Gold and Silver both had a stellar Q1, and Q2 looks to be more of the same. The same issues will continue to drive metals, with perhaps the added interest due to central bank cuts.
Gold was very strong for Q1 as you all know, and it is likely to continue to be very strong. All things being equal, this is a market that has plenty of reasons to go higher, both from a fundamental and a technical perspective. As for the technical analysis, it’s quite easy to see that we have been in an uptrend for ages, so unless something drastically changes with the overall economic picture, I just don’t see a world in which gold drops its trend and changes to being bearish. Because of this, I am looking for opportunities to take advantage of any value that I find in this market.
On the weekly chart, you can clearly see that there was a bullish flag printed, and that bullish flag has a “measured move” of the $3300. I think ultimately, we have to consider that the market will eventually try to get there, especially if we start to see a weakening US dollar. The $3000 level should be important as support, but even if we were to break down below that level, I don’t think that ends the trend. In fact, I would not be concerned about gold at all until we break down below the $2700 level. If that were to happen, it’s very likely that we would see a lot of disruption in the markets. I remain bullish on gold, at least for the next few months.
Silver shouldn’t be forgotten either. After all, we have seen silver take off to the upside during the entirety of Q1, and it is now at the time of writing, threatening a break above the crucial $35 level. This gets my attention because this is an area that once broken, quite often it has since silver looking to the $50 level. This has only happened a couple of times in the past, and both times silver ended up being like a rocket ship to the upside.
There’s an old legend, possibly driven by CFTC legal actions against J.P. Morgan, that there is a ton of selling pressure in this area and the reason silver has rocketed like that a couple of times in the past is because it ends up causing a short squeeze. While that may or may not be true, the one thing that I do know is that silver is very strong, and a move above the $35 level would probably not only see silver go higher, but it would probably drag gold right along with it, or vice versa.
Pullbacks at this point in time should be thought of as buying opportunities and I would not start worrying about the uptrend in silver until we are well below the $31 level, something that would take a catastrophic episode of negativity. The only thing that I can think that could do that is if the US dollar suddenly spikes quite radically. Remember, and perhaps more so than gold, the US dollar can put a real beating on the silver market.
Chris is a proprietary trader with more than 20 years of experience across various markets, including currencies, indices and commodities. As a senior analyst at FXEmpire since the website’s early days, he offers readers advanced market perspectives to navigate today’s financial landscape with confidence.