As regulars know, we’ve been keeping an eye on just how accurate the experts are over at Kitco, the ones that the site asks every week for a call on what gold will do in the week to come. Last weekend finished a cycle of a year, which gives us a decent sample and a good idea of how accurate these people are.
Each week they’re given one of three choices “bull”, “bear” or “neutral”. To gauge results, I assumed “neutral” to be between +0.5% and -0.5% of the previous week’s close of GLD, with bulls winning above that and bears below.
As this chart shows (left to right) every week (date) they ask a number of participants (part) of which they get their weekly players (responses), who choose their preferred bracket (bull, bear, neutral). Then the chart gives the price of GLD that Friday evening and then the “result %” comes when next Friday’s close is known. The final column no the right shows whether the majority of the experts surveyed by Kitco got the call right (and when the box is shaded in yellow), it was a week of a “strong opinion”, when more than 50% of the experts made the same call
The result: After 52 weeks, the experts were right 17 times. That’s to say, they score one in three on a survey that offers three choices. The same one-in-three ratio comes when you only count the “strong signal” weeks, too. They are indeed monkeys with dartboards and believing what these people say is a total waste of time.
The end.