Briefly: in our opinion, full speculative long position in silver is justified from the risk/reward point of view at the moment of publishing this Alert.

The Fed kept rates unchanged and while it was not immediately preceded by major price moves in the PMs, the no-change decision was followed by bullish price action in the following hours. This action extends into today's pre-market trading.

Most interestingly, however, the USD Index repeated its daily reversal confirming that lower values are to be expected. This confirms our yesterday's analysis.

The News in the USD Index

This means that the breakout in the greenback is likely to be invalidated shortly, and once that happens, the PMs are likely to move higher once again.

The breakout itself was neither huge, nor decisive, but it did take place. The USDX rallied above the rising red resistance line and reversed before the end of the day. Still, even taking into account the late decline, it ended the session higher - above the resistance line.

The important thing about this breakout is that - since it was relatively small - it would need to be confirmed for it to really matter. Based on the sizes of the previous rallies in the USD Index and the times when it corrected (blue lines on the above chart) it seems that the USD Index is about to start a corrective decline. Even the start of the decline would likely cause the USD to invalidate its breakdown, thus giving way to a much bigger decline.

To be clear, we continue to think that the USD Index is headed much higher in the following months and perhaps years, but this doesn't mean that it will rally in a straight line.

The vertical dashed line on the above chart shows what happened when the USDX entered such corrective downswings in the recent past. In almost all cases, gold and silver declined (usually relatively sharply) prior to USD's declines. The July 2019 case may seem to be an exception, but it really isn't one. Back then, the USD formed two tops and the first top was indeed immediately preceded by a quick dip in both precious metals. The true exception is what happened in December 2019 - in this case, gold and silver paused a bit before rallying again.

All in all, in most cases the quick decline in metals right at the USD top was normal. While in most cases, it is the USD Index that can tell us something about gold and silver, this time it might be the other way around first. The PMs might have declined indicating that this was indeed the final part of the USD's rally, which in turn could imply a quick comeback of the PMs along with a short-term correction in the USDX.

Meanwhile in Precious Metals

Miners soared back with vengeance, while gold and silver moved up just a little. This move might be accidental - after all, it was just one session - but it could indicate that the precious metals market will be making another short-term run up instead of being done with the previous one. Theoretically it shouldn't matter because after all, PMs are likely to move higher in the short run, but it does matter in relative terms. It means that silver's outperformance is still ahead of us.

Also, speaking of silver, while there are no doubts that the SL for the USLV ETF was not reached yesterday, some data providers report yesterday's low to match exactly our SL level of $17.28. It was not broken, but touched. Depending on data source, and the way one's broker handles orders, if one's trading position was closed, we think that reopening it is justified from the risk to reward point of view, and if it wasn't, we think that simply keeping the position intact is a good idea.

The GDX ETF confirms the bullish outlook for the next several days.

In yesterday's analysis, we wrote that the GDX ETF reached its rising support line without breaking below it, and that it was likely to trigger another rally, just like it did in mid-December and in early January. That's exactly what happened.

Summary

Summing up, it seems that the USD Index has yet to decline and thus that the rally in the precious metals sector is not over yet. Miners led the way yesterday, but silver is likely to take up the baton shortly.

The way in which the markets react to news in the first 24 hours is likely to be the way that they move in the next several days as they continue to discount new information. Yesterday's and today's (so far) price moves suggest that PMs are likely to move higher in the next several days.

Naturally, the medium-term outlook for the precious metals market remains very bearish and once the short-term correction is over, the declines are likely to resume.

As always, we'll keep you - our subscribers - informed.

To summarize:

Trading capital (supplementary part of the portfolio; our opinion): Full speculative long position (100% of the full position) in silver is justified from the risk/reward perspective with the following stop-loss orders and binding exit profit-take price levels:

• Silver futures: profit-take exit price: $18.49; stop-loss: $17.24; initial target price for the USLV ETN: $99.97; stop-loss for the USLV ETN: $82.95

Long-term capital (core part of the portfolio; our opinion): No positions (in other words: cash)

Insurance capital (core part of the portfolio; our opinion): Full position

Whether you already subscribed or not, we encourage you to find out how to make the most of our alerts and read our replies to the most common alert-and-gold-trading-related-questions.

Please note that the in the trading section we describe the situation for the day that the alert is posted. In other words, it we are writing about a speculative position, it means that it is up-to-date on the day it was posted. We are also featuring the initial target prices, so that you can decide whether keeping a position on a given day is something that is in tune with your approach (some moves are too small for medium-term traders and some might appear too big for day-traders).

Plus, you might want to read why our stop-loss orders are usually relatively far from the current price.

Please note that a full position doesn't mean using all of the capital for a given trade. You will find details on our thoughts on gold portfolio structuring in the Key Insights section on our website.

As a reminder - "initial target price" means exactly that - an "initial" one, it's not a price level at which we suggest closing positions. If this becomes the case (like it did in the previous trade) we will refer to these levels as levels of exit orders (exactly as we've done previously). Stop-loss levels, however, are naturally not "initial", but something that, in our opinion, might be entered as an order.

Since it is impossible to synchronize target prices and stop-loss levels for all the ETFs and ETNs with the main markets that we provide these levels for (gold, silver and mining stocks - the GDX ETF), the stop-loss levels and target prices for other ETNs and ETF (among other: UGLD, DGLD, USLV, DSLV, NUGT, DUST, JNUG, JDST) are provided as supplementary, and not as "final". This means that if a stop-loss or a target level is reached for any of the "additional instruments" (DGLD for instance), but not for the "main instrument" (gold in this case), we will view positions in both gold and DGLD as still open and the stop-loss for DGLD would have to be moved lower. On the other hand, if gold moves to a stop-loss level but DGLD doesn't, then we will view both positions (in gold and DGLD) as closed. In other words, since it's not possible to be 100% certain that each related instrument moves to a given level when the underlying instrument does, we can't provide levels that would be binding. The levels that we do provide are our best estimate of the levels that will correspond to the levels in the underlying assets, but it will be the underlying assets that one will need to focus on regarding the signs pointing to closing a given position or keeping it open. We might adjust the levels in the "additional instruments" without adjusting the levels in the "main instruments", which will simply mean that we have improved our estimation of these levels, not that we changed our outlook on the markets. We are already working on a tool that would update these levels on a daily basis for the most popular ETFs, ETNs and individual mining stocks.

Our preferred ways to invest in and to trade gold along with the reasoning can be found in the how to buy gold section. Additionally, our preferred ETFs and ETNs can be found in our Gold & Silver ETF Ranking.

As a reminder, Gold & Silver Trading Alerts are posted before or on each trading day (we usually post them before the opening bell, but we don't promise doing that each day). If there's anything urgent, we will send you an additional small alert before posting the main one.

Thank you.

Sincerely,
Przemyslaw Radomski, CFA
Editor-in-chief, Gold & Silver Fund Manager