"When misguided public opinion honors what is despicable and despises what is honorable, punishes virtue and rewards vice, encourages what is harmful and discourages what is useful, applauds falsehood and smothers truth under indifference or insult, a nation turns its back on progress and can be restored only by the terrible lessons of catastrophe." … Frederic Bastiat
Evil talks about tolerance only when it’s weak. When it gains the upper hand, its vanity always requires the destruction of the good and the innocent, because the example of good and innocent lives is an ongoing witness against it. So it always has been. So it always will be. And America has no special immunity to becoming an enemy of its own founding beliefs about human freedom, human dignity, the limited power of the state, and the sovereignty of God. – Archbishop Chaput
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I've moved back over to a 4 hour chart for the time being to try to get a bit tighter view of the recent trading range that gold has been carving out over the last few sessions. The chart resistance and support levels being created detail the range as gold is still finding buyers on dips below $1740 but has not yet been able to clear $1780.
If it pushes through $1780, it looks to me to have enough momentum to try to take another shot up towards $1800. How it reacts there will be extremely important.
The overall chart pattern is still being dominated by that big down day from last week after the market pushed through $1800 but then failed to hold that level after subsequently setting back.
Bulls would not want to see this market spend much time below $1730 or so before rebounding as that would portend a drop towards $1700 initially.
Volume is easing somewhat ( a welcome relief I might add) reflecting a lull in the emotions of traders. After last week's wild ride, a lot of guys are just worn out and glad to be sitting around on the sidelines or trading a bit smaller in size while awaiting some more definitive signals.
One brief note about the action in the HUI in Monday's session. Once again it has pushed right up into a very stubborn and formidable chart resistance level near 580. It has had trouble dealing with this area since May of this year. Going back to the beginning of the year, it had managed to briefly penetrate the level but spent spent less than a month above it before succumbing to selling pressure and failing to hold its hard fought gains. If it can clear this level now, and if it can hold those gains going into the end of the week, then we should have something to hang our hats onto from a technical perspective. If it sinks back down away from 580 again, it will just further reinforce how significant this level is becoming on the charts. Apparently, there is a lot of pain coming to short sellers if some of the shares rise much further from today's levels and they are making a concerted effort to prevent that from happening. Any further move higher in gold is going to complicate their efforts immensely.
Please click on the following link to listen to my regular weekly interview with Eric King on the KWN Weekly Metals Wrap.
I was a bit surprised last evening NOT to see some selling related to the margin hikes announced by the CME Group yesterday for carrying futures contracts in gold. Eventually however, the selling did kick in. Along with the upside move in the equity markets in today's session, that was enough to take some of the wind out of the gold market and bring it back down to earth for a bit.
We have had a nice run higher which was threatening to get out of hand due to the very steep angle of ascent being created on the price chart ( remember what happened to silver earlier this year) so some retreat in prices and HOPEFULLY a bit of stability in the gold price after some consolidation will be most welcome. We also need to give some time to the big physical markets of Asia to get accustomed to a higher gold price. Wild swings higher in price tend to scare some buyers away over there initially until they become acclimatized to the new levels.
This market will remain very jumpy however as any further signs of deterioration out of Europe can and will send gold right back up again. The computer programs at the CME which monitor volatility will be watching to see if additional margin hikes are warranted. As downside support levels on the price chart come into play, these margin hikes will tend to bring additional selling as long positions go underwater that were placed on above $1780. That tends to amplify selling pressure that would not otherwise occur.
If you note the enormous spikes in volume on the price chart I have included below, you can see the EMOTION being reflected in the market. This sort of emotional intensity is very difficult to sustain for any extended period of time so I for one am welcoming what I hope will be a bit of relative "calmness" if we can get it. After daily moves from $60 to $80, a day in which gold moves "ONLY" $20 will be a pleasant relief. So much depends however on what happens next in the bizarro-land of the equity markets so for now we wait and see like the rest of the investing/trading world what the computer algorithms will do next.
From a technical chart standpoint, the market has indicated that it needs a break and that the easy money on the upside is over for a while. Today's BEARISH OUTSIDE DOWN REVERSAL is signalling additional selling should be following. The fact that the market looks like it is not willing to move below $1,740 makes the reversal not as serious as it could have been. Still, the signal is bearish and will have to be noted due to the nature of todays trading which is highly technical.
Now we have to see at what levels we get some two-sided trading to take place. All depends on just how hungry the bulls are to move back into the market. Initial downside support comes in just below $1720 and then down near $1700. That is followed by more formidable chart support near and just below $1,680. There are a lot of potential gold buyers sitting on the sideline who did not want to chase this market higher out of fears of getting caught flatfooted who are eager to get in. They are going to be doing the same thing as the rest of us; namely watching for a level that they feel they can get in more safely.
If the Bulls are now to have a shot at $1,800, they will have to take price past $1,780 and hold it there first.
I did note that open interest, after falling for the last few days, shot up yesterday on the big volume surge higher. It was a large enough increase that I cannot attribute it all to just spreads being put on so it appears that some of the very strong bearish hands were doing a large amount of selling yesterday. The weak-handed shorts were run out in large numbers recently so this new group of sellers is more formidable. It is going to take a very sharp selloff in equities to threaten them in the least.
If you notice, the Swiss Franc is really getting hammered today, down near 4.5% at one point today. That is an excellent gauge of risk aversion so as it moves lower, gold is moving lower alongside of it. These two markets have recently been moving pretty much in tandem. If Swissie reverses higher, so too will gold.
One last note, as usual, the HUI once again failed to better the 580 level. Until it can take that out convincingly, the shares are not going to go anywhere. Once that level gives way preferably on a weekly basis, the shorts in the shares will be in serious trouble. Until then, they can brazenly sell no matter how much further they push them into severe undervaluation territory.
Effective as of the close of trading, margin requirements for gold are being raised from $6,075 to $7,425 for new positions and from $4,500 to $5,500 for "current maintenance" margins. WE had expected this to actually come a bit sooner than it did on account of the extreme volatility and extent of the intraday price moves that have recently been taking place in gold. This is a normal occurence in bull markets which begin to see large moves in price and is designed to protect the integrity of the clearing houses and of the brokerage firms, which can set their own margins for their customers.
Apparently the announced hike has not impacted gold the least as it continues to trade above $1,800 at this hour and as of yet shows no sign of weakening.
Please see the following chart along with the notations I have placed in it for some insight into the distress currently being felt by the gold bears at the Comex. This is one of the reasons that the price of gold has been moving up so sharply - forced short covering is occuring as panic sets in on the part of the bears. Only the strongest shorts are going to be able to sustain their positions in this type of squeeze. We'll have to see how far this wave of short covering can take things before all or most of the weak-handed shorts have been run out of this market. Things could get a bit dicey for the longs after that.
As trade moves into the Australian morning, gold has shot up above $1800 and has set a brand new all time high above $1,810 reaching to near $1818 as I write this. The market is accelerating higher as fear levels ramp up.
It would seem that any euphoria induced from the FOMC statement of yesterday has been long forgotten as fears of European bank solvency are now taking center stage in the minds of traders/investors. There are enough rumors floating around out there that denials from large bank officials are the order of the day.
Traders are fearing a type of meltdown similar to the 2008 credit crisis here in the US which was triggered when Lehman went down and a domino-like toppling of major firms commenced. Regardless of the reason, those who were trashing gold as a safe haven are now having to stutter and mutter their way back to the obvious. Not only is gold going on to make new lifetime highs in US Dollar terms, but also in Euro terms, and in other major currency terms as well. It is functioning as a currency of last resort.
I had to marvel at the comments coming from some of the guests on CNBC today who when asked by the anchors about where investors can find some sort of place in which to hide from the carnage were oblivious to the simple answer - gold. For Pete's sake, what kind of savvy does it take to at least speak the word (gold) when it is making one record high after another. I kept hearing the same thing from some - "Buy large cap stocks that are DEFENSIVE holdings" - oh sure - that means buy something that is going to lose me LESS money than some tech stock.
What about some seriously undervalued mining stocks to go along with gold bullion? After all, on a day in which the equity markets were bleeding red, the HUI and the XAU were noteworthy in their strong upside showing, in spite of the fact that such heavy volume down days have tended to drag them down in the past.
Note that since the bottom reached during the height of the credit crisis which erupted in the summer of 2008, that the HUI has outperformed the S&P 500 over this same 3 year period - and this comes on the heels of a ratio spread trade by the hedge funds who stupidly have insisted on using the miners as the short end of a spread trade instead of using them as the long leg of a broader equity market spread position as I have been advocating for some time now.
I want to make a quick point here as a type of follow up to my comments from yesterday regarding the Fed's intentions to run investors out of bonds and into equities in search of yield.
Think about the horrific effects that this stupidity is having on our senior citizens and those who are retired and attempting to live off of the interest on their life's savings. They have none!
What are they supposed to do? Hire some hot shot hedge fund manager to get them into the latest and hottest IPO?
Bernanke and his pals at the Fed are turning the entire nation into a generation of wild-eyed speculators all in an attempt to get a decent rate of return on their saved wealth.
Don't forget this segment of the population when you hear some double-talking politician or monetary authority flapping his mouth about how the Fed is trying to "help".
Punish savers and reward debtors - Welcome to America in the new millenium.
It was just last week that we witnessed the Bank of Japan intervene into the Forex markets to derail the Yen's rally back towards the former intervention level. It had completely erased the losses that it suffered after the round of coordinated intervention by the BOJ, the ECB and the Fed back in March of this year. It was evident from their action that the Ministry of Finance was dealing with political pressures from industry leaders whose exports were suffering as a result of the surging yen and were complaining quite vocally about its levels. Out came the intervention gun by the BOJ and down went the Yen.
But look out! The Yen has come back once again and it has only taken it FOUR TRADING SESSIONS to erase all of the losses that the intervention had resulted in. Talk about a gigantic waste of resources by the Central Bank!
The problem is the sheer volumes of liquidity that are tied to carry trades using the Yen as the funding currency. Traders continue to unwind those trades and run from risk with the end result being a repurchasing of the Yen. That buying is overwhelming any efforts by the Japanese monetary authorities to rein in the Yen.
There is now an effort by the SNB (Swiss National Bank) to derail the Swiss Franc, which is also attempting to take the Franc lower as it has been the recipient of huge inflows tied to safe haven flows. I expect that they will meet with the same "success" as has the BOJ.
Based on what I am seeing, the Central Banks have now become victims of their own policies. They created this beast of liquidity in an attempt to preserve the status quo and now that it is surging back towards their own shores, they are powerless to stem its tide.
