After reaching new yearly highs yesterday off of fears of nuclear proliferation with North Korea, longs in gold booked profits today as headlines in Washington D.C. took top step for investors.The gold market saw selling pressure right after midday news reports that President Trump said he will support a three-month extension to the U.S. debt limit. That would keep the government operating and keep hurricane-damage funds flowing. The gold market had seen some slight support recently on ideas a U.S. government shutdown in the coming weeks, due to a debt-limit impasse, would create even more anxiety in the marketplace. The U.S. stock indexes pushed to their daily highs on the Trump debt-limit-extension news. Aside from the North Korea H bomb testing over Labor Day weekend, gold was also buoyed by weakness in the greenback. A weak durable goods reading and comments from a Fed governor stating that the Fed should be more cautious about raising rates with inflation not reaching the goal of two percent has also aided the bullish momentum. As of August 29th, the CFTC reported that the non commercial non-reportable position in gold coming in long over 262 K contracts. But given the rally into this past weekend and to start this week, the long position has most likely pushed out to 300 K contracts. Silver has also been bought as a safe haven and briefly pushed up to first weekly resistance this morning at 18.06 before pulling back on the close to finish the session at 17.91. As of August 29th, longs in silver came in at over 65K contracts but again this is understated and in my view is most likely up at 80K contracts. In any event there is clearly more room to the upside should geopolitical headlines dominate with silver gaining on gold in the near term. Aside from everyone watching the track of Hurricane Irma as it bears down on the Florida coast, the major economic data point for the remainder of this week is Thursday’s European Central Bank monetary policy meeting, including a press conference from European Central Bank President Mario Draghi after the meeting.
Technicals come in as follows for Thursday and Friday for both gold and silver. For December gold support is down first at 1320.6 and with a close under 1306.7. Resistance is up at 1349.0 and then up at 1358.1. For December silver, support is down at 17.58 and below there at 17.34. Resistance is up at 18.06 and with a close over 1830.5.
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