12 Hour Gold Chart

Gold ran into selling pressure today as both safe havens, the bond market and the gold market, were taken lower after the equity markets reacted to a supposed improvement in the US unemployment claims. Personally this number is a very poor indicator to base trading decisions upon but the equity markets are almost desperate to find some good news somewhere.

They even seized on Berlusconi appointing an interim government rather than holding elections further down the road. That was viewed to be friendly for stocks. Heck, it had people buying the Euro today?! Go figure.

Strangely enough, the hedgies were selling the commodity markets in general today with the energy sector seemingly bucking that trend but the metals and grains did not. The result was that the CCI moved lower with the CRB slightly higher, as it is more heavily weighted in energies and skewed in that direction.

Gold did find good buying below the $1750 level and is currently trading near $1760 as I write this. We'll have to see how Asia responds overnight but we certainly have some solid support and resistance levels to work off of thus far. If we stay above $1725- $1720 we should range trade with some chart resistance initially seen just shy of $1780.

The HUI was lower today but it recovered a rather goodly portion of its losses heading into the closing bell. There is chart support near 570 initially with another round of potential buying emerging closer to 565. Keep in mind that this is an index comprised of various mining companies so when I mention support and resistance levels, this is simply picking up on what is occuring in the shares of those companies which comprise this particular index.

The HUI will now have to convincingly CLOSE above 610 to see a solid trending move higher in the mining sector commence. A closing downside push through 540 would signal some additional weakness otherwise the shares look to be forging out another consolidation pattern.