Michael Ballanger discusses the effect of events in Brussels on precious metals.
As I was stomping around the house looking for my cowering Labrador yesterday afternoon, I think I was mumbling something about “no good rotten ba$tards” in reference to the blatant price control exerted yesterday in Europe and North America in stocks, Forex, and, of course, the precious metals because, after all, they simply couldn’t allow stocks and the Euro to crash and precious metals to soar in response to the murders perpetrated in Brussels on Tuesday. You will note that I did not use the words “terrorist attacks” or “suicide bombings” but the more accurate description of what occurred: People were MURDERED—period. The perpetrators are “murderous bastards” as opposed to “Islamic Fundamentalists” or “terrorists.”
I don’t know whether I was mumbling to myself more in disgust with the market interventions or with these senseless killings that are slowly desensitizing us all to the horror of these acts and the madness gripping the perpetrators. What is important to us in the trading arena is that a sharp advance in gold and silver was halted and reversed with a masterfully executed buy program in the Dollar-Yen, which triggered an entire armada of HFT/Algo-driven computers into buy-side action in the USD and stock futures and sell-side action in gold, silver and the VIX.
So this morning, in a move that actually began last night, the PMs are now doing exactly what the COT reports have been suggesting for the past three weeks and the miners will most certainly roll over today with the HUI opening down nearly 5% to 172. This is what I have been fearing for the past four weeks since the Commercials moved to “net short” 161,000 contracts and finally topping out at 195,000 contracts on March 11. I …read more