Gold/Silver Technical Highlights:
- Gold broke the December trend-line, 1306/00 and worse in sight
- Silver on the brink of trading down below 16.20 to July trend-line
- USD strength burdensome, DXY on the verge of more gains
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Gold broke the December trend-line, 1306/00 and worse in sight
A couple of days back gold broke the trend-line running higher since December after another rejection around the 2013 trend-line. The US dollar has been flexing its muscles as of late (My colleague, Nick Cawley, touched on the fundamental driver earlier this morning). The decline has the area from 1306/00-area squarely in sight, with the upper portion of the zone having the most amount of inflection points, dating back to October.
If gold fails to find buyers at price support, next up is the 200-day at 1287, however; the moving average, while widely-watched, isn’t in confluence with price or slope support, so it is unclear whether it will have much meaning. The past couple of times it has traded around the MA there hasn’t been much of a reaction.
On a big pick-up in momentum, the December 2016 trend-line (over 40 points lower) will come into view. For now, though, we’ll take it one step at a time with levels closer at hand. Overall, though, its looking lower in the near-term and support levels at risk of breaking.
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Gold Daily Chart
Silver on the brink of trading down below 16.20 to July trend-line
Silver is trading just below a minor trend-line rising up from the December bottom. The key level in focus here is the Feb low at 16.20. A break below will bring the July trend-line into play, currently just beneath 16, and below there the December low at 15.63. To turn the picture bullish, much work will be needed, and its big sibling, gold, will need to firmly cross the 2013 trend-line on a weekly closing basis.
Silver Daily Chart
USD strength burdensome, DXY on the verge of more gains
Since hitting a bottom during the middle of last month the US dollar has experienced the strongest rebound since Q3 into Q4. The rebound has the US Dollar Index (DXY) on the verge of recapturing an underside trend-line from 2015 along with the low from September.
Should this take shape, there is a little room to run until the trend-line from last March is tested. This may turn out to be problematic for the dollar, but there is still plenty of room from here to there for a rally and continue putting heat on precious metals. Yesterday, a higher high was made from the early-February peak, so even if DXY pulls back a bit from here the outlook can still remain constructive.
The overall picture looks set to continue keeping pressure on precious metals. But as per usual, we’ll focus on the set-ups/levels in gold & silver directly, and secondarily we’ll worry about what the dollar is doing.
US Dollar Index (DXY) Daily Chart
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---Written by Paul Robinson, Market Analyst
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