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It was déjà vu in the Comex gold market yesterday as the recent
sharp selloff continued. Bearish sentiment remains at extreme levels and all
notions of fundamental value are being thrown out the window as the financial
crisis morphs into a global economic crisis. Stock, commodity and many currency
markets internationally are in meltdown on panic selling.
Both gold and silver are off another 4.3% and 8% today on massive deleveraging
and wholesale panic selling in financial markets. The Nikkei fell nearly 10%
overnight and stock markets in Europe are crashing this morning (FTSE down
9% and DAX down 10.5%). Gold remains resilient vis-à-vis stock markets
especially over the medium term to long term (as seen in the Performance Table
below).

Gold and silver continue to sell off despite still very strong demand, shortages
and increasing tightness in the physical market. The tightness is spreading
from the small coin and bar market up to the larger bar market and premiums
on larger bars such as 5 kilo bars and 100 oz bars are also increasing. Gold
lease rates remain very high on increasing concern about counterparty risk
in the gold market.
A 1929 style severe crash of some 90% in some stock markets is looking quite
possible and some noted commentators are saying that if the panic deepens there
will be market closures for a period of time - possibly as long as a week or
two.
It is hard to know what such unprecedented actions might achieve besides delaying
further sharp falls in markets. But the hope is that some form of calm would
be achieved. Although already shattered consumer confidence would likely be
severely damaged further if financial markets were actually closed for a period
of time in enforced 'bank and market holidays'.
Technical Analysis
As you can see from the graph, the break of support at $732 (May 06 resistance)
opened up a move down to $700 (Apr/May 07 resistance). This strong resistance
level proved good short term support with profit takers/short term players
positioned just below this level in size causing a short term bounce back over
$730. Momentum remains strongly to the downside and we will have to watch very
closely to see if momentum wanes between $675 (uptrend support from Jan 06)
and $660 (downward resistance from May 06). From the graph you can also see
that this was an area of major congestion for the gold price in 07.
Given the still very strong fundamentals and the huge demand for physical
bullion internationally, we should start to lose downward momentum soon with
a period of consolidation, of undetermined length, before we resume the uptrend.
Look how closely the move from Aug 07 to today resembles a larger scale version
of the move from Nov 05 to June 06; further, consider what happened after the
June 06 low was in.

This is just dollar based analysis and it would be interesting to consider
the technical analysis of €/gold and £/gold, considering that in
sterling terms, gold was at one stage higher today than yesterday despite $/gold
being down a further 4%.
RSIs suggest that gold is becoming very oversold and the usually reliable
moving average tenors have been destroyed as support, however these are technically
termed "fast markets" with unprecedented volatility, so anything is possible.
OPEC just cut production by 1.5 million barrels a day so watch the rally that
should ensue in oil, or at least a halt in the slide, and possible implications
for gold.
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