Mining’s old guard needs strong medicine
A new report details subpar investor returns in the mining industry over the last decade, particularly big cap diversified companies which have not adapted to new realities.
As I often say, every asset class has its own DNA of volatility, which is measured by standard deviation. Specifically, standard deviation gauges the typical fluctuation of a security or asset class around its mean return over a period of time ranging from one day to 12 months or more.
This brings us to mean reversion, which is the theory that, although prices might trend up for some time (as in a bull market), or fall (as in a bear market), they tend to move back toward their historic averages eventually. Such elasticity is the basis for knowing when an asset is overbought or oversold—and when to sell or buy.
As you can see in the oscillator below, gold looks oversold right now and is nearing a “buy” signal, after which we can statistically expect it to return to its mean.
Gold’s current standard deviation for the 60-day period is about 7 percent—you can reasonably expect it to move this much over a two-month period, therefore, 68 percent of the time.
For more on standard deviation and mean reversion, I invite you to download my whitepaper, “Managing Expectations: Anticipate Before You Participate in the Market.”
The J.P. Morgan Global Purchasing Manager’s Index is an indicator of the economic health of the global manufacturing sector. The PMI index is based on five major indicators: new orders, inventory levels, production, supplier deliveries and the employment environment.
Standard deviation is a measure of the dispersion of a set of data from its mean. The more spread apart the data, the higher the deviation. Standard deviation is also known as historical volatility.
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Holdings may change daily. Holdings are reported as of the most recent quarter-end. None of the securities mentioned in the article were held by any accounts managed by U.S. Global Investors as of 9/30/2016.
