $1360 through to April 2018 x5 attempts to break out higher

Today US non farm payrolls data is due - a traditional day for hitting the gold price with large anonymous block Comex sales. Will today be any different ? Notably this is the first morning this week when the gold price is down -$4 at $1290.

Frankly a short-term pullback to $1280 manipulated or otherwise would be healthy for this gold rally. It would set up for a proper run at the first resistance level, the psychological round number $1300.

The list of key players forecasting gold to take out the five year gold high this year include Stan Druckenmiller, Ray Dalio, Gerald Celente and John Rubino.

Gold and gold stocks rally is not a mirage or a sucker's rally. We own the safe haven choice in times of uncertainty.The first week of 2019 have been the worst start to a year for general stocks in US since the Great Depression. QE, zero interest rates, huge additional debt, share buy backs, tax cuts, tariffs - none have cured let alone addressed the problems of 2008.

Gold's rally so far is a stealth one with much disbelief. The missing accelerant is a weak dollar. The US $ Index was one of the few winners in 2018 rising +4.57% vs peers. The index has held above 96.0 since 23/10/18 having tested that support once on 7/11/18.

To help US exports Trump has said he wants a weaker dollar. Will weak data and failed policies deliver it or will the Fed ?