Half-Full or Half-Empty?

I guess it all depends on how you choose to look at it.

Half-full: In the face of a rising POSX, a falling euro, negative crude and sharply lower grains, the PMs performed admirably in eeking out slight gains on the day.

Half-empty: After rallying all morning, gold stood just $3 away from a headline-grabbing, all-time closing high at noon EDT. The buyers had seized the day and the EE was on the run. Sadly, the buyers seemed to simply give up and call it a day before their work was done. This allowed the monkeys to take over and drive gold back down almost $10 by the close. Yuck.

By the descriptions above, I guess you can tell how I feel about today’s events.

Oh well, today is over and its onto the overnight and Tuesday trade. Without question, the item of the day for tomorrow will be the performance of the POSX. It faces two very strong lines of resistance that are both intersecting around the 74 level. IF it can clear 74, the newly-energized bulls will seize the day and quickly drive it back toward 75. IF, however, it acts like it’s supposed to, the 74 level will cap today’s meager rally and the index will head lower, toward 73.50. Let’s hope the latter scenario plays out as it will activate the “risk on” button of WOPR and send stocks and commodities higher on Tuesday.

Today’s weakness in crude presents traders with another opportunity to get long near support and with limited downside risk. I gotta tell ya, if I was some big $ hedgie, I’d be all over this one. You can buy right here, between 98 and 99 and put a stop below the recent lows of 95. That’s about $4 of downside risk. Your upside, however, is almost infinite.

The PM charts are simply updates of the charts I posted this morning. Sadly, gold failed to hold 1550 and was successfully beaten back for the fourth time in four days. Again, why The Cartel is so determined to keep it below 1550 and why buyers are so reluctant to drive it through are questions for which I don’t have an answer. Feel free to posit your own theory in the comments section.

Lastly, here’s a piece from one of my favorite commentators, Mark Steyn. It’s about two weeks old but still relevant to the discussion here.
http://www.steynonline.com/content/view/4084/28/

Have a great evening. Keep checking back as I may have more for you later. TF

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