These are the most gold-friendly readings in almost 2 months. India is getting ready to participate in the world gold market again. India’s gold imports drop 80.48% to $972.9 million in March documents what a heavy blow the Indian gold retailers strike struck to global gold. JBGJ guesstimates March imports at around 24 tonnes meaning some 120 tonnes of demand was lost in March.  – From John Brimelow’s Gold Jottings.

The quote above from Brimelow’s Gold Jottings report is in reference to the fact that gold import price premiums in excess of the import duty India’s gold market began to appear again.

Since the big move higher through early March, gold has been surprisingly “resilient” up to this point from repeated attempts to manipulate the price lower. The most common occurrence has been attempted “flash crashes” during early Asian trading. Interestingly, gold has tended to rally after the London a.m. fix and into the NY Comex floor trading hours. Perhaps most surprising is that the bullish activity has occurred in the absence of demand from India. India’s jewelers have been on strike since March 1, which has effectively closed down India’s massive gold import machine (excerpt from the latest issue of the Mining Stock Journal).

The graph above (click to enlarge) shows the big “cup/handle” formation that has formed in gold since its extraordinary move since mid-December.   “Extraordinary” because the gold market has had to endure strong headwinds in the form of a literal avalanche of anti-gold propaganda from the financial media, financial cable networks, Wall Street banks and even some of gold’s supporter.

As you can see from that graph, gold has been “oscillating” sideways, digesting the 21% bottom to top move it made in a short period of time.  Perhaps most impressive about the move is its durability despite a continuous flood of paper gold thrown at the market by the Comex bullion banks, per the CFTC’s Commitment of Traders report.  In fact, the latest report released last Friday showed a big spike higher in the bullion bank net short position in both paper gold and paper silver.  Typically this signals an imminent, manipulate price-plunge, enabling the Comex operators to cover their shorts at a handsome profit.

Too be sure, the technical formation in the graph above could break either way.  From a technical standpoint, it would not be atypical to see the price of gold to pullback to the “rim” of the cup (112 area on GLD) or even down to the 200 dma (red line, 109.40).

But the market manipulators will not be getting help from India, who’s elephantine appetite for gold at this time of year appears to be picking back up or from the public, which has been converting paper fiat dollars into gold at a record rate per this report on gold eagles sales by SRSRocco.com.

JP Morgan’s mining stock analyst issued a report on Agnico Eagle (AEM) in which he made the assertion that, “the company’s exploration efforts have yielded good results, resulting in an increase in the share price, even against declining gold prices.”  Hmmm.  I wonder what kind of smokable material JPM’s analyst has been putting into his pipe (click to enlarge: