Gold continues to make headway in herky-jerky fashion, failing to fully satisfy bulls but also denying bears much to cheer about. On Monday, the February Comex contract rallied to within a millimeter of the 1240.20 Hidden Pivot target shown. The pullback so far has been mild, encouraging the thought that the next pop will be good for a ride to 1259.80. Another encouraging sign is that some recent ‘mechanical’ buy signals in gold vehicles, including one in HUI, the Gold Bugs Index, have been winners.  We’d sworn off this type of trade in bullion after getting stopped out once in the futures, but they seem to be working again. This implies that buying enthusiasm has picked up a little over the last couple of weeks. For your information, the February futures is currently on a ‘mechanical’ buy signal that tripped at 1216.80, stop 1202.40.______ UPDATE (Dec 7, 4:00 p.m.): The February contract climbed as high as 1255.80 today. Just a smidgen more! We want buyers to blow past that Hidden Pivot, since that would announce their intention to push still higher. _______ UPDATE (Dec 12, 9:59 p.m.): Zzzzzzzzz. _______ UPDATE (Dec 16, 12:17 a.m.): The futures have rolled down without having achieved an ‘easy’ 1259.80 target, but also without having exceeded any external peaks on the most recent upthrust. Taken together, these signs of weakness suggest that gold’s balky uptrend since August is not destined for greatness. We’ve made similar observations scores of times since the gold price peaked above $1900 in 2011, and the only thing that has changed is that bears have become too depleted to sell off bullion except for short periods when conditions are perfect. It is not a bull market we are seeing at this point, but neither is it much of a bear. _______ UPDATE (Dec 17, 10:18 p.m.): Zzzzzzzzzzz. The 1259.80 target remains viable, but it’s hard to get excited about it. If a rally were to impale this Hidden Pivot resistance, that would be another story._______ UPDATE (Dec 19, 9:43 p.m.): The little hoser poked its snout above 1259.80 for all of an hour before tanking big-time. The plunge was the worst one-day reversal we’ve seen in recent memory, although anyone following my updates couldn’t have been too surprised. This chart shows how the actual top missed an alternative target at 1262.40 by just two ticks.  The trend remains balky but bullish, implying we’ll need great patience to profit from it.