"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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Thursday, January 5, 2012

Gold proving to be very resilient

Considering the very strong rally in the US Dollar today, a generally weak or lackluster showing in the equities, a sinking Euro and a rather comatose bond market, one would expect the selling malaise that has gripped many of the commodity markets in today's session to be making an impact on the gold market. Instead, the yellow metal is showing signs that investors/traders are looking at it as a safe haven that got undervalued and is now a good place into which to store some wealth while trying to get a handle on the mess called the Global economic situation.

The incompetent bunglers (aka hedge funds), which came out buying everything in sight to start off the New Year have been mostly in the process of throwing all of that stuff away over the last two days proving that the advent of the New Year has not seen an improvement in the intelligence of that pack of pathetic traders. Seriously, this current crop of hedge funds contains some of the most ignorant and unskilled traders that I have ever personally witnessed over my entire two decades+ trading career.  They seem to know little if anything about nibbling on markets or being cautious and scaling back in size. It is either, "All in" or "All out". Massive amounts of money are slingshotted into everything and then promptly jettisoned out. It seems to me that the only people making money in that environment are the brokers, who must love the commissions and the exchanges which are revelling in the huge fees that this constant churning is creating.

That brings us to gold, which has been able to hold very firmly above the $1,600 level. The longer it does, the more confident traders are becoming that the bottom is in and that the next trending move will be to the upside.

You will notice on the chart that the market has run right back up into the initial resistance level detailed near and just above the $1,620 level. Forays in price the last two trading days have seen any dips below $1,600 immediately attract buying which has taken price promptly back avove that level. The result is that some shorts are getting nervous and are beginning to cover. If the bulls can now mount a close above today's session high, it seems we are going to get a move towards psychological resistance at $1,650 with the potential to charge towards the second resistance line drawn in near $1670. That is where the real battle will shape up to see whether or not the stronger-handed bulls can contain it there or watch it run to $1,700.