Considering that equities were in a rabid, take-no-prisoners short-squeeze yesterday, and Ukraine was on its way to becoming yesterday’s news, gold held up pretty well. The scumballs who thrive on beating it down at every opportunity had to accomplish the task in under 30 minutes yesterday — in the dead of night. Pretty sleazy. And what weakness we saw thereafter was not weakness at all, but rather, bulls saying, Make my day. There is immediate downside risk to at least 1326.60 nonetheless (see inset), but bulls have stood their ground so well here that it’s difficult to imagine the selling will get much worse than that. Camouflageurs looking to bottom-fish should monitor charts of 5-minute degree or less near the red and green lines shown. _______ UPDATE (March 6, 10:47 a.m. EST): Gold has popped for a $16 rally this morning after having gone no lower than 1331. If and when it blows past the 1349.10 midpoint pivot, we can infer more upside is coming to at least 1366.90 over the near term. (FYI, the pattern displays nicely on the 30-min: A=1319.30 on February 28.)