Barry Stuppler

A couple of weeks ago, my Foolish colleague Alan Oscroft asked whether recent large falls in the price of Bitcoin should be taken as a sign for investors to start buying the cryptocurrency. His conclusion? Definitely not. Not only do I agree with him but I think investors should really consider getting some exposure to a different asset . . . .

We have been noting silver’s relatively positive Commitments of Traders (CoT) alignment vs. that of gold. Before Friday’s pervasive market disturbance that likely improved both CoTs, the reading in silver was already constructive . . . .

In my article from 4 months ago about gold versus bond yields, I concluded that gold would reach $1330-1350 from the $1280 level at the time of writing the analysis. So where do we go from here? . . . .

Last Friday, with interest rates and the U.S. Dollar rising, the financial markets started to react negatively, and the Nunes memo gave the markets the momentum to drive the Dow Jones down 665 points and caused Gold to drop $10 per ounce . . . .

Gold briefly moved below the key $1,330 support price in Asian markets, then quickly rallied $5 per ounce . . . .

Today the Labor Department said that U.S. employment increased by 200,000 jobs for January. This caused the U.S. Dollar and interest rates to rally and Gold/Silver and equity markets to decline . . . .

While gold is very close to a major breakout (in price) its strength has not filtered down to silver yet, writes Jordan Roy-Byrne. . . .

Late yesterday the Federal Open Market Committee said that they expect that inflation will move up this year . . . .

Investors should not take it for granted that inflation will rise from here, but whatever the direction of markets, gold is a prudent investment right now, according to Bill McQuaker, multi asset investment manager at Fidelity . . . .

Consumption of the precious metal climbed 9.4 per cent to 1,089 tonnes, according to data from the China Gold Association, released on Thursday. That represents a big turnaround . . . .