Pay no mind to reports that a big player unloaded $3 billion worth of gold contracts into Monday’s tidal surge in bullion, knocking quotes down by $37 before the session ended. In the first place, we were ready for this ‘surprise’, since the intraday high at 1691.70 occurred less than a dollar from an important rally target I’d begun drum-rolling several weeks ago. More significant is that at its peak, the upthrust slightly exceeded a midpoint Hidden Pivot resistance associated with a D target at 2285.90. This is shown in the chart, and although it will take a more decisive penetration of p=1666 to put D solidly in play, gold’s strength over the near term is likely to feed off a stock-market selloff that has farther to go.  If and when the futures blow past 1666, institutional whales like Monday’s big seller in gold will be powerless to stop it. _______ UPDATE (Feb 25, 6:35 p.m. EST):  Although gold has given up $60 of its recent gains in the last two days, sellers have had to work hard to pull it down to bargain levels. This feels bullish, as does the tentative bounce the April contact took from the 1629.50 Hidden Pivot support shown in the chart. Let’s see how well the good guys perform today. If they can push the futures above the 1666.70 point ‘c’ of the pattern shown in the chart, they’ll be back in the driver’s seat. _____ UPDATE (Feb 26, 8:28 a.m.): Gold is timid today, down $15 at the moment and acting spooked by a patently phony, feeble rally overnight in index futures. It will turn around only if and when stocks dive anew. The good news is that they have MUCH further to fall before they achieve the 20% correction ‘required’ to qualify as a bear market. If the pandemic cannot make this happen, the alleged Smart Money that has been feeding this bull is even crazier than we’d suspected. _______ UPDATE (Feb 27, 8:35 p.m.): The bloodbath in the miners seems just a tad overdone, wouldn’t you say? And while we might have expected physical to make headway as stocks have fallen over the last two days, neither has it lost much ground.  A 1732.90 target that I posted in the Trading Room on Tuesday at 10:15 a.m. remains viable, so let’s keep it in mind if bullion should take one of its wonted kamikaze dives.