Senior Trader Daily Update 19 December 2017

Hello everyone.
 
The progress of US President Trump’s (and the Republican party’s) tax reforms held sway over the markets and related uncertainty fed into a weak US Dollar Index throughout much of yesterday’s trade, allowing gold and silver to advance by the close of business in spite of buoyant US equities markets.
 
That was basically the long and short of it, as the saying goes.
 
The latest Commitments of Traders (as at December 12th) showed substantial levels of long liquidation and simultaneous short selling from gold and silver non-commercial speculative accounts. Platinum spec accounts continued piling in on the short side.

 
Technically, price action in XAU/AUD on Friday and Monday managed to break the sequence of lower highs and lower lows, thereby removing any immediate threat to the October 19th low at AUD 1625.25 and a cluster of lows / support at the AUD 1615.00 level (extending back to late August), and increasing the probability of some mean-reversion into the AUD 1650 - 1665 region on likely shortcovering / profit taking. 
 
Last Tuesday’s ‘Hammer’ candlestick on the Daily XAU/USD chart provided the trigger for further gains, as gold has continued its march back towards previous support at USD 1265.50 (which should now provide resistance). The 21 Day and 200 Day moving averages intersecting at USD 1269.00, beckon.
 
Good luck.
 
Regards,
Andre