Will investors have one more chance to buy gold for the relative bargain price of $900 before it takes off? We’ll get to that in a moment, but let me mention first that loading up on gold when bullion is moving higher needn’t be painful and fraught with risk. Consider the following futures recommendation that went out to Rick’s Picks subscribers early Monday evening. It missed the overnight low by just 10 cents, allowing traders to buy a single tick off the bottom. Here’s the recommendation exactly as it was disseminated at 8:01 p.m. EDT:  “The futures sold off hard after making their high early in the day – but then, when haven’t they done so?  The important thing is that buyers had no trouble pushing the August contract past a Hidden Pivot resistance at 985.80 noted here earlier. Night owls should put a stink bid in at  970.60 stop 969.90 and keep your fingers crossed.”

As you can see in the chart above, August Gold bottomed at exactly 970.50 overnight – a tick below the forecast — before embarking on a spirited $18 rally. A trader who followed the recommendation exactly would have enjoyed a highly favorable risk:reward ratio on the way up, since the maximum gain on the trade was 25 times the amount, in theory, that was risked initially.

Beating Predators

Incidentally, off-hours trades like this one are not strictly for scalpers, since they can be used by investors seeking to adjust long-term positions. I hesitate to say that night markets make easy pickings, because they most surely do not. They are in fact dominated by some of the most talented sleazeballs in the business – skilled predators whom you would not want to sit down with at a poker table. But when it comes to trading, DaBoyz who work the night shift are less concerned with technical factors than with the subtle interplay between global news and active markets, particularly index futures that trade round-the-clock. For our purposes, that means night-time price action is somewhat more predictable than during the day. The tradeoff is that liquidity can be very thin in the wee hours, making it easier to get trapped in a bad trade.

So what about the prospect of buying physical gold for $900 before it hits $1500?  That’s the prediction of Karim Ghaidan, a subscriber and veteran institutional trader whose past predictions have garnered an ardent following in the Rick’s Picks chat room. I’ve posted Karim’s detailed forecasts for gold and other vehicles (including a 1300 target in the S&P, followed by a plunge to 400!)  Subscribers can find these forecasts in the Intraday Notes section of the Rick’s Picks home page. If you don’t currently subscribe but would like to have a look, you can gain access to Karim’s numbers, to my daily forecasts, and to a 24/7 chat room frequented by traders from around the world by taking a risk-free seven-day trial subscription. For further details, click here. (And if you’d like to have Rick’s Picks commentary delivered free each day to your e-mail box, click here.)