Investors who time the gold market are betting that the precious metal will continue its recent slide. But given the timers’ historical inaccuracy, it makes more sense to wager on gold rising, says investment guru Mark Hulbert.

The precious metal has dropped 11 percent from its February high, trading recently at $1,592 an ounce.

The consensus of timers turned bearish toward gold in March. “The gold timers’ average exposure over the last four months has been actually negative,” Hulbert writes on MarketWatch.com.

“That is for four months now, they’ve been betting that the gold market would go down.”

The Hulbert Gold Newsletter Sentiment Index, which measures the average recommended gold-market exposure of short-term gold timers, has averaged negative 3.3 percent during that period.

That’s the lowest average since 1991, when gold was trading around $360.

But the consensus has been wrong far more often than it has been right in forecasting gold’s short-term moves over the last 30 years, Hulbert says.

That would suggest gold is headed higher. There’s no guarantee gold will rise, of course, as the last four months have proven.

“But that remains the intelligent bet today,” Hulbert maintains.

Some experts anticipate volatile trading in coming days.

"The dollar will be holding gold back, but the dollar can be trumped as the key driver, and the key to that is heightened economic or political turmoil," Ross Norman, CEO of precious metals trader Sharps Pixley, tells Reuters.