Precious Metals News Update - 13 April 2018

PRECIOUS METALS RANGES - Trade Date: April 12th

COMMENTS / HIGHLIGHTS:

• Ladders and snakes – ladders give, snakes take. Gold and silver gave up the entirety (and a touch more) of Wednesday’s gains yesterday, as expectations of the US and its allies raining down a shower of missiles from the skies over Syria, failed to materialise. The slightly inconvenient requirement for facts and evidence to emerge before pursuing such a grave course of action, perhaps staying the hand of the war hawks for now. That notwithstanding, the United States, the UK and France continue to assemble their military hardware in the region as President Trump pursues his “Twitter Diplomacy”, Tweeting overnight that; “Never said when an attack on Syria would take place. Could be very soon or not so soon at all! In any event, the United States, under my Administration, has done a great job of ridding the region of ISIS. Where is our “Thank you America?”

• Palladium posted a “Long Legged Doji” candlestick on the Daily chart as buyers swooped in and bought the weakness, allowing the industrial metal to close towards the upper end of its intraday range and to again register the strongest performance from amongst the precious metals complex in recent days. XPD/USD however, was unable to reclaim the all-important 200 Day moving average (@USD 976.00) yesterday but remains within striking distance and it remains to be seen whether the low at USD 897 (April 6th) has been “locked-in”.

• The Bitcoin casino provided punters with a result as the cryptocurrency registered its strongest performance since last year, allegedly as Russian oligarchs piled in to protect their net worth.

TECHNICAL COMMENTS:

• XAU/USD: The technical ‘double top’ resistance around the USD 1365.00 level highlighted yesterday, presaged a mean-reversion move back down into the middle of XAU/USD’s broader USD 1306 – 1365 sideways range, the market holding just above the 21 Day moving average at USD 1332. It’s a ‘buy dips’ or ‘sell rallies’ proposition given the sideways price action but at current levels it’s a coin-toss as the market sits in the middle of the range. Better dip buying or rally selling opportunities should present and the more prudent course for the moment would be to take a ‘wait and see’ approach, especially in view of the significant headline risk that exists resulting from current geopolitical tensions. “When in doubt, do nowt”.

• XAU/AUD: Textbook range trading continues in XAU/AUD. As flagged yesterday, the market dropped back down to the 21 Day moving average and followed through to recent support at the AUD 1715 / 1720 (previous resistance of the mid-August 2017 to late March 2018 sideways trading range). So, with that in mind, it appears that it’s a ‘buy dips’ market back towards AUD 1715 / 1720 and ‘sell rallies’ back into AUD 1750 / 1757 until a breakout either side.

Good luck and have a great weekend.
 
Regards,
Andre