By Imre Gams, Editor, Money Trends This is very rare, but sometimes I don’t care if a market is going to trade higher or lower… because I know I can make a lot of money no matter which way that market goes. Right now is one of those times. The opportunity in question lies in the gold futures market. Gold put in a significant top back on August 7th at a price of 2089.2. What followed was a dramatic decline of just over 10%, with gold finding support at 1874.2. Since then, the yellow metal has traded in a sideways fashion… likely chopping up all of the impatient traders rushing in to buy or sell. Sideways trading indicates a balance between bulls and bears, with neither side being able to take firm control. Sideways markets are rarely exciting in the moment… but they almost always portend heightened volatility once the market decides to break out in direction or the other. Sometimes, this direction is easily predictable. In this case, however, I don’t think it is. I can build very strong technical and fundamental arguments for gold selling off… but on the other hand I can also create a compelling case for gold strengthening in the days ahead. What I do know for sure is that a sharp move is coming… either to the upside or to the downside. And like I said earlier, I don’t need to know which way this move is going to go in order to be able to profit from it and you don’t either. You see, sideways movements are oftentimes triangles. And it looks like we are dealing with a symmetrical triangle in gold right now. The really neat thing about symmetrical triangles is that they can break in either direction. Oftentimes, this break will occur as we reach the apex of the triangle… and we are almost there now. I have a very laidback approach to trading symmetrical triangles. I simply set up pending buy and sell orders to take advantage of the coming breakout. When one of the orders gets triggered (one of them always ends up being triggered!), I simply delete the other one and let my trade run. I am now going to show you the equally valid bullish and bearish interpretations of gold. First, I will show you the bullish price chart. This price chart shows us that we have completed Waves 1 through 3 and that this triangle comprises the Wave 4 correction. This means that prices should rally above the August 7th high to complete Wave 5. A likely target in this scenario would be around the price level of 2250, where Wave 5 would be equal in length to Wave 1. This bullish interpretation will become valid if we break above the (d) point of the triangle, which comes in at 2001.2. Next, we have the immediately bearish price chart. This price chart is similar to the bullish interpretation, as it also shows us that we have completed Waves 1 through 3. The difference is that this more immediately bearish price chart indicates that this triangle is only a part of the Wave 4 correction, not the entirety of the correction. We have our Wave A sell-off from the August 7th highs, followed by Wave B which takes on the shape of this triangle pattern. This means we have one more leg down to complete the entire A-B-C correction that altogether will make up Wave 4. This bearish view will become valid if we break below the (d) point of this triangle, which comes in at 1911.7. This view would set an expected target above 1788.8, the extreme of Wave 1. This price is very important, because if we break below 1788.8, then gold would have to take on a much more bearish tone. Remember, one of the cardinal rules of the Wave Principle is that Wave 4 cannot end in the price territory of Wave 1. Therefore, breaking below 1788.8 would suggest that we are not in a bigger bullish impulsive phase. I will address this situation if it arises in a future issue of Money Trends. For now, what these price charts mean for traders is that we can set a buy stop order in gold a few ticks above 2001.2 and a sell stop order a few ticks below 1911.7. When one of the orders gets triggered, we’ll simply delete the other order. Regards, Imre Gams Editor, Money Trends Like what you’re reading? Send your thoughts to feedback@andykriegertrading.com. |