After dancing around the $1350 level (August futures basis) the price of gold launched in three stages after the FOMC circus was over on June 19th. The first move enabled gold to break above and hold the $1360 area of resistance that has been referenced ad nauseum for the last three years. Then, two “reverse flash crashes” later on Thursday and Friday that week, gold powered well above $1400 before a “flash crash” at the end of Friday’s trading pushed gold back below $1400 for the weekend. On Monday afternoon (June 24th) gold broke free from  the shackles of official price containment and sustained a move over $1400 and ran up to $1440.

As I expected, a combination of profit-taking by the hedge funds chasing momentum higher with paper gold and official efforts to push the price of gold lower triggered a sell-off that tested $1400 successfully. Gold closed out the week (August futures basis) at $1412.

While I was expecting a move like this at some point in response to the Fed reimplementing loose monetary policy, I thought that it wouldn’t happen until the Fed signaled that it would begin printing money again. It’s not clear to me if this move is being fueled by fundamentals and a flight to safety or if it’s hedge fund algos chasing price momentum. It’s likely a combination of both.

Independent of any economic disruption that may or may not be caused by the trade war, economic activity globally is deteriorating rapidly. Every country around the world recklessly printed money and piled up debt which artificially revived economic activity after the 2008 de facto systemic collapse. Mathematically the world can’t print money and issue debt ad infinitum. We may have hit the wall in that regard over the last 12 months. The trade war is being used as a convenient scapegoat. It’s like blaming the start of World War I on the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand…

I believe there’s no question that highly negative events are unfolding “behind the scenes” which are sucking liquidity out of the system. I believe these events will emerge in plain sight well before year-end. The yield curve inversions (Treasury, Eurodollar futures) are telling us there’s hidden explosives detonating that have been contained for now. I have no doubt that the troubles are connected to primarily to Deutsche Bank but also stem from the early stages of a subprime debt problem. The “secret” meeting held a couple weeks ago by Mnuchin and the Financial Stability Oversight Council concerning “alarms” in the junk bond market was a tell-tale as was the “bad bank” plan announced by Deutsche Bank, which was curiously devoid of any details on how it would be funded or what would go into it.

The systemic problems and geopolitical animosities percolating behind “the curtain” are not lost on those with an inside view of the action. I expect an aggressive attack on the gold price next week. The Fourth of July observance falls on Thursday, which means most Wall Street trading desks will be lightly staffed most of the week. Low-volume holiday periods are the favorite time for the bullion banks to stage a raid on gold. The success of this raid is crucial to maintaining the illusion that obvious systemic problems are manageable.

Any attempt to push the price of gold lower will be helped by the fact that official gold imports into India have stopped while the Indian public digests the recent surge in the price of gold. This is typical behavior by India after a sharp move higher in gold. Smuggling to avoid the import duty likely continues unabated. But the removal of India’s official bid from the physical gold market is a window of opportunity for the western gold price managers to make an effort to push bold back below $1400 using paper.

If any attempt to  manipulate gold back below $1400 fails in the next week or two, it means that unhealthy quantities of brown fecal matter are connecting with the fan blades – out of sight for now except for the signal coming from the gold.

Any sustained move higher in gold and silver will ignite a fire below the mining stocks, especially the historically undervalued juniors. My Mining Stock Journal covers several mining stocks that I believe are extraordinarily undervalued relative to their upside potential. I also present opportunistic recommendations on select mid-tier and large-cap miners that should outperform their peers. In response to subscriber requests, in the next issue released this upcoming week I’ll present an initial opinion on Great Bear Resources. You can learn more about this newsletter here:   Mining Stock Journal information.