As I mentioned on Thursday, gold is totally at the mercy of events in Ukraine for the time being.
You can see on the chart that the metal has been range bound for some time now ( about one year ). Please keep this is mind when you read more breathless talk about gold being poised for a big move "any time now". How many of these "any time now's" have we read over the last year? Whether it is the GOFO talk or backwardation talk or "Russia is going to dump the Dollar" talk, or whatever.
Technically not a single one of these premises, or others not listed, have changed the technical posture of this market for a year. If and only if the price breaks out of this range, can we say with certainty that the market has become concerned with these things. For now, it could care less and thus neither should we.
The green rectangle defines the range which is near $1400 on the top side and just below $1200 on the bottom side for a range of some $200. Just last month ( March ) the price had rallied up to the top of the range only to meet with selling. That pushed it back down with it looking likely that it was headed down towards $1200 once more. However, events flared up in Ukraine and gold received some strong bids due to safe haven flows. Those bids came in near $1280.
The circumstances due to these geopolitical concerns have created a new and higher bottom at the $1280 level. However, gold has been unable to push past $1320 for any length of time. That has carved out a new range within the broader range. This is marked on the chart as "Tighter Trading Range".
These two levels are our new boundaries which are confining the price for the time being. If the market senses any lessening of tensions in Ukraine, chances are that $1280 will not hold on the bottom. If not, there is a band of congestion between $1260 - $1240 that will draw it like a magnet should it fail. There is little support between $1240 and $1200 meaning that if $1240 were to fail, $1200 will be tested.
On the upside, only a breach of $1320 would give the bulls the needed impetus to make a run to $1350.
If events in Ukraine fade from traders' minds, the focus will shift back to US economic data with participants looking for clues to the Fed's future actions on in US interest rate front. Any improvements on the jobs front will immediately fan the flames of higher interest rates next spring, which the market continues to waver back and forth on. Higher rates will pressure gold as it should support the US Dollar. Again, we do not know what the economic data will look like and thus that leaves the markets very susceptible to sudden and sharp price swings either way as price responds to changes in expectations or sentiment along those lines.
Lastly, here is the current Commitment of Traders data viewed in chart form as to the positioning of the large hedge funds in comparison to the price of the metal.
There was a rather large shift this week in the positioning of the hedgies as they were both liquidating stale longs and adding new shorts. The combination dropped their current net long position by some 8000 contracts or so. This is the reason for my concern if the $1280 level does not hold - there will be a significant amount of long liquidation among this category of traders if it does not.
In another interesting development, the small traders, the general public, were selling gold this past week as well. Is the bloom coming off the metal for this category? They are net long still but this is the least bullish they have been in five weeks. Sentiment could be changing in the speculative community and that will bear close monitoring.
Happy Easter.
