Well, the markets have been telling you...

Although I do not trade commodities very often, I do keep track of some such as gold, silver, oil etc, as a large part of the FTSE100 here in the UK for example, contains a number of major oil and mining stocks.

As noted in these two recent posts here and here, gold and silver have been taking a bit of a bashing recently, and this has intensified this morning. As a result the FTSE100 is well down today.

While the index itself has not given a short signal as yet, there have been plenty of mining stocks that have clearly been in downtrends recently (refer to this recent post which shows some charts relating to such stocks).

As always, trend followers are not interested in picking tops or bottoms in markets, they do not forecast or predict what is going to happen, and yet they always seem to be well positioned quite early in major movements. The beauty and simplicity of waiting for a signal to be given is that your capital is not tied up in losing or poorly performing trades. You wait for the the odds to have been tilted in your favour, and then (while still using strict risk control in case you are stopped out), you simply place your bets on what price action is telling you. Following that, all you need do is sit in your positions, and wait for your exit signal to be given.

Those trend followers who are positioned as such in the precious metals, or in associated mining or resource stocks will not be panicking, they will simply observe what is happening, and remain in their positions for the duration of the trend, watching their profits accumulate. They are allowing their profits to run, and giving themselves the maximum opportunity to make a big profit, many multiples bigger than their initial risk on the position.