Yesterday’s fleeting, spike high suspiciously failed to take out any daunting peaks along the “wall” of the July/August decline, so we’ll be monitoring gold’s vital signs more closely than usual today. In practice that will mean determining whether downward retracements in various time frames are reversing from midpoints (bullish) or ‘D’ targets (bearish). The first such pattern to observe is the one shown in the accompanying chart, with a midpoint at 830.00 and a ‘D’ target at 794.60. As always, a breach of the first by more than a small amount (in this case, perhaps 40-50 cents) would imply that weakness is likely to persist to at least the second. More bearish would be if the futures close below the midpoint, and more bearish still would be an overshoot of 794.60. _______ UDPATE: A collapse overnight brought the futures down to 828.50. Although that’s a tad more than the 50-cent overshoot I’d allotted, we’ll consider the damage over and done with for now. However, a close below 830.00 would still indicated another nasty leg down to at least 794.60.