(Kitco News) - 2015 has been a wild ride for the gold with sentiment being a significant force in the marketplace, which is something retail investors have been relatively effective at predicting, according to year-end results of the weekly Kitco News Wall Street vs. Main Street Gold Survey.
Kitco relaunched its weekly gold survey in April and included the results of a weekly survey to better incorporate the sentiment of the retail market.
Each week, participants in the survey are asked if they are bullish, bearish or neutral on the gold market for the week ahead. After tabulating the results, retail investors are pretty good at determining gold’s short-term trend.
In the last 37 weeks that the new survey has been running, the online results has accurately predicted gold’s trend 57% of the time. Market analysts as a group, which makes up the second part of the survey, accurately predicted gold’s trend 27% of the time.
While Wall Street might not be as accurate as Main Street, it is important to note that several times during the past year, sentiment among market professionals only differed by one or two votes, which can have a big impact on a small sample size.
The past results show that negative sentiment among retail investors was at its highest during the summer. In late July, 75% of participants were bearish on gold as the price dropped below $1,080 an ounce, hitting its first multi-year low in 2015.
Sentiment was at its most positive in late November as 78% of respondents expected prices to rally after prices fell below $1,060, recording yet another multi-year low.
Heading into the end of the year, sentiment has been relatively balanced with neither the bulls nor the bears showing a clear majority.
By Neils Christensen of Kitco News; nchristensen@kitco.com
Follow Neils Christensen @neils_C
