by Adam Hamilton
Zeal LLC
Gold has been consolidating high since early August, when it rocketed parabolic on colossal gold-ETF demand. That 6-week-old sideways drift has worked off some greed and overboughtness, but plenty still remains. So gold isn’t out of the woods yet for this essential sentiment-rebalancing selloff. With residual overboughtness still extreme, gold faces considerable downside risk heading into its biggest seasonal selloff.
Across the financial markets, absolute price levels usually don’t matter much in technical and sentimental terms. Though they are important fundamentally. Supply and demand always converge to drive prices to sustainable levels, and over time traders come to accept them as normal. But how fast prices surged or plunged to current prevailing levels is exceedingly important, greatly affecting their short-term staying power.