Through much of this young year, Gold has basked in its glow of being above where ’twas through much of the same period a year ago — but now, ’tis not so. Price settled out the week yesterday (Friday) at 1235, which per the above panel is 25 points (-2.0%) below 2016’s level nine like weeks into year, (then at 1260). Proof once again that the trend is our friend ’til it reaches the bend, which by Gold’s slacking continues to be the repellent, dare we say repugnant, 1240-1280 resistance zone. But as for Sister Silver…

…Ouch! Silver had been on one of those stock market-like “we never go down” binges, pretty much from the 20 December low of 15.675 to the year’s high of 18.510 on both this past Tuesday and Wednesday. To be sure, we’ve been marveling for many-a-week at how Silver’s “Baby Blues” have been depicting an almost perfect upside day-by-day consistency of the 21-day linear regression trend. But then came this past Thursday and…

…Crack! went Silver’s Blues, price plummeting so swiftly as to hoover back 13 trading days of gains (+ 4.9% since 10 February) by falling 3.7% in less than two hours! Yet ’tis hardly understatement to assert that selling Silver was absolutely due, having previously noted from the precious metal aspect Gold had already come off its own upside rails, and from the industrial metal aspect, Copper had already for some three weeks been flailing about and failing. From left-to-right here are the three metals across the last 21 trading days, with their respective Baby Blues and current grey diagonal trendlines:

Still, have a look at each of the above markets’ rightmost bar (yesterday) of recovery. For even with Federal Reserve Bank Vice-Chairman Stanley Fischer’s (per his most diplomatic terminology of “If there has been a conscious effort I’m about to join it”) jumping on the rate-hike bandwagon, the dovely Chair Yellen nonetheless hedged so as to “evaluate whether employment and inflation are continuing to evolve in line with our expectations”. That is to say, her eyes are squarely-focused on the late-arriving February payrolls data due this next Friday (10 March). ‘Course, one need take no more than a mere glance at the Economic Barometer to see that it has “rate hike” written all over it: