Precious Metals

I've been dusting off some longer term charts over the last few days, and while we wait see see whether silver can break above the upper trendline of the two year rising channel, I've been considering the next upside target if it does. I posted a possible continuation IHS on silver when it broke 20 and suggested 30 as a possible target. In addition to the IHS there is also the longer term resistance trendline on silver indicating to the same area. If we do see a break up I think we could see a fairly fast move to 30 but if so, it should find some formidable resistance there:

A lot of people don't like IHSs as continuation patterns but they do appear and play out every so often. My favorite example is the big IHS on gold that recently made target. If silver breaks up I would expect to see gold make my next upside target in the 1450 area:

Another long term chart that sprang to the eye was USDJPY where the all time low in 1995 at 79.7 is now within striking distance. A test looks more than likely from here now and would seem likely to coincide with USD hitting the multi-year support trendline at 75.75:

Short term I'm still looking for a swing high in this area, though I'm not seeing much to suggest that the pullback will be deep. My bullish EW chum Pug, who has been bearing up well under the burden of being constantly right about market direction for quite a while now, is also looking for a high here. He's looking for that in the current area or slightly higher at 1175. I'm looking at the post flash-crash high at 1173.57 SPX to provide some resistance and I'm seeing a very possible broadening top on ES where I'm thinking we may well see an upper trendline hit in the 1169 ES area today:

That broadening top on ES might also give us the next swing low on the lower trendline of course and I'll be looking for it there. Despite the name, broadening tops are not a bearish pattern as they break up as often as they break down, and I'm thinking that this one may well break upwards after the next retracement. Pug's looking at 1137 SPX and 1120 SPX as the most likely retracement targets and I'd add 1130 SPX to that for the retest of the IHS neckline. Anything lower than 1120 SPX and we might be seeing a much deeper break down, but I'm not expecting to see that happen.

Pug's wrapup post from last Friday is available for anyone to view here, and I would suggest that it is well worth a read.

As an aside some of you will have noticed that Alphahorn has closed his blog after getting some very snarky comments last week. Snark is always a problem on the blogs but I was particularly sorry to see this as Alphahorn is a superb analyst and has been eerily accurate on market direction in recent months. He was writing about a return to the 1170 SPX area in August as I recall, and that makes him one of very few who were. A serious loss to the blogosphere and yet another example of some bloggers making a virtue of bluntness at the expense of good manners. Sad.