Gold Bears and Gold Bulls - Who is right and who is wrong?

 The general opinion of most market participants nowadays is that gold is in a long-term secular bull market. This statement is hard to debate given the fact that the price of gold has quadrupled since 2001.  Thus, it would be easy to assume that the only right way to invest into gold is being long. However, as Keynes used to say, long-term we are all dead, and if you want to trade gold, maybe it can be useful to listen to some other voices as well.

Being involved in the gold market can mean only that you are either in the bull camp or in the bear camp, as opposed to Schrödinger’s cat who can be in a quantum state of being both dead and alive at the same time. What makes the decision more complicated is that there are some very respected and well-known names  -  market analysts, investors, forecasters, gurus  -   in both camps. Just to mention a few, Jim Sinclair (JSMineset), David Nichols (Fractal Gold Report)  and numerous others are convinced that gold is in the final stages of an epic run-up, going to the moon all the way along a parabolic growth curve, with the next brief stop only at 1,500 or 1,600, while finally going to 2,200-2,400, which, by the way, would be the inflation-adjusted all-time high of the 1980 top of 850 US$/ounce.

In the other camp, we hear only some lonely voices of bears, mainly Elliotists, who in fact also agree that gold is in a long-term secular bull market, but with an imminent move to the downside -  a corrective wave C according to the Elliott wave terminology.  Just to mention a couple of them, there are Ron Rosen (The Rosen Market Timing Letter) or Dan Stinson (E-Wavecharts). Both are forecasting an imminent top and a severe corrective wave down to at least the 680 US$/ounce low of 2008, or maybe even further down, to correct the excesses of the current rise to the new all-time high of 1,195.