Gold is Not Exactly Glittering
After staging an impressive run higher through the first few weeks of July, the turn into August has been anything but friendly for gold and silver prices. The breakdown in U.S. Treasury bonds outpaced a jump in U.S. inflation expectations, pushing up U.S. real yields to multi-month highs in the process; gold and silver tend to underperform during environments defined by rising real yields.
Even though the prospect of higher inflation the next few months persists—starting with the July U.S. consumer price index released today—it may be the case that gold and silver prices are facing headwinds in the near-term. From a technical point of view, weakness may just be beginning.
In late-July, it appeared gold prices were getting ready to break out of an ascending triangle to push above $2,000. But the burst higher in U.S. Treasury yields upended the best laid plans of mice and men (or gold bugs and men?), kneecapping the rally. Instead, ascending triangle support has been breached, indicating that the recent uptrend off the summer lows has been broken.
Undergirding the near-term bearish interpretation has been a shift in the momentum profile as well. Moving average convergence/divergence (MACD) is trending lower and nearing a cross below its signal line, while slow stochastics are nearing a move into oversold territory. Necessarily, from a technical point of view, this opens the prospect of a return to $1,900 in the coming weeks.
Christopher Vecchio, CFA, tastylive’s head of futures and forex, has been trading for nearly 20 years. He has consulted with multinational firms on FX hedging and lectured at Duke Law School on FX derivatives. Vecchio searches for high-convexity opportunities at the crossroads of macroeconomics and global politics. He hosts Futures Power Hour Monday-Friday and Let Me Explain on Tuesdays, and co-hosts Overtime, Monday-Thursday. @cvecchiofx
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