We are revisiting a long-term cycle that we began tracking several years ago. This cycle, which is illustrated by the vertical red lines drawn on the weekly chart displayed below, has been elongated for the same reasons as other cycles/trends over the past couple of years. Before we get to the current situation, a recap is in order.
Over the past two decades, gold mining stocks as represented by VanEck Gold Miners ETF (NYSE:GDX) have set major peaks relative to general mining stocks as represented by XME approximately every four years, that is, the GDX/XME ratio has tended to make a multi-year peak approximately every four years.
Furthermore, the major peaks in the GDX/XME ratio have coincided with major peaks in the gold/GYX ratio (the US$ gold price relative to the Industrial Metals Index), which, in turn, have coincided with the crescendo of an economic or debt crisis.
To be specific, the Q1-2009 peak was linked to the Global Financial Crisis, the Q1-2012 peak was linked to the euro-zone sovereign debt crisis, the Q1-2016 peak was linked to the shale oil bust in the US and the general bust in industrial commodity-related investment, and the April-2020 peak was linked to the COVID lockdowns.
The continuation of the 4-year cycle would have led to major peaks in the GDX/XME ratio and the gold/GYX ratio last year. However, this didn’t happen. There was a substantial rise in the gold/GYX ratio, but the GDX/XME ratio did little more than ‘chop around’ near its cycle low.
This prompted us to conclude, in the 23rd September 2024 Weekly Update:
“Either the GDX/XME ratio is going to peak at a much lower level during the current cycle than it ever has in the past, or the current cycle has been elongated and is still a long way from its completion.
The latter possibility is the more plausible. The main reason is that the GDX/XME ratio is driven by the gold/GYX ratio, and as noted above past peaks in the gold/GYX ratio have coincided with the crescendo of an economic crisis or a debt crisis.
Mainly because of aggressive government deficit spending designed to postpone a recession, but also because of Fed/Treasury actions that have boosted financial market liquidity in the face of tightening monetary conditions, there has been nothing resembling an economic/debt crisis during the current cycle to date. The crisis has, we think, been shifted from 2024 to 2025 or perhaps even later. Consequently, the cycle top in the GDX/XME ratio that was ‘due’ to occur this year probably won’t occur any sooner than H2-2025.
An implication of the above is that it will make sense to favour gold mining stocks over other mining stocks for at least another 12 months.”
Turning to the current situation, since late last year there has been a significant increase in the GDX/XME ratio (shown in the top section of the following chart), while the gold/GYX ratio (shown in the bottom section of the following chart) has continued its strong upward trend. GDX/XME is now at its highest level since mid-2021.
Despite its meaningful increase over the past three months, the chart suggests that there is plenty of scope for additional relative strength by the gold sector. We are referring to the fact that over the past two decades the GDX/XME ratio has never made a cycle peak below 1.2, which is more than 50% above the current level.
We expect that both the GDX/XME ratio and the gold/GYX ratio will make their cycle peaks this year, but those peaks probably aren’t in place and in the case of GDX/XME the peak could be a long way above today’s level.