Gold Miners ETF Inches Toward a Breakout

The Market Vectors Gold Miners ETF (NYSEArca: GDX), the largest gold miners ETF, has surged 12.3% over the past 90 days, a gain that is roughly 10 times better than that of the SPDR Gold Shares (NYSEArca: GLD) and other ETF backed by physical holdings of gold.

Year-to-date, GDX has climbed 21.4%, making it one of the best non-leveraged ETFs on the market, but even with those superlatives, GDX and other high-flying miners ETFs could more upside ahead of them. A lot more, in fact.

Citing Jonathan Krinsky of MKM Partners, Phil Pearlman notes on Yahoo Finance that for GDX “$27-$28 is the big resistance level to clear, and represents the neck-line of the pattern. A clean break above $28 would imply a measured move up to $36,which would be a 28% move above the breakout.”

GDX closed at $26.75 Thursday and last closed above $27 on July 11. The ETF has not managed a close above $28 since September 2013.

From my vantage, the miners have been hated since they began breaking down in 2012. The lower they go, the more maligned by those nursing losses in the individual names and the GDX. The combination of a chart that is becoming more constructive and the negative sentiment can make for a great combination and so I am watching Krinsky’s 28 level along with the price of gold that remains in the same no man’s land mentioned earlier in this space,” said Pearlman.

Pearlman is correct in asserting miners and ETFs like GDX have been unloved. That scenario gave way to a monster rally for GDX and friends early this year when miners entered 2014 with bearish sentiment so extreme it had not been seen since the early 1980s. [Rare Opportunity in Gold Miners]