With Wednesday’s gain of over 2%, the Market Vectors Gold Miners ETF’s (NYSEArca: GDX) is up more than 21% this year, cementing its status as one of the top-performing non-leveraged exchange traded funds to this point in 2015.
Buoyed a solid showing by gold, GDX has extended its January gains in February. GDX, the largest gold miners ETF, was one of the top non-leveraged ETFs last month a gain of 17%. The three-week period ending Jan. 16 represented the best three-week stretch for the ETF since it came to market over eight years ago. [January’s Best and Worst ETFs]
A look at GDX’s monthly chart highlights the potential for further upside for the ETF and its rivals.
“There looks to be a big 5 point broadening top pattern in play denoted by the numbers 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5. Price still looks to be tracing out the point 4 low. Price has recently rallied from its lows which looks to have set up a double bottom. Double bottoms generally don’t end downtrends so after this rally I expect price to come back down and bust the double bottom and puts in the final low. The Stochastic indicator is bullish but in weak territory. The Moving Average Convergence Divergence (MACD) indicator is trending up and looking bullish. Any move back down to new lows may set up bullish divergences. In fact, the recent low was accompanied by a bullish divergence,” writes Austin Galt for Market Oracle.
Gold’s solid showing this year has predictably benefited the miners, which are often hyper-sensitive to price fluctuations by the yellow metal. Said another way, the SPDR Gold Shares (NYSEArca: GLD) rejoining the list of the 10 largest ETFs by assets has been a boon for GDX. [Gold ETFs Try to Recapture Lost Magic]
As GLD has added $2.2 billion in new assets this year, over $885 million in new capital has flowed into GDX.
On Monday, traders pulled $33.2 million from the Direxion Daily Gold Miners Bull 3X Shares (NYSEArca: NUGT) while adding almost $13 million to the Direxion Daily Gold Miners Bear 3X Shares (NYSEArca: DUST), according to Direxion data. NUGT and DUST are the triple-leveraged answers to GDX.
Those flows into DUST and out of NUGT could be instructive given investors’ long-standing history of getting it wrong with leveraged miners ETFs, meaning GDX could be poised to deliver more near-term gain. For example, from about Aug. 20, 2014 to Sept. 23, DUST lost $185.3 million in assets but surged 55% over that period. [Getting it Wrong With Leveraged ETFs]
Market Vectors Gold Miners ETF
Chart Courtesy: Market Oracle
ETF Trends editorial team contributed to this post. Tom Lydon’s clients own shares of GLD.