It’s hard to gauge how people feel about assets. Price alone doesn’t tell the whole story.
Gold is up 50% from where it was a year ago – but it’s down 10% from where it was in January. It sounds absurd now, but gold was under $3k on April 8th, 2025. Perhaps for the last time… Time will tell.
But back to sentiment: are people bullish because it’s up over the past year, or bearish because it’s down from January’s highs?
You simply cannot tell how the market feels about gold based on price.
One way to tell though, is to look at ETF flows.
There’s no perfect indicator, but when retail investors are bullish, you tend to see massive inflows into ETFs like GLD, and when they’re bearish, you see outflows.
I’m not a fan of these kinds of ETFs because I think if you want exposure to gold, you should probably own physical. If you want upside to gold, you should buy high quality gold miners and royalties (obviously).
But the appeal for retail investors is also obvious: it’s easy to buy GLD when you’re feeling bullish. It’s easy to sell when you’re feeling bearish. It’s slightly less convenient to buy and sell physical.
In March, we saw the biggest outflow from ETFs ever.
(I know this graphic is a little confusing: just focus on that last big down bar at the far right.)
$13 billion left gold ETFs last month – all of it from North American investors. For the year, North Americans have sold more gold ETFs than they’ve bought.
The last time we saw a net outflow from ETFs was in Q1 2024, when gold sold for $2,000/oz.
After that quarter, gold jumped 40+% over the next 12 months.
Now, I’m not saying that gold will jump 40% over the next year.
But I am saying: if you’re serious about being a contrarian investor, of going against the crowd and being bold enough to be greedy while others are fearful, you may not have a more obvious signal to do so.
In my personal and managed portfolios, I have been adding positions over the past month.
We can never know at the time we buy if we’re buying before prices rise or fall, but we can make educated decisions based on what other people are doing.
We won’t find out how April fares until early May – but if March is any indication, the time to be greedy is here.
Don’t wait. It won’t last.
Best,
Garrett Goggin, CFA, CMT
Lead Analyst and Founder, Golden Portfolio