As we all know by now, we haven’t had free markets since the fall of 2008 when the SEC banned short selling in financials. Other than currencies, which are the most heavily manipulated markets in the world, the metals are a close second or third if one includes sovereign bonds.

I became cautious when gold crashed in June even though the dollar had basically gone nowhere. That was a warning that someone was suppressing the metals again. So we’ve been very careful with tight stops as we’ve been hunting for an intermediate bottom.

At this point I think we are dealing with a large bank or central bank that would like to cover their shorts into a panic. That probably means gold will continue to be suppressed and manipulated until they succeed in breaking the July 2017 low.

So we’re staying on the sidelines for now.

Update: For the first time in a long time gold is making an effort to break free of the suppression holding it back this morning. If the bulls succeed in breaking the manipulation we could get a nice short squeeze on the banks that may have held onto their shorts a little too long. We’ll have to see where the battle is at when we close later today. 

I fully expect the market to be “rescued” probably into the close today, and then propped up ahead of the FOMC meeting, but I still like the timing band between late August and the first week of September for a larger degree intermediate cycle low.

I got an email from some idiot the other day telling me how stupid I was for being bullish stocks. Another perma bear trying to pick a top.

Of course I didn’t just get bullish like this moron was implying. I’ve been bullish for a long time. So while idiots like this have been getting killed over and over for 9 years, we’ve been making money the whole time.

As of today the SMT stock portfolio is up 17.4% since the challenge started on July 2. No one is even remotely close to those gains at this point and it’s because I’m smart enough not to be a bear during a bull market. Logical right?

The SMT metal portfolio is currently in 2nd place with a +10% gain.

These retards are going to manage to miss an entire secular bull market if they try hard enough.

And as we’ve seen countless times over the years. The vast majority of traders are way to weak minded and emotional to ever have any chance of succeeding with contrarian strategies.

So far we are making good money, even from the difficult metals market because we don’t behave or think the same way as the majority of traders who are destined for financial extinction. These people are unable to grasp the idea that markets change. So contrarian trades are impossible for them. Since gold didn’t bottom as quickly as they wanted, it meant gold would never bottom. So instead of continuing to try until they catch the bottom and reap the reward they just give up.

The world is full of losers that give up when things get hard.

The simple fact is that everyone gets knocked down from time to time. The winners are the people that refuse to stay down and get back up to try again.

For the reasons I outline in my morning report, I think we got the bottom for gold on Thursday. I actually picked the exact bottom and we bought Thursday morning at the open based on gold tagging the 50% retracement. This was a real time trade, not the after the fact claims to picking the exact bottom that we are going to hear in the weeks ahead.

However I didn’t anticipate the attack on the mining sector on Thursday so we got knocked out of our position with only a tiny gain. Still the metal portfolio is at all time highs. I’ve mentioned many times in the past that this is how the banks enter their final positions. They create an undercut that runs stops producing the liquidity necessary for them to enter large positions without moving price against them.

The fun is about to begin. Now we’re going to see if the relative strength in miners during the ICL is about to lead to a big rally.

I think it is.

This is hilarious. I’m still getting plenty of emails from the fleas yet not one of these cowards has had the balls yet to put their ass on the line and enter the challenge and make real time calls.

It’s starting to look like the entire commodity complex may have completed the summer ICL on Thursday. That should include metals. I’m watching copper as the canary in the coal mine. It’s rallying above the 10 day moving average this morning.

When I saw several large attacks this morning it was the bell ringing that the banks weren’t done hitting the metals yet. We got out with a tiny profit. The metal portfolio is at a new all-time high and we’re back on the sidelines waiting again.

So far the SMT stock portfolio is leading the challenge with +11% and the SMT metal portfolio is in 2nd place with +7.4%.

Not surprisingly still not one troll has stepped up and entered the challenge. Not one newsletter writer has either.

Gold needs to get above $1229 today to complete a swing.

If stocks are ready to move down into a correction for the next 4-5 weeks that could be gold’s chance to start the intermediate rally.

I suspect stocks have at the least put in a short term top now that the Humphrey Hawkins speech is behind us.

It’s possible this could turn into an intermediate top. As the daily cycle is on day 15 that would imply the next good buying opportunity is 20-25 trading days away. Normal daily cycles tend to run about 35-45 days.

Now is probably a good time to get on the sidelines and just play the waiting game until we get into that 35-45 day window.

I want to see gold close above $1220 tomorrow to convince me the final yearly cycle low is complete.

It managed to correct all the way back to the 50% retracement and the weekly charts are now as oversold as they have ever gotten. So depending on how tomorrow plays out we may have completed the YCL yesterday. If not we may have to wait another day or two into next week.