Although I try to keep subscribers on top of encouraging signs in gold, there’s little value in my trying to sugarcoat the technical evidence at hand. To be as straightforward as I can right now, that means acknowledging that August Gold’s bounce from the June 28 low at 1179 has not been nearly strong enough to suggest that a major bear market has ended.  More immediately, and from a purely technical standpoint, the weakness of the last few sessions has transformed a promising, bullish impulse leg into a duel between bulls and bears.  To be sure, the larger of the conflicting patterns is intact and still bullish. But as of early Monday morning, the smaller one dictates trading from the short side if scalping.  The chart (see inset) shows what would need to happen for bulls to regain the upper hand — i.e., a price reversal from p or above that rallies above the red ‘A’ without pausing for breath.  However, it would take significantly more than that — specifically, an uncorrected thrust to 1301.80 on the hourly chart, to refresh the bullish energy of the three-day rally we saw from 1179.