Cap the metals they may. Smash the metals they may. Save some ammo for another day, cause Gold & Silver didn’t come here to play. We are the Sultans of Price Swing… 

Gold & silver have been on tight lockdown all week. After gold punched through $1300 on Friday, August 18th, both metals have been range-bound and capped ever since:

 

 

Furthermore, we have been monitoring the daily chart all year, and noticing, especially with silver, that there has been very little to no consolidation. However, all that has changed this week:

 

 

 

The MSM will be quick to point out a healthy “consolidation”, “basing”, or however they would like to spin it, but one look at that chart and we know exactly what it is: Fierce capping of price ahead of the Fed’s Jackson Hole Keynesfest.

The “consolidation” is pronounced in gold as well:

 

 

 

Of course, we can rest assured that the battle for $1300 will not be pretty. This is the third defensive stance by the market manipulators this year. After the April and June gold offensives, maybe we took for granted “third time’s a charm”, and now we are finding out that since June, they have been hardening their defenses.

And then, of course, today happened. Gold and silver caught a bid, and gold popped above $1300 at 9:17 a.m:

 

(No, that’s not the elusive yet uber-bullish “Loch Ness Chart Formation”, that doesn’t happen in the metals. That is the “Cue the Fat Finger Chart Formation”)

Then, 23 minutes later, the smash began, and one minute later, for one minute, between 10:41 a.m. and 10:42 a.m., 21,135 gold futures contracts were dumped on the COMEX.

Sorry, but I’m done with the sugar-coating and the fun strike-through fonts. Let’s just call it what it is: All out desperation to keep a finger pressed down hard on that sell button until every last person who wanted to buy gold was sold to and then some. I’m sure that guy has a blister on his finger, yellow stains on his undershirt, and a ring around his collar. Here’s the volume spike close up so you can get angry, mad, or sick:

 

 

 

Today’s 21,135 contract dump merits a zoomed out look for further consideration:

 

 

We all know what happened in the wee hours of November 9th, 2016, but a closer inspection of daily volume shows that while the cartel has been successful in containing price, they haven’t been successful in really knocking it back to $1050 or anything like that. Also, in addition to the “flood the market with naked short gold futures contracts and buy them back when enough have been printed to outspend then outlast the specs”, there has been a slowly increasing volume creep all year. So much so that it looks like it is about to get very, very loud. For example, North Korea came and went, as did Charlottesville and the Total Solar Eclipse. If we live by the 24 hour news cycle as Jim Rickards states, what explaination is there that gold would have such a massive spike in volume (dumping) on a day when nothing is going on?

Publicly, the Fed ignores and avoids gold all of the time. So while Jackson Hole is a whole lot of “meh” in terms of an effect on gold, with the proxy exception of talking the US dollar one way or another,  there is really no reason to see what we are seeing. It’s not FOMC day, it’s not minutes day, it’s not Nonfarm Payrolls day, it’s not anything massively market moving day, other than a Fed convention just like all the other Fed conventions.

And so today, the metals are standing their ground. They are not on the offensive, but they are not retreating, and gold and silver have recovered all their losses within just a couple of hours:

 

 

 

It is bittersweet, because we know the metals are strong. Copper and palladium have shown us that. The pill that’s hard to swallow is the one that could have led us to a $75 day in gold and $1.00 day in silver. We had some big move days in 2016 don’t forget (Brexit & Trump), and today, we could have had a big move off of nothing but the pent up energy everybody must be tired of waiting for. All that it means, however, is that once the pent up energy cannot be contained, the cartel will wish they could keep it at $75 and $1.00 days.

If you really want to bust out the tinfoil, here is some fundamental food for wrapping it in the foil and putting it in the microwave thought. North Korea? Crickets. Racial divide and blood on the streets? Crickets. President Trump screwed this up or stuck his foot in his mouth on that? Crickets. What we do have, is a ton of this:

 

 

 

 

Now, not to belittle a hurricane or the people that stand in it’s forecast path, but think about it for a second. Fear trade? Nope. Hurricanes are local events. Partisan politics? Nope. Hurricanes don’t care about blue or red. OK, so that leaves racial tension? Nope. Harvey is not even in the top 250 boy’s names in the US:

 

 

We aren’t even sure how popular of a name Harvey is?

So as you can see, the MSM has shifted to about as non-gold sensitive of a topic as they can. Now I know what you’re thinking if you try pulling out the “but people can barter with gold and silver post-SHTF”. Yes they can and you are absolutely right. They can and they do. However, just watch. If the hurricane gets bad enough, the MSM will either blame it on President Trump, or they will throw all that racial/political/gender/everything divide out the window for as long as they cover the story and for one moment highlight the “coming together in a time of crisis”.

Gold and silver are still as bullish as ever, and the cartel is as active as ever trying to keep the price down.

In other market news, the US dollar has just put in a fresh new low on the year:

 

 

Kind of makes you wonder if there are any dollar bulls left? That was the trade of 2017 after all, and from the looks of it, they are in scramble mode trying to make the gold and silver trade not look like the real trade of the year. Cue Bitcoin?

Palladium has hit a new high on the year:

 

 

 

And so has copper:

 

 

Crude, bonds, and the stock markets get honorable mentions this week but no charts.  Crude is down slightly on the week, 10-year note yield is down on the week, and for this week’s stock market comparison, since the WSJ thinks this market is all that matters, the S&P is up about 20 points on the week.

We have been all over the Fort Knox Gold Story like an inconsiderate cousin’s fingerprint on your 2017 American Gold Eagle.

So we can’t help but leave you with this:

 

#DYK the gold bar @USTreasury Secretary Mnuchin is holding weighs about 27lbs? #UnitedStatesBullionDepository #FtKnox pic.twitter.com/fMj6Y2QShx

— United States Mint (@usmint) August 24, 2017

And as a bonus, this:

 

And as a double bonus, we hope you enjoyed this market wrap covering the most eventful unch gold & silver week ever: