"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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Monday, October 17, 2011

Same Play - Different Act

Gold has once again failed to sustain its footing for any length of time above the critical $1680 resistance level. Last Friday it managed to eke out a close above this level but just barely. "Just barely" does not constitute a convincing technical breakout so it had the opportunity to try to be more emphatic in today's session.

As trade moved into early European trade, the gold price took off to the upside buoyed by comments out of the G20 summit that seemed to indicate decisive action and timely action was going to occur in Europe in regards to their bank recapitalization/stability mechanism plan. It moved up towards $1700 on strong buying which then evaporated as comments out of Germany throw a bucket of cold water on the hopes of traders/investors that the bureaucrats were going to follow through on intentions expressed at the summit.

Down went gold along with silver and along with the stock markets. Up went the Dollar; up went the long bond and down went the Euro and the commodity currencies. Once more it was, "RISK OFF" and so back to the same old same ol'.

It certainly did not aid the case of the bulls in the metals to look over at the HUI and observe it disintegrating as it failed to even touch the 560 level, a level which it MUST better to get anything exciting going to the upside. It dropped back down towards support at 540 and managed a squeaker of a close above there but if it loses that level, it is going to fade towards the lower end of the range near 520 to see if any buyers will emerge there.

Silver once again stumbled at the $32.50 level and dropped back into the trading range which continues to confine it. As expected when the risk trades are being yanked, silver underperformed gold in today's session. That will continue as long as RISK AVERSION is in vogue.