Gold continued to claw its way higher yesterday, making steady progress since April 1 against punitive losses that had occurred, effectively, in mere hours. Look at the chart below and you’ll see the nasty downdraft that took bullion from an all-time high near $1036 in mid-March to a recent low of $876. That’s a 15% decline, and most of it could be accounted for by just a relative handful of price bars that have been marked in red. Add them up and you could say that it took only about ten hours for most of the damage to occur.

We’d like to say the worst is behind us, but encouraging as the April rally has been, it has only recouped about 40% of the losses sustained from mid-March into early April. Still, yesterday’s bold move against the corrective tide was encouraging, since it slightly surpassed a 939.10 benchmark we’d disseminated the night before. We didn’t think the June futures to get there before late today, but the fact that they reached, then minutely exceeded, the target as quickly as they did suggests that still higher prices are imminent. If so, it would take a minimum 948.30 today to reassure us that buyers have plenty of power in reserve. That’s a Hidden Pivot target that comes from the hourly chart, and if it is reached – or better yet exceeded -- it would create a robust new impulse leg on the lesser charts. Creating the next bull leg after that will be even more challenging, since it the rally would need to surpass a 1001.30 peak made a few weeks ago, marking the moment when gold fell off a cliff.

Yesterday’s rally in gold got a psychological boost from a surge in oil, which has been on a rampage lately. The $4 spike in May crude was attributed to surprisingly low stockpiles in the U.S. Whatever the cause of the rally, it sent transportation stocks into a steep dive, with American Airlines (AMR) leading the way. While it’s difficult to see how the carriers might turn things around, they’ve been beaten down so hard since early 2007 that there’s almost nothing left to short. That is of course bullish, but it will take some kind of bullish news to trigger off a short squeeze. Unfortunately, we lack the imagination to even guess what that news might be.

***

Three Seats Left

There are just three seats left for the April 16-17 Hidden Pivot Seminar online. If you’ve wanted to take the class but have been unable to attend on weekend mornings, this one will be held over  two consecutive evenings – Wednesday and Thursday, April 16-17, from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. MDT.  Click here, and then on the “Upcoming” tab to register; or here if you would like more information as well as a detailed description of the Hidden Pivot Method and a free Hidden Pivot calculator.