The price of gold soared over $13 Monday as flight-to-safety money flowed into the precious metals sector while the stock market went into a downward spiral. I see Monday’s market action as a preview of what’s in store going forward as price discovery once again engulfs the stock market and causes the most extreme stock bubble in U.S. history to deflate.

Despite the fact that it seems to be taking forever for gold and silver to enter into a prolonged move higher, the chart below should offer encouragement.

Gold, silver and mining stocks are deeply oversold technically. It’s  obvious that the western Central Banks are throwing everything they can at the gold price via the paper derivative gold markets in London and NYC in an attempt to prevent a massive move higher.  The data for gold and silver futures on the Comex show that the banks are working hard to stunt any rally by unloading loads of paper gold on the market.

This effort is rewarding the large physical gold importing countries in the east. India’s net import of gold jumped by 27 per cent to 192.4 tonnes in the first quarter of calendar year 2019 from 151 tonnes in the same period last year. In April India unofficially imported 121 tonnes of gold, up significantly from April 2018. The increase in import activity is attributable to the lower gold price. Note that the official statistics do not include smuggled gold, which is thought to average around 25 tonnes per month. China also has stepped up its gold buying over the last several weeks.

At some point the Fed is going to be forced by the market to cut the Fed Funds rate, as the 1yr Treasury is now yielding less that the Fed Funds target rate. In addition, the yield curve is inverted from 1yr out to 7yrs, with a steep inversion between the 1yr and 3yr Treasurys. It won’t take much flinching from the Fed to ignite a rally in the metals. In addition, the investor sentiment as measured by MarketVane is about as low as I’ve seen it in a long time (34% bullish for both gold and silver).

Despite the 600 pt sell-off in the Dow today, complacency persists, along with an expectation that the Fed will continue to support wanton speculation in the stock market.  But the inverted yield curve, combined with an effective Fed Funds rate that is above the interest rate used to calculate the quantity of free money given by the Fed to the banks on excess reserves, is strong evidence that the Fed is losing its ability to control the financial markets.  At some point the Fed and its western Central Bank collaborators, led by the BIS, will also lose control of the gold price.