Gold finished the week at $1798, having been as high at $1803 – nicely up on last week’s $1756. Gold mining stocks too headed further up as the recovery since the September low continued, as can be seen on my chart of Gold versus the Gold mining ETFs GDX (major), GDXJ (juniors) and GOEX (explorers):

Gold finished the week at $1756, up a tiny smidgeon on last week’s $1751 but essentially unchanged in a week of little US economic data. Gold equities fared a little better and put in another new recent high to continue the run since late September.

Gold finished the week at $1751, down a notch from last week’s $1771 but still well up on recent lows, having put in a high point of $1785 on Wednesday. US economic data offered little to cheer about, and the US treasury market continues to ring all manner of alarm bells. Despite that, US equity markets finished the week on a bit of a high – but for how long?

Gold closed the week at $1771 – strongly up on last week’s $1683 and way better that the recent low around $1620 notched up at the beginning of the month. The US$ has slipped off its perch too: is it (at last) all change?

Gold closed the week at $1683, up nicely from last week’s $1646 and back above the apparently all-important $1675 mark. But perhaps the real surprise is that it rose at all, given that the Fed again hiked interest rates by another 0.75% to 3.75-4% and warned of more pain to come. Normally, that would see the yellow stuff weaken, given that the yield on Gold is zero. But instead, someone lit the blue touch-paper.

Gold finished this week at $1646 per oz, marginally down on last week’s $1658 and almost back to the $1645 of the week before. Gold is going nowhere fast, although the Gold mining ETFs I have been keeping an eye on are still gaining modest strength, as can be seen from the chart below (courtesy of ADVFN).

Gold finished the week at $1658 – marginally up on last week’s $1645 but essentially unchanged. However, as gold hovers around its recent low, Gold miners have picked up a smidgeon, as can be seen from my chart of Gold vs GDX (Gold majors ETF), GDXJ (Gold juniors) and GOEX (Gold explorers). I discussed a potential M&A frenzy HERE in the wake of three potential bids for AIM-listed Shanta Gold (SHG) and wonder if that might be showing up in the chart.

Gold finished the week at $1645 per oz, down from last week’s $1695 and back below the apparently all-important $1675 line. So we have had a false breakdown, then a false beak-up and we are back in the doldrums. But in view of what else is going on (even higher interest rates, anybody?), I would suggest the yellow stuff is actually doing just fine.

Gold closed the week at $1695 – nicely up from last week’s $1661 and comfortably above the apparently all-important $1675 level. But the bigger news from Gold was the rise to almost $1730, which prompted the most bearish Gold-bull, Jordan Roy-Byrne of TheDailyGold.com, to suggest that we may have finally seen the bottom, and that this means that the (downward) break of $1675 was a false breakdown. On the face of it, after last weekend’s depression (the darkest hour is always before the dawn!) things are looking more hopeful.

Gold closed the week at $1661 per oz – up from last week’s $1645, but still below the apparently all-important $1675 mark. It is all a bit depressing, but with incoming cash from the latest AIM-listed Ariana (AAU) dividend of 0.175p per share due tomorrow, the Gold price in Sterling terms within £100 of its all-time high and equity markets in another bear-run, its not so bad.

Gold closed the week at a sickly looking $1645, down from last week’s $1676. There was to be no bounce at around $1675. But in a week when the Fed again raised interest rates by 0.75% - the third such hike in succession – you could be forgiven for wondering why Gold has not headed even lower. Inflation remains on the rampage in the US, and until that reverses the Fed is likely to continue hiking…..or until something in the economy breaks, as it continues to gaze into the rear view mirror. Over here, however, the big news was the crunching of sterling in the face of Friday’s non-budget budget. Whilst Gold has been struggling against the US dollar, it raced towards of its year high against sterling and is now just £57 off the all-time high as markets took fright at Truss-onomics.

Gold closed the week at $1676, down from last week’s $1717. I had hoped that we might have seen the end of this particular bear by now, but on the back of still uncomfortable US inflation figures, as US Government Bond yields headed higher in expectation of more rate-rises, Gold headed south. The one glimmer of hope is that Gold closed the week almost bang on the recent lows right on Jordan Roy-Byrne’s line in the sand at $1675. Will it bounce from here?

Gold closed the week at $1713 – down from last week’s $1739. However, in Sterling terms it closed at £1488 – up from last week’s £1481, reflecting the weakness of the pound and a reminder of the usefulness of Gold as an insurance policy. The Fed (and the Bank of England under the useless Andrew Bailey) are still talking tough in the face of sinking economies, in the face of rampant inflation. To my mind, they are either bluffing or are heading for massive self-inflicted recessions. In either case, holding Gold is a great insurance.

There is an old fable amongst musicologists described in two questions: a) what is it that we try to learn from the great masters and b) why do we fail. The answers are a) how to get out of a hole and b) because they don’t get into one in the first place. This week the economic masters of our time got into a hole – Jackson’s Hole – and are wondering how to get out. The problem is that the economy is itself in a hole – squillions of unpayable debt and acre upon acre of magic money trees – and there is no way out. The solution, of course, would have been not to sink into such debt, financed by printing money, in the first place – but they dare not admit it.

Gold finished the week at a sickly $1748, down from last week’s more hopeful $1804. Gold stocks have again gone into reverse and the Fed is talking about hiking rates further. It is all grim for Gold bulls…..or is it?

Gold finished the week at $1804 per oz – a useful gain from last week’s $1777 and back through the $1800 barrier. As the economic storm clouds continue to gather, things are looking up for the yellow metal, even if the Fed continues to play hard-ball with now declining inflation as it talks up its capacity to continue raising interest rates into a recession.

Gold ended the week at $1777, up from $1767 last week, and held up well in the face of a surprisingly strong jobs report in the US last week. That jobs report was good news, supposedly, but following the previous week’s bad news on US GDP which was taken as good news, this week’s positive jobs report was taken as bad news and market fell, with the exception of the Dow Jones index. Hmph!

Gold ended the week at $1743 – a nasty drop from the $1813 clocked up last week, and according to ShareProphets’ favourite technical analyst, Jordan Roy-Byrne of TheDailyGold.com, down through support at $1780 and $1750. So is it time to give up my hermit existence and return to normal life? Not a chance!

Another week, another slip in the Gold price: it closed this week at $1813, down from $1827 last week. But as real yields rise, Jordan Roy Byrne of TheDailyGold.com comments that one might have expected Gold to show rather more weakness than it has – especially with the US Dollar still on the rise. That it has not fallen off a cliff suggests that the market is already sensing an abrupt reversal of course by central banks.

Gold finished the week at $1827 – down a little from $1840 a week ago as the divergence from the general stock market continues. Of course, I view stock market strength as…..ahem……transitory, to coin a phrase, so if Gold is diverging that is good news for Gold Bulls. If only this final roll-over would hurry up!

Gold finished this week at $1840 – down from last week’s $1872, but a good recovery from the drop to test $1810 in the wake of the Fed’s rush of blood in raising interest rates this week by 0.75%, accompanied by the suggestion that we could be in for the same again at the next meeting. The Fed wants us all to know that it is taking inflation very seriously. Very seriously indeed.

Gold finished the week at $1872, nicely up from last week’s $1851, following a day of yet more bad US inflation numbers and a corresponding sell-off in both equities and bonds. Gold initially followed the market down, but then rallied. Is this a sign of a decoupling which would see the yellow metal head sharply north as equities head the other way?

I see that the US has released its inflation numbers for May 2022. For anyone who thought that April’s numbers marked the peak, they had a nasty shock today!

Gold ended the weeks at $1851 – almost unchanged on the previous $1854, but in between times headed down to $1830 and then up to $1870 before heading back to where it started the week. Pleasingly, Gold stocks did a little better by more-or-less continuing the recovery from a low ebb in May, but the underperformance against the yellow metal remains stark.

Gold closed the week at $1854 – a small improvement on last week’s $1847, but not yet enough to cure the sell-off in Gold stocks (although they did improve this week). So when are we going to see the great explosion I have been looking for since the start of the Covid crisis? I don’t think it will be long.

That was a rip-roaring week! One might be tempted to suggest that equity markets do not know what they want: they were sliding ahead of the Fed’s rate decision in fear of a rate hike. When they got it (a half point rise) they went up. And when the dust settled they went down again. Gold and Bonds did much the same.

Everything is going down: shares, precious metals, bonds – it is all one way traffic south. The Nasdaq is now officially in a bear market, and has seen all of last year’s gains wiped out. The Dow is down from almost 37,000 at the turn of the year to 32,977 and all the US indexes slumped into yeserday’s close. But Bonds are also falling, and Gold had a poor week too – perhaps no surprise, given the general sell-off.

That was quite a week – having started in risk-on mode, all the major indices were slapped down on Friday, US treasuries fell away yet again and gold and silver slumped as the week drew to a close. Gold ended the week at $1,932, down from $1,974 a week ago, having bounced off resistance at $2,000. Meanwhile the Dow closed down 2.8% on Friday, alongside a 2.6% drop on the Nasdaq and a 1.4% fall from the FTSE100. The 10-year US Treasuries closed the week on a yield of 2.9% whilst 2-year hit 2.67%. The reason for the end-of-week squall was the Fed.

The bond markets have reacted strongly to the smoke signals from the Fed that interest rates are going up (far and fast, so they would have us believe) and that we are about to suck some of that excess liquidity out of the market via QT – quantitative tightening. The result has been far higher bond yields – which should be bad for Gold – and if QT actually happens, since it is the opposite of printing money then in theory that is also bad news for gold-bugs. 

I suggested two weeks ago that the yield curve was going to invert by the end of April. I was wrong – it has already happened. This, I suggest, has implications for the yellow metal, which closed this week back down at $1926 – down from last week’s $1959, but still nicely above $1900 and indeed the last quarter saw a record high finish.

Jordan Roy-Byre of TheDailyGold.com  is getting very excited about the prospects for Gold and Gold stocks, saying this week that now could be the last chance to buy cheap and that he thinks that we are in a bullish consolidation ahead of a major break higher in the next 2-5 months. Given that he is perhaps the most bearish Gold-bull around, it is a big call.

Gold ended the week at $1922 – down from last week’s $1991 as the assault on the record high petered out. The Fed raised interest rates, the Bank of England hiked rates again, the Ukraine war continued with more horrific attacks and inflation was still there rearing its ugly head.

What a week! A week ago Gold was at $1973 and threatening to take out the all-time high from August 2020 at $2063. It squeaked over $2070 intra-day on Tuesday then in a volatile week dropped back down to $1960 on Friday, before recovering to close the week at $1991. Silver had a similar whip-saw week, as did markets in general – and I fancy that we are in for more of the same next week as Ukraine continues to play out, the Fed announces its first interest rate hike (or not….) and inflation continues to run amok.

Gold finished this week at $1973 – up $74 from last week and now only $90 from its all-time high and seemingly set to challenge that mark very soon as the perfect storm gathers force. Even our favourite technical analyst, Jordan Roy-Byrne of TheDailyGold.com, has turned uber-bullish.

The big news this week was, of course, the Russian invasion of Ukraine. It is horrendous, and once again my thoughts are with those in the firing line. The market’s initial response was to mark up Gold and oil/gas, and sell everything else. But then a recovery set in – although I am not convinced it will last.

Vladimir Putin has gone for it: his troops went into Ukraine last night alongside missile attacks on Ukraine’s military and, according to broad media reporting, cyber-attacks were unleashed. As diplomatic efforts to resolve the situation were exhausted, it is now clear that Putin had decided to go in some time ago. The markets’ reaction has been to sell off, but oil is up and Gold is strongly higher.

Gold ended the week at a tantalising $1899, up from last week’s $1859 and right on the technically critical $1900 mark. In fact the weekly closing spread, according to Kitco.com, was $1899.2 – $1900.2. The general view amongst technical commentators is that if Gold crosses above $1900 we are in for some fun, but some of the current strength is down to a war premium as tensions regarding Ukraine are at boiling point. Will Putin go in or won’t he? And if he doesn’t, then the war premium will have been temporary – I would expect Gold to fall away at least a little. I’d rather not think about the scenario if he does….

Gold closed the week at $1859 – well up on last week’s $1808 and the highest since November when it briefly went to $1867. Before that, the last high point was at the end of May last year at $1908, and then the all-time high at $2063 in August 2020. My view is that all of these marks could get taken out in pretty short order: inflation still rages and there is a potential catastrophe looming in Ukraine.

The all-important inflation data for January in the US has come out. Anyone still taken in by the Fed’s “transitory” description of the thief in the night will be sorely disappointed and the pie-in-the-sky wishful thinking that saw people thinking that inflation might moderate in the face merely of threats of rate rises have had a bit of a shock.

Gold ended the week at $1808 – so still around the $1800 mark. It has been here for what seems to have been an eternity. Yet at the same time, whilst the yellow metal has held firm, gold stocks have been selling off and silver has slipped back to $22.50, having been as high as $24.50 only a couple of weeks ago.

Writer Jesse Felder warns that equities have NEVER been more overvalued but that gold offers a … golden opportunity to get rich

So the result of last week was that the Fed didn’t hike rates (but essentially said it would next time) and Gold slipped back below $1800, having been knocking at the door of $1850 resistance until then. The yellow metal closed the week at $1792, having pushed as low as $1780 in the…er….disappointment.

Gold ended last week at $1836, up nicely from the prior week’s close at $1818 and, perhaps importantly, just above resistance at $1830-1835. Silver also did well, closing at $24.32 – close to a two month high. Meanwhile, for stockmarket bears, markets were selling off. The only ingredient now needed for Jordan Roy-Byrne’s (ahem….) golden scenario now is a Fed rate hike.

Gold ended the week at $1818, nicely up from last week’s drop to below $1790 and the close at $1797. The yellow metal is still not though $1830 resistance but the general direction of travel over the past month and a half has been upwards and the past four and a bit months has seen a steadily rising series of low points – even if of late there seems to be a ceiling at $1830. 

Our favourite technical analyst, Jordan Roy-Byrne of TheDailyGold.com, reckons that Gold is in for some slippage – it could slip down to around $1670 or so in the run-up to the Fed’s first interest rate hike, probably in March. If that is not enough, the minutes of the last Fed rate-setting meeting made it clear that it will be tightening policy – and possibly performing quantitative tightening (the opposite of QE) too. Normally that might be seen as a cue for the yellow metal to nose-dive, and although it fell once again below $1800 it closed the week at a resilient $1797 – down just $33 from the close at the end of 2021.

Gold ended the year at $1830 – up $20 in a shortened week, but down almost $70 on the year. So much for my belief that anything to do with Gold would have a good year – and so much for my $2000 at year-end prediction. But I sense things are swinging back in favour for the yellow metal.

Gold finished for Christmas at just about $1810, up $11 on the week as Gold enjoyed a very minor Santa rally. The view from the Montana log-cabin is that this recovery of $1800 is fragile in the short term, but I expect a much stronger 2022 as the grinding correction fizzles out and the US heads into mid-term elections at the end of the year.

Well that was a strange week! Having plunged as low as $1765 earlier this month from a high point of $1872 mid-November, Gold has been trying to put in a recovery but there have been some strange reactions.

This week Gold again went nowhere, closing at $1783 against last week’s….er…..$1783. But beneath the apparent market inactivity I sense there is a change of sentiment going on. The issue for me is that in theory, with interest rate rises on the horizon (making bonds more attractive) and suggestions that inflation may be moderating, Gold should be falling in price yet it is holding up quite nicely.

ShareProphets published the latest thoughts of favourite technical analyst Jordan Roy-Byrne regarding Gold on Friday. It was described as a bleak warning for folkslike me but I beg to differ – and I certainly won’t be buying meme stocks instead!

Gold closed the week – and month – at $1785, down from last week’s $1792 having again had a go at breaking through $1800. It does keep knocking at that door but so far there isn’t the buying strength to go through. I fancy that the market isn’t keen to put its money on the table ahead of next week’s central bank meetings in the UK (less so) and more importantly at the Federal Reserve. Whilst there is plenty of speculation that the UK will raise interest rates, over at the Fed the question is merely about tapering the vast quantities of new cash being printed and for Jerome Powell and his colleagues it is a tough call.

Gold closed this week at $1792 – up from last week’s $1768 and like last week it had a pop at $1800, reaching $1813 before being batted back down below $1800. Gold stocks had another good week too, as can be seen on the chart showing Gold, GDX (major producers’ ETF), GDXJ (“junior” producers) and GEOX (explorers) below.

Gold closed the week at $1757, down a tad from last week’s $1761 but pretty much unchanged. Nothing to write home about, perhaps, but very quietly Gold stocks seem to be showing a little more poise than of late. My chart of Gold against GDX (Gold majors’ETF), GDXJ (Gold not-so-juniors ETF) and GOEX (Gold explorers) shows what I am talking about.

Another week goes by and Gold is testing the nerves: having bounced between $1750 and $1830 or thereabouts over the past three months, this week the direction of travel has been lower and the price closed the week at $1751. Worse still, we have seen a series of lower highs.

This is getting boring! Gold fails at $1800 and slips, recovers, shows signs of another attack at $1830 resistance and then fails again. Repeat ad nauseam. As can be seen from the chart below, it has been going on for some time now – indeed, since mid-June.

Gold ended the week at $1817, up from $1781 last week. The big news was the chairman of the Federal Reserve, Jerome Powell’s speech to the virtual Jackson Hole shindig and whilst there had been some talk of a spot of hawkishness and an imminent taper on the masses of magic money being spewed out by the Fed, what we actually got was that the Fed’s view was that it could be appropriate to trim in this year. Which, of course, means it also could not be! The result was that Gold headed north and gold stocks followed suit.

I have been noting for the last few weeks how the Gold price has been fairly stable (…ish!) whilst Gold stocks have been falling. Last week I had wondered whether a mini double-bottom put in by gold stocks might draw an end to this. Alas, no – here is the chart for Gold, GDX (large gold-miners’ ETF), GDXJ (“junior” miners ETF) and GOEX (gold explorers’ ETF). They are still dropping.

Last week I pointed to the fact that while Gold was holding the $1800 per oz mark, Gold stocks had been sinking and I put up a chart to show it. Here is that same chart a week later:

Gold closed this week at $1812 – up a notch from last week’s $1808. That’s a fourth weekly gain in a row, which is good, but given that the price peaked at over $1830 it’s a bit of a disappointment. The surge was in reaction to yet another set of US inflation data well above expectations, but the response was short-lived.

Writer Steve St. Angelo of the SRSrocco Report says that the Fed’s Treasury purchase isn’t money creation; instead, it destroys it. Therefore, QE is not inflationary as many believe. This process is supposed to lower rates and thus increase public borrowing. However, QE is destroying money velocity and gradually ruining the economy.

Gold finished the week at $1782, having finished last week at $1764 – a modest improvement, but still a long way off $1900 which it was trying to clear before the Fed dropped the bombshell that it saw two rate rises…not this year, not next year, but in 2023!

Crash! Having had a fair old go at clearing $1900 Gold went into reverse this week to close at $1764 – down a whopping $114 from last week. Apparently Jerome Powell, head of the US Federal Reserve, has suddenly become a hawk……having told us he would ignore inflation data for the rest of this year, that unemployment is his biggest concern and that he wasn’t even thinking about thinking about tapering QE (which, we are told, would come before raising rates), now we are told to expect maybe two rate hikes in 2023. And that was enough to send precious metals into a tail-spin.

Gold finished this week at $1892, down a tad from last week’s $1904, so the week-on-week uptrend that has been going on for a while seems to have stalled. Data again suggested inflation is in the system and whilst the market reacted positively to Friday’s jobs data in the US, the number came in short of expectations again.

Apparently $1900 represents massive resistance for Gold in the charting world and a break of that line would be hugely bullish. The good news is that the yellow stuff closed the week – and month – at $1904, so is this the big break I have been waiting for?

Last week I noted that the calamitous latest US jobs data had helped the yellow metal over the $1800 mark and Gold reached $1831 as the magnitude of the miss sank in. Jordan Roy-Byrne, of TheDailyGold.com had been predicting a rise to between $1825-1850 before hitting overhead resistance and this week saw inflation data pushing ever higher which was taken as a cue to sell off.

Gold settled last week at almost exactly $1770 per oz – down a notch from the $1777 it closed at the previous week as the effect of the Federal Reserve’s interest rate decision (unchanged, completely predictable) wore off. And having wobbled as low as $1765 towards the end of the week, was it time to sell in May and go away?

It has been a long winter for gold, as an extended correction set in last August. But after a few weeks of going nowhere it seems as though Gold has finally exited the corrective phase and is finally on the up once again. But will it last, or are we headed for more drops?

Two steps forward, one step back. Gold closed at $1734 per oz this week, down a tad from last week’s $1745, ending a two-week rally but the truth of it is that it has been going nowhere fast over the last two and a half weeks, as can be seen on the chart below. I guess that is better than continuing the decline.

Gold is up again this week. Two in a row! I wouldn’t like to say the correction which started last August is over, or even that the bottom is at last in, but I am optimistic on both scores. So what happened this week? The Fed, of course!

AIM-listed gold producer in Turkey Ariana Resources (AAU) this morning announced that its CEO, Kerim Sener, has been buying shares – 582,000 of them – and why not, for the company is on the verge of declaring the long-awaited Special Dividend which I reckon will be around 0.7p. At approx. 4.9p a pop, that is £28,500 worth which is substantial enough to catch my interest, but there is another thing….

Last week I sensed that we were near the bottom of the correction in the Gold price at $1700 per oz. This week I see that Gold has risen to $1728: things are looking up! So have we finally seen off the grinding correction which started last August?

Goldman Sachs has pinned a $2,300 per oz target on Gold for 2021, saying that its bull market is not over, according to fnlondon.com, as inflation expectations will move higher, the US$ will weaken and emerging market retail demand recovers. Compared to some forecasts, this is extremely modest but a 22% gain for the yellow metal would still be significant.

My pieces on Centamin (CEY) and gold over the past few days have picked up some interesting comment. Jimbo55 is worried and has been cleverly risk-managing his gold exposure. On the other hand, Putneywill seems to agree that the long term move for gold is up and TheBadger reckons that the increasing supply of US dollars in circulation suggests that gold is only heading in one direction. Meanwhile, Jordan Roy-Byrne of TheDailyGold.com  simply says “ignore the noise”…

Phew – that was quite a week! Having posted yet another all-time high on Wednesday, the Nasdaq went into a mini-meltdown and dragged the DOW and the S&P with it, albeit to a much lesser extent. Even Bitcoin felt the wobbles as it closed the week at a shade over $10,000 having notched up almost $12,000 during the week. But as I sit here on the veranda of my log-cabin gazing out into the woods (where my secret stash of Gold is buried) it was a week of relative peace: it went up to just shy of $2,000 per oz and closed the week at $1935. Crisis? What crisis?

And so Buzz Lightyear “QE to Infinity and beyond” of the US Federal Reserve spoke at the virtual Jackson Hole economic summit for the great and the good of Central Banking. Reading between the lines, we can expect higher inflation but interest rates will stay low on the other side of the pond. That, of course, means that US Treasuries are set to lose investors’ money as inflation eats into the capital invested. As we all know, if the US sneezes the rest of us catch a cold, so expect the same thing this side of the pond. That was the news, but there seems to be a point that has been missed.

I said the other day that the gold market looked like it was ready for a correction. We’ve had a big run, everything is overbought etc etc – the gold market needs to correct, to blow away the froth. The problem has been that every time it looks as though a bit of selling will settle in, more bad data emerges and off we go upwards once again. Yesterday the Fed was effectively suggesting inflation is good and interest rates will stay put at zero, Nancy Pelosi was suggesting that $600 a week cheques would not disincentivise people from returning to work, the Democrats and Repulicans are apparently homing in on another stimulus package (funded by the Fed’s money printing machine) and apparently the Fed thinks that your average American will invest in US government bonds for ten years at an interest rate of 0.5%, which is well below the inflation rate. Meanwhile the US dollar resumed its slide and gold broke through $2000. Real world vs fantasy-land.

Last week I warned that markets were ripe for a big tumble in the face of, quoting Alan Greenspan (former head of the US Federal Reserve), irrational exuberance and that according to our favourite technical analyst Jordan Roy-Byrne of TheDailyGold.com gold and gold stocks were likely to offer a great buying opportunity. Well, here we are a week later and markets are down but there is a long way to go, and gold hasn’t gone anywhere……except the mining stocks have, and look set for a rebound.

I noted last week that whilst most precious metals experts were saying this was the time to buy gold Jordan Roy-Byrne of TheDailyGold.com was suggesting a correction may be on the cards. Well, gold did indeed slip – as did the gold miner ETFs (so full marks to JRB) and then on Friday it all bounced back again. Was that it?

Equity markets have had a startling run since posting coronavirus lows back in March. It seems to me that the appetite for risk hadn’t been dented and most seemed to believe in the V-shaped recovery theory once the economies around the world had reopened. Most startling for me is that the Nasdaq was actually up on the year so far. That seems to me to be utter lunacy: I see an “L”-shaped non-recovery for the time being.

It is a big question: where can you make money now? More to the point, with economic uncertainty the order of the day, perhaps not making money but just preserving capital as best you can should be the focus. Are shares going to go up? In general, I doubt it – at least for the time being. With interest rates at historic lows and therefore bond prices sky-high it is hard to see much progress there too. Perhaps we should all just move into cash? But central banks are printing, governments are borrowing so the threat of devaluing currencies makes that option unattractive too. What to do?

The technical analyst community is frothing a little over this chart as it offers a pretty strong bull signal for gold enthusiasts. The thing causing the excitement is an inverted head and shoulders, suggestig upside ahead, on the chart of Gold Futures. Note the break of that line at $1680 this past week: I gather the upside target is around $1880 per ounce.....IF ths follows the textbook. That's a big "if", though.

Warren Buffett is famed for many pithy comments such as “When the tide goes out you see who wasn’t wearing trunks” in the wake of the banking crisis. It is often the case that those who really understand what is going on are best able to explain it in simple terms and this week Peter Schiff offered up another. The point here is that we are being told that everything will return to normal once the coronavirus has been dealt with – Peter Schiff completely disagrees.

As everything crashes and burns in the markets there is one asset - gold - which has managed to keep its head above water. At the end of last week it looked as though we were on the edge of another significant move higher, and then markets had a big sell-off and gold was tramped down again. But the week just ended has seen gold recover and have another go at breaking out, putting in an 8-year end-of-week high.

Fully-listed Egyptian gold miner Centamin (CEY) has announced Q4 results, including confirmation of its intention to pay an increased full year dividend of 6 US cents per share to add to the 4 cents paid out at the half year. The numbers are, despite missing the target of scraping in line with the full year production target, quite impressive and bode well for the future...

Suddenly everybody sees the markets heading ever higher. China and the USA are apparently on the cusp of signing something which would at least mark a truce is the trade spat, central banks are again joining the feeding frenzy and life is good. UK markets are up, Asian markets are up and the USA is posting yet more records. And with all this uber-happiness, gold and gold stocks are also pushing higher. It is all good, but I thought that gold was supposed to be an asset of last refuge: why is it heading higher if stockmarkets in general are riding high? Surely it should be heading in the opposite direction.

I have made no secret of my view that Gold is an essential part of one’s portfolio. Not everyone will agree, but that is my view. In the light of what is going on now, those who have exposure will be perhaps the only people smiling right now. The one technical analyst rated by ShareProphets, Jordan Roy-Byrne of thedailygold.com has been forthright in his views that the metal is headed much higher over many years, after a very extended period of waiting, and although recently he had been suggesting a correction was due he remains a strong bull.

AIM-listed Turkish gold miner Ariana Resources (AAU) has had a raft of good news lately – the biggest seems to me to be the resurgent strength of the yellow metal: last seen its price was through the apparently all-important $1350 per oz level, although only time will tell whether that proves a sustainable move or another false dawn in a long line of false dawns. We have also had full year results for 2018 and drilling results from Kizilcukur all amounting to a rise in the share price to 2.1p. Having finished my own top-slicing, I can now proudly say strong hold as we look forward to a string of developments.

There aren’t many chartists that one would pay close attention to, but Jordan Roy-Byrne is one to pay attention to. I have said before that whilst he is presented as a technical analyst, much of what he offers is more to do with a history lesson and he has an alarming rate of accuracy.

Peter Schiff is a libertarian a gold bug and a hero of mine. So I listen to what he says. His latest podcast - not surprisingly - has a similar world view to mine. The Fed is now indicating it needs evidence that  the Q1 weak economic data is transitory and not a trend.  This is interesting for 2 reasons.  The Fed’s narrative has always been to tout economic growth even in the face of flimsy or no supporting data.  Now the Fed is actually admitting there is weakness.  The other interesting thing is that, although the Fed continues to claim it is “data dependent”, it has been ignoring the economic data ever since the first rate hike.  The market puts chances of a June rate hike at almost 100%.  Maybe that is because it believes the Fed will raise rates regardless of proof.

Other than a few months around the start of the year, we are now seeing silver back at its lowest levels since mid-2009, and I can see a strong bounce coming soon.

I’ve always had in an interest in the natural resources sector, but in the past I had mainly stuck to investing and trading the shares of companies within that area.

The Federal Reserve and IMF have both wrongly forecasted growth and inflation forecasts the for the last 8 years. The economists who run those organizations are not scientists, but dogmatists and ideologues who let preconceived notions and political preferences hinder their objective analysis. In his new book ‘The Road to Ruin: The Global Elites’ Secret Plan for the Next Financial Crisis’, New York Times bestselling author James Rickards shows some specific examples of how the scientific methods could work.

I have been very pleased with the way that Glencore (GLEN) has performed since I covered it here a few months back, but I now feel that it is time to cash in, at least for the time being.

With the USA recording a higher than expected number of new entrants into the workforce last month, the markets are hopeful that there will be a rate hike in September and that US dollar’s weakness might be over and the optimists are now forecasting a 3.8% third quarter rise in real GNP but recent services data out of the USA has pointed to a weaker number. The second quarter GNP figure which had widely been expected to come in at +2.8% turned out to be only +1.2%. With capital spending following profits downwards and the world economy continuing to be weak, only consumer spending and bank consumer credit lending has kept the US economy rolling along. 

The stock market sell off came amid concerns that the stock market slide itself together with the slowdown in China will cause more capital outflows. Faced with a falling stock market and growing pessimism about the economy, investors are moving money out of China and into countries with better returns.

Despite the recent sell off my BTI (sentiment indicator) is still rising (bullish divergence), an indication that the FTSE will rally. But the rally must start now otherwise there is a risk the BTI will turn down. Sentiment is affected by stock market declines, if the market falls and the decline lasts too long people turn bearish.