Gracia's BOE: "DAILY TECHNICALS: 09 May. Gold versus platinum, Anglos and BHP Billiton recent volumes. Gold: The chart rebases platinum and gold in Rand and their respective local listed indices to 100 as at the start of 2006. Gold and platinum have moved up in rand terms by around 50% in this time period. This has to be contrasted with the indices, where the platinum index is up 140% over the same period, and the gold index is up a mere 10%. This shows the huge out-performance of platinum shares, but also highlights that relative valuations may be expensive for platinum stocks and cheap for gold stocks. A contrarian hedge fund strategy would be to short platinum stocks and go long gold stocks on the basis of a partial reversion towards where the Rand prices of the metals are trading. Anglos and BHP Billiton: Yesterday's sharp sell off in both Billiton and Anglos has not broken any upward trends. However, volume analysis does reveal an interesting divergence, showing down days seem to be accompanied by higher volumes, with more aggressive selling notable in the last month or so. Normally, volume should follow trend, suggesting that in an uptrend volumes should be higher on up days than down days. Yesterday's action mirrors that of mid-April, when selling on the 18th April showed much higher than average volumes traded. In the primary market in London, this divergence in volumes is not yet evident. While the divergence may be reason for concern, volumes are viewed as secondary, and only moves below the late April/early May lows at 37206c (Anglos) and 15825c (BHP Billiton) would question the upward trends."
